North American Network Operators Group
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Re: Cogent/Level 3 depeering

  • From: Patrick W. Gilmore
  • Date: Wed Oct 05 16:37:37 2005 
On Oct 5, 2005, at 3:11 PM, Daniel Roesen wrote:
Exactly. And this is why Cogent's statement to the public (and their
customers) is an outright lie. Level 3 isn't "denying Level 3's
customers access to Cogent's customers and denying Cogent's customers
access to Level 3 customers.". It's just that they deny Cogent
settlement-free direct peering anymore. Cogent can get the L3 and L3
customer routes elsewhere if they want. But Cogent doesn't. It's Cogents
decision to break connectivity, not L3's.
I think you and I have a different definition of "deny" and "decision".

Cogent was connected to L3. Level 3 TOOK ACTIVE STEPS to sever that relationship. Cogent, this moment, has their routers, ports, and configurations ready, willing, and able to accept and send packets to and from L3.

Please explain to me why you think Cogent is the bad actor here?

By your logic, Level 3 is denying customers access to Cogent because they are perfectly capable of buying transit from Verio.


All that said, it is entirely possible L3 was justified in their actions because Cogent was abusing the peering relationship. For instance, Cogent may have been forcing L3 to carry long haul traffic for Cogent instead of buying their own fiber / routers / whatever. If so, L3 probably feels their decision to terminate the peering relationship is on sound moral, ethical, and financial ground.

However, L3 still typed in the config lines which caused this bifurcation. Whether that makes it their "fault" is open to debate. But it certainly is not Cogent's fault just 'cause Cogent can buy transit - so can L3.

--
TTFN,
patrick