 |  | 
richk_1957
If ..Then..Else
Premium
join:2001-04-11
Minas Tirith
|  You're right about the symmetry
Most people download more.
And AOL's squeezing a couple of colleges? Who don't have a huge provider (and probably don't have a huge internet budget, either)
By the nature of the users in the colleges, there would be a closer symmetry there [more downloads, but more uploads too]
It just looks like, from my viewpoint, like goliath [AOL] picking on David | |
| | 
dnoyeB
Ferrous Phallus
join:2000-10-09
Southfield, MI
| Re: becoming typical? I don't think this is what a peering relationship is about. its not about sharing bandwidth. its about sharing paths and innerconnecting networks.
It should be automatic that if your users start going through the peer connection a little too much that you would find where they are connecting and get your own path there for your users sakes. If They don't do that, they will hard their users and their peering relationship.
--
dnoyeB
"Then said I, Wisdom [is] better than strength: nevertheless the poor man's wisdom [is] despised, and his words are not heard. " Ecclesiastes 9:16
| |
| Nightwchtr
join:2001-09-10
Falls Church, VA
 ·Verizon FIOS
| What do you expect from AOL Personally I think AOL is trying to get money out of them because they are probably the smallest company they work with. Plus if Cogent knew they weren't up to par wouldn't you think they would try and work something out instead of just walking away like AOL said. To fishy to believe AOL was trying to help them, more like trying to squeeze them alittle bit for some money. | |
| | 
jebby1
@206.34.x.x
| Re: What do you expect from AOL hi,
i'm not knowledgeable about peering relationships but it seems to me from a business standpoint that AOL's position is a legitimate one. afterall, the myriad of small ISPs have to pay the behemoths like level 3, etc...for access to the internet. just like those small isps, if cogent is not big enough, it can't share in the freebies the larger joints enjoy. is David instead trying to get a free lunch? | |
| | 
DrTCP
Yours truly
Premium,ExMod 1999-04
join:1999-11-09
Round Rock, TX
| AOL has the right! I think peering should be mutually beneficial to both parties. Although I am not a big fan of AOL, in this case, AOL is carrying a lot more transit traffic for Cogent than the traffic originating from or destined to AOL.
Who would want to provide free upstream connection while other smaller ISP's are paying the likes of Level3, AT&T etc. to carry their traffic? This is business and I can understand why AOL does not want to suck the extra costs when it is not getting significant benefit from this peering.
If it was that both AOL and Cogent had mutually equal or close to equal benefit from this private peering then yes, AOL would be at fault and actually it would hurt its own customers significantly but that is not the case.
Well, cogent should either pay AOL or find another peering point. The ball is really at Cogent. | |
| | | | | mdurkin
join:1999-08-11
San Bruno, CA
| Re: AOL has the right! - bingo yes they do! said by Jerm  :
I think some people don't fully understand what was happening in this situation.
Cogent customers were downloading much more from AOL sites (ie CNN) than AOL users were downloading from Cogent (which hosts what? not much).
That's exactly opposite of where peering disputes arise. The ISP that receives more traffic wants to get paid. So AOL users would be downloading more from Cogent. It has to do with the fact that most ISPs use hot potato routing, ie. Cogent would handoff their outbound traffic destined for AOL customers as soon as possible and AOL winds up hauling it across country (and there are technical pluses to doing that since it tends to reduce the chance you will go from SF to NY and back to SF... AOL has much more detail about where its own customers ultimately are than can be practically exchanged via BGP), as well as the fact that ISPs can get more money for webhost bandwidth than they can for access bandwidth. | |
| | | | 
Jerm
join:2000-04-10
Richland, WA |  Your right...
| |
| 
jose3030
Premium
join:1999-08-17
Manassas, VA | Peering seems to be like... Something that lawyers would have a lovely old time discussing.
What is "fair" and what is not. | |
| | darkman6420
join:2002-10-21 | Re: Peering seems to be like... I just dont like AOL at all. They should go out of business. I hope Cogent Handles this quickly | |
| | |
jose3030
Premium
join:1999-08-17
Manassas, VA | Re: Peering seems to be like... Cogent sounds like a promising company. | |
| benboy4
join:2000-12-19
Silver Spring, MD
| Cogent business model not working Cogent is not a "small ISP". Cogent could be called a "small national ISP" though. Cogent bought the remnants of national ISPs Netrail and PSI which they added to their existing national network. (They also bought the failed Allied Riser lit building ISP.) With the acquisition of Netrail and PSI, Cogent acquired pre-existing non-transit peering agreements that Cogent otherwise would never have been able to acquire standing on their own. Netrail and PSI's peering agreements date back to the beginning of the Internet and probably have very favorable terms relating to traffic volumes, number of peering locations and ratios compared to today's riduculous standards.
Cogent's business model is to provide large amounts of bandwidth for relatively small dollars. End users get a 100Mbps connection for $1,000/month; resellers/distributors (school systems, ISPs, web hosters, etc.) can get a 100Mbps connection for $3,000/month. Cogent services are primarily delivered to Cogent lit buildings and colo facilities.
So Cogent sells bandwidth for $10/Mbps retail and $30/Mbps wholesale. These rates are a fraction of what other national ISPs are selling bandwidth for. UUNET is wholesaling DS3's (45Mbps) at $200/Mbps; AT&T and Sprint are at or above $250/Mbps for DS3 or above commitments. End user/lower commitment pricing for these ISP's are much higher.
Cogent's goal *seems* to be to take advantage of the Netrail and PSI non-transit peering agreements where they don't have to pay for bandwidth and hope that their end users don't use too much bandwidth to transit peering partners (one's where Cogent has to pay - if they even have such partners which is now in question due to the lack of fail over when AOL cut off their peering connection).
High volume hosting firms would most liley not use Cogent's bandwidth because of Cogent's reliance on non-transit peering agreements which are too shaky from an ISP of this size (again, as evidenced with AOL). Most users who are jumping on the Cogent bandwidth seem to be users who are in the lit office buildings where Cogent already is located. Thus most of their traffic is going to be pull traffic (to the end users) as opposed to push traffic from hosting providers as evidenced by AOL (who interestingly enough has a ton of pull traffic from their dialup users and if Cogent had any serious hosting customers should easily have thrown push traffic to AOL but obviously Cogent doesn’t).
IMHO, this is just the first non-transit agreement to be terminated on Cogent. As the Post article alludes to, non-transit peering partners require certain ratios of inbound and outbound traffic. AOL saw that the ratios are out of whack and cut Cogent off. How long will it be before UUNET, Sprint, CW and the other big boys pull the plug on Cogent?
Cogent's business model while initially attractive to end users belies the fact that you generally get what you pay for. Prince George's County and George Washington University have learned, you really do get what you pay for. As Cogent loses more non-transit peering agreements, their costs will rise and will either need to adjust their revenue model to be more in line with the industry or they will fall like so many DSL providers we have seen who gave it away in exchange for "volume". | |
| | raye
Premium
join:2000-08-14
Orange, CA
| Re: Cogent business model not working While I am not a fan of AOL either, I appreciate and agree with the point you are trying to make. 100 Mbps access at Juno.com prices is a business model doomed to fail.
BTW, I think that other providers have begun to de-prioritize Cogent traffic. I was getting >2400 ms pings from a VisualRoute v7.0g trace from my machine (West Coast) to »www.cogentco.com and »www.pgcps.pg.k12.md.us (PG Schools). Looks like they moved their peer to AboveNet. Hope the outbound access for PG schools is better than that.
»www.gwu.edu has moved to RCN networks, and I am getting 90-95 ms pings. Interesting to see if others follow GW's lead and move to a better ISP. | |
| | jwvo
join:2001-07-27
Seattle, WA
| Cogent Sends FAR more traffic than it receives.
I am the Admin of an ISP that uses them as one of our upstream providers. We, for example, send a lot more data out our link that what we suck in, (3 to 4x). This is because while their transit is not the most delay free it is cheap and to that end we route traffic from our biggest bandwidth customers out it.
A couple of people i know run other ISPs that also have Cogent links who do exactly the same thing. One of the most common uses for cogent bandwidth is streaming and downloading servers, neither of which are very sensitive to latency along the path.
Even now this AOL problem has little effect on us [once i was told about it] because we just told our routers to never use cogent for traffic with level 3's AS number in the path. (that is where it gets slow from cogent).
This solution however only works for ISPs with high powered routers and multiple bgp peers (we have 3 others). The people who really get hammered with no recourse are the poor schools and businesses that use them as their only transport.
John  | |
| jdir
join:2001-05-04
Santa Clara, CA |  Need traffic up?
| |
|
unhappy
@rr.com
| spat TW/AOL wants to be an entertainment provider but if the content doesn't come from their servers it should cost much more? Until TW added "Business Class" cable MODEM support around here they literally maintained that cable MODEMs were just for entertainment, probably still do.
BTW, the ping times through ATDN.net and cogentco.com are back in the sub 100 mS times, the highest I observed in the last two weeks were more like 3500 mS. Makes a telnet session really tough when there is a lag over 5 seconds from keypress till it echos on the screen.
I am a TW/AOL residential customer who was accessing something on PSInet (a segment that was Alpha.net until PSI acquired it a couple of years ago). And like someone else mentioned, Cogent's network is national, not just a small ISP.
My employer queried about a "business class" connection and got a quote for installation of more than $12000 as the cable doesn't come into the business park yet. | |
| carlhirsch
join:2001-03-27
Chicago, IL | resolved? I just tried pinging into AOL from our Cogent router and it looks like connectivity is much improved.
Does anybody know whether Cogent has upgraded its pipe into Level3's network? It looks like that's how they're still getting into AOL. | |
| | | |
|
|
