If you don't have enable on a router, and you've never negotiated
peering with a transit free ISP then you're not qualified to comment.
You really don't understand what's going on here, and it's not, I
repeat, not a technical problem. There is nothing wrong with the
technology, architecture, or anything else. There is something
wrong with the business model of one, or both of these companies.
I agree. Though many of the people who meet the second criteria don't
even have enable anymore. :)
That said, the business relationships that have evolved have certainly
overwhelmed -- or rather use a very specific definition of
connectivity/reachability, etc. When two transit free networks peer, its
often in many locations over many different political regions (time
zones, geographies, pick your term). Deliberately and voluntarily taking
that down does not change the stability of the underlying architecture.
Certainly anyone who runs any network of any size knows very well that
the Internet does not survive conscience, deliberate breakage well at
all -- nor was it architected to. Put a little knowledge into a border
router that is a part of the "Internet" and watch the chaos you can create.
Further, the "survivability" we talk about also requires that the end
nodes, clients, networks, ISPs design for fault-tolerance. This would
imply no single-connections. Like all de-peerings, this creates the most
hardship for those Enterprise customers (and smaller customers) that
either don't have the know how to know they need multiple providers and
portable space or the smaller customers that can't afford it [business
model or actual finance]. Those of us who are customers of both networks
or customers of neither network wouldn't even notice.
I think Cogent's offer of providing free transit to all single homed
Level3 customers is particularly clever and being underpublicized. I
wouldn't be surprised if Cogent is in more buildings than Level3 with a
high degree of overlap with the entire Level3 lit network. That could be
a very nasty "competitor" to force into your customers awareness by your
own action (or inaction) -- especially if your customer is single homed
to you and realizes now that isn't enough of the "Internet" for them.
Deepak