RE: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-18 Thread Stephen J. Wilcox

yes they're alive.. but the connectivity to DT was never in question :)

On Mon, 18 Apr 2005, Peter & Karin Dambier wrote:

> 
> They are alive!
> 
> host_name("217.167.29.246","www.francetelecom.com").
> 
> No ping, no traceroute, but I get their homepage.
> 
> host_name("84.167.240.52","p54A7F034.dip.t-dialin.net").
> 
> That is me.
> 
> 217.0.67.105 (217.0.67.105)  9.237 ms  9.128 ms  9.335 ms
> da-ea1.DA.DE.net.DTAG.DE (62.153.179.54)  8.362 ms  8.445 ms  9.784 ms
> 
> That is my way out.
> 
> In europe there seem to be no problems. I have not seen anything in forums
> here.
> 
> From
> 
> http://vision.opentransit.net/docs/peering_policy/
> 
> "If you meet the criteria defined above, please send your formal peering
> application by email to peering5511 at opentransit.net
> ([EMAIL PROTECTED] has been discontinued)"
> 
> I guess they have another mailbox in "qa."
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Peter Dambier
> 
> 



RE: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-18 Thread Peter & Karin Dambier

They are alive!

host_name("217.167.29.246","www.francetelecom.com").

No ping, no traceroute, but I get their homepage.

host_name("84.167.240.52","p54A7F034.dip.t-dialin.net").

That is me.

217.0.67.105 (217.0.67.105)  9.237 ms  9.128 ms  9.335 ms
da-ea1.DA.DE.net.DTAG.DE (62.153.179.54)  8.362 ms  8.445 ms  9.784 ms

That is my way out.

In europe there seem to be no problems. I have not seen anything in forums
here.

From

http://vision.opentransit.net/docs/peering_policy/

"If you meet the criteria defined above, please send your formal peering
application by email to peering5511 at opentransit.net
([EMAIL PROTECTED] has been discontinued)"

I guess they have another mailbox in "qa."


Regards,
Peter Dambier

-- 
Peter und Karin Dambier 
Graeffstrasse 14 
D-64646 Heppenheim 
+49-6252-671788 (Telekom) 
+49-6252-599091 (O2 Genion) 
+49-6252-750308 (Sipgate VoIP)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
www.peter-dambier.de
peter-dambier.site.voila.fr


Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-18 Thread Michael . Dillon

> For many folks too the falling price they buy transit for just meansthey 
are 
> being forced to take that off their product sell prices so they 
dontactually 
> make any more profit.. in which case there is no advantage to buying
> below cost 
> services.

In recent years, the unregulated telecoms industry has struggled
with the steep slide towards commoditization. This is a problem
because the industry's definition of telecom services is so narrow
that there are few opportunities to add value and outrun the 
commoditization wave. 

Moving packets from point A to point B is rapidly becoming
as glamourous and as profitable as moving water from point A
to point B or moving gas, or moving electricity...

The only way out is for the telecoms industry to be dismantled
by 3rd parties who will buy and own networks in order to leverage
those networks for their own value-add services. Everyone else
will just have to get used to repeated cost-cutting exercises.

--Michael Dillon



Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-17 Thread Michael Sinatra

John van Oppen wrote:
> All,
> 
> 
> Here is an output of show ip bgp regexp _5511_ on my cogent facing router (ie 
> with a full cogent feed)...Most of the prefixes with best paths that are 
> not through cogent don't exist in my cogent route feed at all (even via a non 
> FT path).   It looks like things are still a bit wonky.
> 
> http://as23265.net/cogent.txt
> 
> Thanks,
> John van Oppen
> PocketiNet Communications
> AS23265
> 
> 
> -Ursprüngliche Nachricht-
> Von: Patrick W. Gilmore [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> Gesendet: Sunday, April 17, 2005 10:26 PM
> An: nanog@merit.edu
> Cc: Patrick W. Gilmore
> Betreff: Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent
> 
> 
> 
> On Apr 17, 2005, at 11:16 PM, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
> 
> 
>>On Apr 17, 2005, at 10:49 PM, John van Oppen wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>As a cogent customer, I still see no routes to 217.167.0.0/16 (the
>>>route that holds www.francetelecom.com) via my cogent feed.
>>>
>>>That /16 also appears to be unreachable from the looking glass on
>>>cogent's website still.
>>>
>>
>>I can trace from Cogent to FT just fine.
>>
>>Haven't checked all possible end points, but my spot check shows  
>>connectivity.
> 
> 
> Replying to my own post, I still see some Cogent <-> FT strangeness.
> 
> Tracing to www.opentransit.net works fine, but www.fracetelecom.com  
> dies on the first hop.
> 
> Spot checking other IPs in FT, they seem to work.  Is it just the  
> 'fracetelecom.com' sub-network that is still not connected?
> 
> Anyone have any more info?
> 

I am seeing wonkiness too.  I have a default-free router peering
exclusively with AS174 that's not seeing routes for hosts in rain.fr and
francetelecom.com, and traces to those hosts die two hops into AS174.
The same hosts are reachable via level3 and their traces go through on
our routers that have multiple peerings.

Note that the authoritative nameservers for francetelecom.com are in
rain.fr and are not reachable via an exclusive cogent path.  Hence, I am
not able to even get DNS resolution on the cogent-only path.

michael


RE: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-17 Thread John van Oppen

All,


Here is an output of show ip bgp regexp _5511_ on my cogent facing router (ie 
with a full cogent feed)...Most of the prefixes with best paths that are 
not through cogent don't exist in my cogent route feed at all (even via a non 
FT path).   It looks like things are still a bit wonky.

http://as23265.net/cogent.txt

Thanks,
John van Oppen
PocketiNet Communications
AS23265


-Ursprüngliche Nachricht-
Von: Patrick W. Gilmore [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Gesendet: Sunday, April 17, 2005 10:26 PM
An: nanog@merit.edu
Cc: Patrick W. Gilmore
Betreff: Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent



On Apr 17, 2005, at 11:16 PM, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

> On Apr 17, 2005, at 10:49 PM, John van Oppen wrote:
>
>
>> As a cogent customer, I still see no routes to 217.167.0.0/16 (the
>> route that holds www.francetelecom.com) via my cogent feed.
>>
>> That /16 also appears to be unreachable from the looking glass on
>> cogent's website still.
>>
>
> I can trace from Cogent to FT just fine.
>
> Haven't checked all possible end points, but my spot check shows  
> connectivity.

Replying to my own post, I still see some Cogent <-> FT strangeness.

Tracing to www.opentransit.net works fine, but www.fracetelecom.com  
dies on the first hop.

Spot checking other IPs in FT, they seem to work.  Is it just the  
'fracetelecom.com' sub-network that is still not connected?

Anyone have any more info?

-- 
TTFN,
patrick


Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-17 Thread Patrick W. Gilmore
On Apr 17, 2005, at 11:16 PM, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
On Apr 17, 2005, at 10:49 PM, John van Oppen wrote:

As a cogent customer, I still see no routes to 217.167.0.0/16 (the  
route that holds www.francetelecom.com) via my cogent feed.

That /16 also appears to be unreachable from the looking glass on  
cogent's website still.

I can trace from Cogent to FT just fine.
Haven't checked all possible end points, but my spot check shows  
connectivity.
Replying to my own post, I still see some Cogent <-> FT strangeness.
Tracing to www.opentransit.net works fine, but www.fracetelecom.com  
dies on the first hop.

Spot checking other IPs in FT, they seem to work.  Is it just the  
'fracetelecom.com' sub-network that is still not connected?

Anyone have any more info?
--
TTFN,
patrick


Re: cost of doing business (was:Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent)

2005-04-17 Thread Mikael Abrahamsson
On Sun, 17 Apr 2005, Randy Bush wrote:

Do you have any idea what sort of underprovisioning is typical for this
sort of service in Japan ? Do they really have anything like a symmetric
100 Mbps all the way back to the backbone ?
yep
Do you have any reference for this?
Provisioning 10G distribution links for every 100 customers doesn't seem a 
viable business model considering the cost of equipment today. Where is 
the aggregation done and at what traffic level?

--
Mikael Abrahamssonemail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]


Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-17 Thread Patrick W. Gilmore
On Apr 17, 2005, at 10:49 PM, John van Oppen wrote:
As a cogent customer, I still see no routes to 217.167.0.0/16 (the  
route that holds www.francetelecom.com) via my cogent feed.

That /16 also appears to be unreachable from the looking glass on  
cogent's website still.
I can trace from Cogent to FT just fine.
Haven't checked all possible end points, but my spot check shows  
connectivity.

--
TTFN,
patrick

-Ursprüngliche Nachricht-
Von: Jonas Frey [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Gesendet: Sunday, April 17, 2005 7:36 PM
An: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Betreff: Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

Cogent is now reachable from OT and vice versa, apparently Cogent  
dropped the filters, i see everything passing verio now. Not sure  
since when this works again.

Regards,
Jonas



RE: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-17 Thread John van Oppen

As a cogent customer, I still see no routes to 217.167.0.0/16 (the route that 
holds www.francetelecom.com) via my cogent feed.

That /16 also appears to be unreachable from the looking glass on cogent's 
website still.


John van Oppen
PocketiNet Communications
AS23265 

-Ursprüngliche Nachricht-
Von: Jonas Frey [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Gesendet: Sunday, April 17, 2005 7:36 PM
An: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Betreff: Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent



Cogent is now reachable from OT and vice versa, apparently Cogent dropped the 
filters, i see everything passing verio now. Not sure since when this works 
again.

Regards,
Jonas



Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-17 Thread Jonas Frey

Cogent is now reachable from OT and vice versa, apparently Cogent
dropped the filters, i see everything passing verio now. Not sure
since when this works again.

Regards,
Jonas



Re: cost of doing business (was:Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent)

2005-04-17 Thread Randy Bush

> Do you have any idea what sort of underprovisioning is typical for this
> sort of service in Japan ? Do they really have anything like a symmetric
> 100 Mbps all the way back to the backbone ?

yep

randy



RE: cost of doing business (was:Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent)

2005-04-17 Thread Mikael Abrahamsson
On Sun, 17 Apr 2005, Malayter, Christopher wrote:
I think you're very wrong here.  For packet delivery of video based 
services, I could see a home using 100mb/s between voice, video, and 
data within the next 12-24 months.  All of the product roadmaps I've 
been looking at contain "How to get 100mb/s to the home", "How do we 
push BRAS/Multicast deployment closer to the edge", "What is the roadmap 
for converged services past triple play?"
Really? 100 megabit/s would be six simultanious HDTV feeds (mpeg2)... I 
don't see any other content that is constant high bandwidth? And in my 
calculations I used 5 meg as the average, meaning that your 100 meg would 
mean that peak bw usage should be much higher to compensate for anyone who 
just happens not to look at 6 TV channels at the time?

The question is also about converged networks, what do we converge past 
data, video and voice?

100 meg to the home is no problem as long as each user is only using a few 
hundred kilobit/s (which seem to be the norm around the world right now on 
these networks), it's when each user is using much more than that we run 
into scalability problems (and monetary problems).

--
Mikael Abrahamssonemail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]


Re: cost of doing business (was:Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent)

2005-04-17 Thread Marshall Eubanks

On Sat, 16 Apr 2005 22:23:53 -1000
 Randy Bush <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> > Let's say for the sake of argument that by 2010 we want to give every 
> > household 5 megabit/s on average. How could this be done with technology 
> > today seen on the radar? Remember that the households should want to pay 
> > for the bandwidth as well, meaning they might be willing to pay $30 per 
> > month for the bandwidth part (this is kind of high, but let's go with it). 
> 
> fwiw, 100mb to the home costs about that in japan
> 
> randy
> 

Hi Randy;

Do you have any idea what sort of underprovisioning is typical for this sort
of service in Japan ? Do they really have anything like a symmetric 100 Mbps all
the way back to the backbone ?

Regards
Marshall Eubanks


RE: cost of doing business (was:Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent)

2005-04-17 Thread Malayter, Christopher



> -Original Message-
> From: Mikael Abrahamsson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2005 12:55 PM
> To: Randy Bush
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: cost of doing business (was:Re: OpenTransit 
> (france telecom) depeers cogent)
> 
> 
> 
> On Sat, 16 Apr 2005, Randy Bush wrote:
> 
> > fwiw, 100mb to the home costs about that in japan
> 
> Well, I dont really see the average home actually using
> 100meg all the 
> time in the near future, thus my 5 meg utilization average estimate. 
> Access could be whatever speed of course, access speed not 
> used doesn't 
> cost very much.

I think you're very wrong here.  For packet delivery of video based
services, I could see a home using 100mb/s between voice, video, and data
within the next 12-24 months.  All of the product roadmaps I've been looking
at contain "How to get 100mb/s to the home", "How do we push BRAS/Multicast
deployment closer to the edge", "What is the roadmap for converged services
past triple play?"

Regards,

Chris Malayter
TDS Telecom - Network Services
Data Network Engineering
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Phone: (608) 664-4878
FAX:(608) 664-4644


Re: cost of doing business (was:Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent)

2005-04-17 Thread Mikael Abrahamsson
On Sat, 16 Apr 2005, Randy Bush wrote:
fwiw, 100mb to the home costs about that in japan
Well, I dont really see the average home actually using 100meg all the 
time in the near future, thus my 5 meg utilization average estimate. 
Access could be whatever speed of course, access speed not used doesn't 
cost very much.

--
Mikael Abrahamssonemail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]


RE: cost of doing business (was:Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent)

2005-04-17 Thread jmalcolm

Hannigan, Martin writes:
>As long as the hardware can keep up, the amount of glass in spectrum
>in the ground should make this an impossibility for the near term,
>10 years plus.

Fiber isn't useful by itself; there are two obvious things needed to
turn a piece of glass into something that can carry IP - transmission
equipment and routers. While it'll be a while before carriers need to
trench across the Rockies again, the day of needing to buy the
equipment to plug into the fiber is already here for some providers.


Re: cost of doing business (was:Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent)

2005-04-17 Thread jmalcolm

Brandon Butterworth writes:
>Perhaps they aim to keep driving the competition out of business
>to ensure there's a cheap supply of equipment so they can grow
>whilst charging so little?

There are several problems with such a plan, even were someone to
attempt it. One, overall traffic is still growing, so cannibalizing
the already-constructed equipment owned by others after you drive them
out of business only goes so far. (Note that low prices stimulate
demand.) Two, requirements change - for example, filtering capabilites
more or less acceptable years ago when certain linecards were released
are no longer. And then there's the fact that the world is moving in
the ethernet direction. Providers need to keep up, because their
competitors will do so. Three, vendors won't support the current
equipment forever, and once they don't, that will quickly end the
usefulness of the equipment in question.

Joe



Re: cost of doing business (was:Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent)

2005-04-17 Thread Randy Bush

> Let's say for the sake of argument that by 2010 we want to give every 
> household 5 megabit/s on average. How could this be done with technology 
> today seen on the radar? Remember that the households should want to pay 
> for the bandwidth as well, meaning they might be willing to pay $30 per 
> month for the bandwidth part (this is kind of high, but let's go with it). 

fwiw, 100mb to the home costs about that in japan

randy



RE: cost of doing business (was:Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent)

2005-04-17 Thread Hannigan, Martin

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2005 1:58 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: cost of doing business (was:Re: OpenTransit (france telecom)
> depeers cogent)
> 
> 
> 
> Mikael Abrahamsson writes:
> >So what will people do? Stop selling when their networks are 
> full? Ignore 
> >the economics and let other business carry the cost of bulk 
> internet? Go 
> >for cheaper platforms? Go bankrupt (if no other business can 
> carry the 
> >cost) ?
> 
> This problem will be fixed when the excess capacity built in the
> latter years of the boom is gone. That's not to say that the
> adjustment won't be painful - I'm sure a few more provider failures
> are in the offing - but obviously if the marginal price for bandwith
> doesn't pay for the capital costs of expansion, either eventually
> bandwidth will be more expensive, or the equipment will be cheaper.

As long as the hardware can keep up, the amount of glass in spectrum
in the ground should make this an impossibility for the near term,
10 years plus.

-M< 


Re: cost of doing business (was:Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent)

2005-04-17 Thread Mikael Abrahamsson
On Sun, 17 Apr 2005, Mike Leber wrote:
H, router and optical gear capabilities are growing faster than the 
market.  Can you say "permanent state of affairs".
Do you have any facts to back up this statement, as I am of another 
opinion. We're seeing doubling in traffic growth each year and the optics 
seem to quadruple every 3-4 years.

Of course if equipment cost goes up the vendors will have more resources 
to make more expensive gear, but I believe the price per bit has to come 
down rather than the opposite.

moores law > market growth
Well, speaking of that, the performance increase in harddrives and CPUs 
seem to have degenerated over the past year and the hefty price per bit 
decrease in harddrive space we saw 1999-2003 seem to have stopped in 2004.

A better (healthier? more sane?) metric is revenue per customer.
Increase in usage is of course driven by the price of bandwidth going 
down.

Let's say for the sake of argument that by 2010 we want to give every 
household 5 megabit/s on average. How could this be done with technology 
today seen on the radar? Remember that the households should want to pay 
for the bandwidth as well, meaning they might be willing to pay $30 per 
month for the bandwidth part (this is kind of high, but let's go with it). 
5 megabit/s at $30 is $6 per meg, with no oversubscription. It also means 
that for a large city with a million households we need to shuffle around 
1M*5M=5Tbit/s in that city alone. We probably need 10Tb national backbone 
to handle it, how do you do that with 40G or 100G links? That's a lot of 
parallell DWDM links :/

So the distributed p2p networks of the future will probably have to wait, 
and instead we'll do regular 1-many broadcasting via these networks and 
we'll be an interactive cable TV distribution instead.

--
Mikael Abrahamssonemail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]


Re: cost of doing business (was:Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent)

2005-04-17 Thread Mike Leber


On Sat, 16 Apr 2005 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Mikael Abrahamsson writes:
> >So what will people do? Stop selling when their networks are full? Ignore 
> >the economics and let other business carry the cost of bulk internet? Go 
> >for cheaper platforms? Go bankrupt (if no other business can carry the 
> >cost) ?
> 
> This problem will be fixed when the excess capacity built in the
> latter years of the boom is gone. That's not to say that the
> adjustment won't be painful - I'm sure a few more provider failures
> are in the offing - but obviously if the marginal price for bandwith
> doesn't pay for the capital costs of expansion, either eventually
> bandwidth will be more expensive, or the equipment will be cheaper.

H, router and optical gear capabilities are growing faster than the
market.  Can you say "permanent state of affairs".

moores law > market growth

A better (healthier? more sane?) metric is revenue per customer.

Mike.

+- H U R R I C A N E - E L E C T R I C -+
| Mike Leber   Direct Internet Connections   Voice 510 580 4100 |
| Hurricane Electric Web Hosting  Colocation   Fax 510 580 4151 |
| [EMAIL PROTECTED]   http://www.he.net |
+---+




Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-16 Thread Steve Gibbard
On Sat, 16 Apr 2005, Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:
For many folks too the falling price they buy transit for just means 
they are being forced to take that off their product sell prices so they 
dont actually make any more profit.. in which case there is no advantage 
to buying below cost services.
To quibble with the economic reasoning here:
What it costs you to provide service is dependent on what your costs are 
(by definition).  What you can get your customers to pay you (the market 
price for your services) is far more dependent on your competitors' costs 
than on your own.  If it costs your competitors less to provide a service 
than it costs you, they can undercut you.  If it costs you less to provide 
a service than your competitors, you can charge what they charge and make 
a bigger profit than they do.

This means if your competitors are buying something cheaply, it doesn't 
help you.  If you can buy something cheaper, it does help you.  But it may 
only help you keep up, if the same pricing is available to your 
competitors.

The same goes for if your competitors are pretending to have lower costs 
than they do, although that's generally not a situation that can continue 
forever.  I have no idea whether that's what Cogent is doing; I've seen 
the claim that bandwidth can't possibly stay as cheap as it is proven 
wrong too many times at too many steadily decending price points to put 
much stock in it.

In general I'd prefer to operate in a healthy marketplace, where all 
parties are making money, theres little risk of the supplier filing 
bankrupcty and I am getting reasonable customers service. That can only 
lead to growth of the industry, healthy businesses and healthy 
economies. Unforunately none of these things appear to be happening at 
the moment...
Customer service and risk protection may be in better supply than raw 
capacity.  Perhaps there's a market for those services, that might 
differentiate those who do really well at it from those selling raw 
capacity cheaply.  If not, that's a sign that either those providing cheap 
capacity are providing service their customers think is acceptable, or the 
customes don't want good service enough to pay what it would cost.

What we're seeing in *some* telecommunications markets -- those once seen 
as where the money was -- is that there's a huge oversupply of capacity, 
so it's not worth much.  As long as it's not worth much, you aren't likely 
to see those who spent money on it as if it was worth something making 
money by selling it.  That would seem to be the "fault" of those who built 
so much of it, or bought it for overly high prices.  The good news is that 
the consumers -- those who are trying to use the stuff rather than just to 
make money from it -- are benefiting greatly.  That's what we're all here 
for, right?

And the bit of good news for those who still want to build this stuff is 
that there are a lot of places where telecommunications capacity is still 
in very short supply.  Those are generally places without much money, so 
there might not be all that much money to be made in some of them.  But 
who knows...  building lots of identical networks connecting the places 
with money doesn't appear to have been all that profitable either.

-Steve


Re: cost of doing business (was:Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent)

2005-04-16 Thread Brandon Butterworth

> I'm sure a few more provider failures
> are in the offing - but obviously if the marginal price for bandwith
> doesn't pay for the capital costs of expansion, either eventually
> bandwidth will be more expensive, or the equipment will be cheaper.

Perhaps they aim to keep driving the competition out of business
to ensure there's a cheap supply of equipment so they can grow
whilst charging so little?

brandon


cost of doing business (was:Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent)

2005-04-16 Thread jmalcolm

Mikael Abrahamsson writes:
>So what will people do? Stop selling when their networks are full? Ignore 
>the economics and let other business carry the cost of bulk internet? Go 
>for cheaper platforms? Go bankrupt (if no other business can carry the 
>cost) ?

This problem will be fixed when the excess capacity built in the
latter years of the boom is gone. That's not to say that the
adjustment won't be painful - I'm sure a few more provider failures
are in the offing - but obviously if the marginal price for bandwith
doesn't pay for the capital costs of expansion, either eventually
bandwidth will be more expensive, or the equipment will be cheaper.

Joe


Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-16 Thread Fredy Kuenzler
Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
I'm not sure about the US price war, I just can say that I've seen
an offer of AS174 in Switzerland which is 38% of the price of
AS1239  we currently pay (same CDR). I'm not sure if ths already
justifies  hell, but at least purgatory ;-)
Strange, I am REALLY HAPPY when someone offers me a comparable
product for less money.  If you prefer to pay more, well, I'm happy
for you.
Product is not comparable anymore, you'll miss ^174_5511_ ... just kidding.
Back on topic, I am unclear on why "you sell X for less than I do" is
justification for rotting in hell.  Whether X is below your cost is
COMPLETELY immaterial.  Whether it is below their cost is irrelevant
to me, but it might be important to some countries / laws /
whatever.  If they are breaking a law, have someone investigate &
charge them.
Not in the so called free markets like US or Switzerland, right?
The real horror comes when connecting comanies and enterprises away from
the main street. When local tail can only be provided by the incumbent.
How to make a good deal for the customer (IP feed + local tail) when the
IP Transit price is probably less than 2% of the actual costs?
I'd be quite pleased with AS174's price dumping policy, at least it 
helps to beat down the price of other suppliers and makes us more 
competitive.

F.


cost of doing business (was:Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent)

2005-04-16 Thread Mikael Abrahamsson
On Sat, 16 Apr 2005, Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:
In general I'd prefer to operate in a healthy marketplace, where all 
parties are making money, theres little risk of the supplier filing 
bankrupcty and I am getting reasonable customers service. That can only 
lead to growth of the industry, healthy businesses and healthy 
economies. Unforunately none of these things appear to be happening at 
the moment...
Yes, it's quite interesting what has happened the past few years. I have 
seen Cisco OC48E/POS-SR-SC cards on the used market sell at $3500 back in 
2001/02, go up to $20k in 2004 and they seem to go for around $10-12k now.

I also did some other calculations. Let's say the average packet traverses 
5 GSR-GSR links and you want to pay the CAPEX over 36 months and let's say 
on average you fill half those with customer paying traffic. Let's assume 
you get 50% discount from cisco on these cards and you want to build OC192 
links:

List price for OC192 cards are $225k, you need 10 of them which with the 
above equals 225000*10*.5=1125k.

At 1125k CAPEX you can carry 5gigabit/s of customer traffic, over 36 
months this boils down to 1125000/36/5000=6.25.

So just the Cisco linecard CAPEX cost alone for this is $6 / megabit. With 
the market price seemingly hovering around $15-25 / megabit/month in bulk, 
this is a large portion of the total cost, considering DWDM systems and 
people don't come cheap either.

So what will people do? Stop selling when their networks are full? Ignore 
the economics and let other business carry the cost of bulk internet? Go 
for cheaper platforms? Go bankrupt (if no other business can carry the 
cost) ?

My guess is that going to OC768 isn't going to be very cheap either...
--
Mikael Abrahamssonemail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]


Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-16 Thread Stephen J. Wilcox

On Fri, 15 Apr 2005, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

> On Apr 15, 2005, at 2:10 PM, Fredy Kuenzler wrote:
> 
> > Paul Vixie wrote:
> > > in other words, sometimes it's better to take pain in a "lump sum" than on
> > > the "time payment plan."  if that's what cogent's trying to do, they've
> > > got my support.  if on the other hand cogent is, as accused here today,
> > > dumping transit at below cost, then may they rot in hell.  (could i say
> > > that simpler?)
> >
> > I'm not sure about the US price war, I just can say that I've seen an offer
> > of AS174 in Switzerland which is 38% of the price of AS1239 we currently pay
> > (same CDR). I'm not sure if ths already justifies hell, but at least
> > purgatory ;-)
> 
> Strange, I am REALLY HAPPY when someone offers me a comparable product for
> less money.  If you prefer to pay more, well, I'm happy for you.
> 
> (And no flames about Cogent not being comparable.  I've already posted here
> that their network runs just fine.  Of course, now that they are no longer
> offering "full transit", we are re-considering how "good" their pricing is.)
> 
> 
> Back on topic, I am unclear on why "you sell X for less than I do" is
> justification for rotting in hell.  Whether X is below your cost is COMPLETELY
> immaterial.  Whether it is below their cost is irrelevant to me, but it might
> be important to some countries / laws / whatever.  If they are breaking a law,
> have someone investigate & charge them.  If there is no law against it, deal
> with it.  They should be going out of business RSN anyway.

The carrier transit market is in a real mess, many of the large players having 
already gone bankrupt once, when that happened with the so called dot-com crash 
it affected the global economy. 

What we see now are todays carriers facing the risk of bankruptcy again, some 
for the second time round. One possible interpretation of Cogent's price 
erosion 
is that networks have been built that will not make a profit until 2 or 3 years 
and being forced to cut prices heavily in order to compete is pushing that 
profitability curve such that the companies will run out of funding before they 
hit profit.

The short term benefit as a buyer is reduced costs, but long term this could 
affect the very market that you're operating in and your own viability and 
profit margins.

For many folks too the falling price they buy transit for just means they are 
being forced to take that off their product sell prices so they dont actually 
make any more profit.. in which case there is no advantage to buying below cost 
services.


In general I'd prefer to operate in a healthy marketplace, where all parties are
making money, theres little risk of the supplier filing bankrupcty and I am
getting reasonable customers service. That can only lead to growth of the
industry, healthy businesses and healthy economies. Unforunately none of these
things appear to be happening at the moment...

Steve





Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-15 Thread Patrick W. Gilmore
On Apr 15, 2005, at 2:10 PM, Fredy Kuenzler wrote:
Paul Vixie wrote:
> in other words, sometimes it's better to take pain in a "lump sum"
> than on the "time payment plan."  if that's what cogent's trying to
> do, they've got my support.  if on the other hand cogent is, as
> accused here today, dumping transit at below cost, then may they rot
> in hell.  (could i say that simpler?)
I'm not sure about the US price war, I just can say that I've seen an
offer of AS174 in Switzerland which is 38% of the price of AS1239  
we currently pay (same CDR). I'm not sure if ths already justifies  
hell, but at least purgatory ;-)
Strange, I am REALLY HAPPY when someone offers me a comparable  
product for less money.  If you prefer to pay more, well, I'm happy  
for you.

(And no flames about Cogent not being comparable.  I've already  
posted here that their network runs just fine.  Of course, now that  
they are no longer offering "full transit", we are re-considering how  
"good" their pricing is.)

Back on topic, I am unclear on why "you sell X for less than I do" is  
justification for rotting in hell.  Whether X is below your cost is  
COMPLETELY immaterial.  Whether it is below their cost is irrelevant  
to me, but it might be important to some countries / laws /  
whatever.  If they are breaking a law, have someone investigate &  
charge them.  If there is no law against it, deal with it.  They  
should be going out of business RSN anyway.

--
TTFN,
patrick


Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-15 Thread Tom Vest

On Apr 15, 2005, at 2:10 PM, Fredy Kuenzler wrote:
Paul Vixie wrote:
> in other words, sometimes it's better to take pain in a "lump sum"
> than on the "time payment plan."  if that's what cogent's trying to
> do, they've got my support.  if on the other hand cogent is, as
> accused here today, dumping transit at below cost, then may they rot
> in hell.  (could i say that simpler?)
I'm not sure about the US price war, I just can say that I've seen an
offer of AS174 in Switzerland which is 38% of the price of AS1239 we 
currently pay (same CDR). I'm not sure if ths already justifies hell, 
but at least purgatory ;-)
Does that imply that 1239 has a better line on what "actually costs" 
are, or else sets those costs for other operators?

Tom


Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-15 Thread Fredy Kuenzler
Paul Vixie wrote:
> in other words, sometimes it's better to take pain in a "lump sum"
> than on the "time payment plan."  if that's what cogent's trying to
> do, they've got my support.  if on the other hand cogent is, as
> accused here today, dumping transit at below cost, then may they rot
> in hell.  (could i say that simpler?)
I'm not sure about the US price war, I just can say that I've seen an
offer of AS174 in Switzerland which is 38% of the price of AS1239 we 
currently pay (same CDR). I'm not sure if ths already justifies hell, 
but at least purgatory ;-)

Regards,
Fredy



Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-15 Thread Paul Vixie

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Daniel Golding) writes:

> This is part of the game.

more like a war.

> Party A depeers Party B. Party B has received 30 to 60 days notification.
> That gives party B enough time to do one of two things.
> 
> 1) They can ensure they have sufficient transit and/or peering with Party
> A's customers to ensure that all packets will be delivered. They can make
> sure that they are seeing all of A's routes through those other networks.
> This is what's called "being good to your customers"
> 
> 2) They can take the time to put measures in place to punish party A. Things
> like route filters to make sure that the only places A gets B's routes are
> through the (soon to be gone) direct peering. Things like canceling or
> turning down enough transit so they can claim they CAN'T send the traffic
> anywhere else. Things like filtering out A's routes from their upstream's
> BGP feeds. This is called "try to inflict enough pain to effect a reversal"

for the record, when the old AS174 (PSInet) depeered the old AS6461 (AboveNet),
we (old MFN) chose #1.  emotionally, i would have preferred #2 -- by a lot!
but i could tell that PSInet wasn't going to be alive long enough for this
to matter, so there was no long term payoff for the costs of such a war.  the
customers on both sides of the schism are probably happy that professionalism
prevailed... but if PSInet had won and also somehow stayed in existence, then
the whole industry would have suffered from the economic power thus conveyed.

in other words, sometimes it's better to take pain in a "lump sum" than on
the "time payment plan."  if that's what cogent's trying to do, they've got
my support.  if on the other hand cogent is, as accused here today, dumping
transit at below cost, then may they rot in hell.  (could i say that simpler?)

> Game theory is fun, folks! With real money on the line, its also very
> interesting.

yes indeed.
-- 
Paul Vixie


RE: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-15 Thread Neil J. McRae

> Do you seriously view it that way? See the financial analysis 
> available on the web about Cogent and tell me the same thing again.

Same could be said for many companies in our industry at the 
moment, I call them the zombies.


> I want my packets to make it to the destination. For some 
> Euros more I get real transit from real networks. See, all 
> the world is fine again. He who wants to save even more money 
> gets what he pays for.

I remember people saying that about Level3 and many others.

> I bet your viewpoint would maybe change if you had nearly 
> exclusively DSL traffic and hardly B2B- type traffic. I could 
> be wrong, of course.

If I was solely in that business I would not be focused on building
big international networks, its pointless and unless you take significant 
market share from the PTTs, notably in Europe (which btw is highly unlikely 
given that the various legislators and regulators fail on a near constant 
basis to level the playing field for all operators) - the chances of making 
a return are incredibly slim.

Better to setup smaller national networks, exchange most of the local
traffic 
at the local peering point and pay $transit_network for the other 30 odd
percent, 
do a decent deal with $transit_network and you'll be quids in and
have a much more managable cashflow cycle without the step upgrades to some 
chunky network that the majority of your customers don't care about.

Neil.



RE: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-15 Thread Jonas Frey

from FT:

FT terminated its direct interconnection with Cogent as they did not 
comply with 2 of the criterias of the FT Peering Policy. This Policy 
is official and published.
However, route exchanges between Cogent and FT customer remained
possible through IP transit provider networks such as Sprint for FT.
As a matter of retaliation, Cogent "blackholed" all FT IP addresses,
cutting the routes between their customers and FT's ones. This
unitaleral measure is a breach of the rules agreed upon among the IP
community.
FT cannot be held responsible vis a vis its customers for the negative
consequences of an action taken under the sole responsibility of Cogent.


Regards,
Jonas



RE: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-15 Thread Neil J. McRae


> If I may, you sound like someone whom FT has depeered in the past? :)

Personally no. ;)

simply playing devils advocate - who really knows what business model
people are following? who really knows why this has happened? But in
my view this type of action where it impacts customers doesn't help
any of us. If you can't compete at the market price then you shouldn't
be in the business, aggressive pricing in the market is just another 
thing you need to deal with.

Regards,
Neil.



Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Daniel Golding


This is part of the game.

Party A depeers Party B. Party B has received 30 to 60 days notification.
That gives party B enough time to do one of two things.

1) They can ensure they have sufficient transit and/or peering with Party
A's customers to ensure that all packets will be delivered. They can make
sure that they are seeing all of A's routes through those other networks.
This is what's called "being good to your customers"

2) They can take the time to put measures in place to punish party A. Things
like route filters to make sure that the only places A gets B's routes are
through the (soon to be gone) direct peering. Things like canceling or
turning down enough transit so they can claim they CAN'T send the traffic
anywhere else. Things like filtering out A's routes from their upstream's
BGP feeds. This is called "try to inflict enough pain to effect a reversal"

#2 is the stand-off scenario. The next step is, will party B keep up their
fortress defense or go home? Will party A back down and turn the peering
back up? How long can party B go without their customers canceling?

Much of this depends on the relative size of A and B, as well as their
customer mixes. If party B is a small porn hoster and party A is a big
broadband ISP, then A has nothing to worry about - evidence suggests there
won't be many complaints. Customers will be upset, but they won't complain.

If party B is hosting something more socially acceptable (if equally
pointless) like fantasy football or a popular Everquest server, well, things
just got dicey for party A. Party A may just back down.

Game theory is fun, folks! With real money on the line, its also very
interesting.

- Dan

On 4/14/05 5:46 PM, "Stephen J. Wilcox" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 
> On Thu, 14 Apr 2005, Patrick W Gilmore wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On Apr 14, 2005, at 5:16 PM, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:
>> 
 Surely FT's customers pay for access to Cogents network and vice
 versa?
>>> 
>>> In such a case, FT has done its part by paying Sprint for full transit
>>> service. It is Cogent who is not accepting the route from their
>>> transit,
>>> and who intentionally does not carry the global routing table. If I
>>> put up
>>> a filter on my transit that says I will not accept routes from you
>>> unless
>>> you peer with me, should your customers leave you because I did this?
>>> Doesn't sound very fair to me. I guess it depends how important I am,
>>> doesn't it?
>> 
>> Is Cogent filtering the prefixes they get from Verio?  Or is Verio
>> filtering what they send to Cogent?  Does it matter?
>> 
>> I think you have a very good point - FT is buying full transit.  Cogent
>> is the one without full reachability.
>> 
>> Doesn't mean that FT didn't know this would be a problem when they took
>> the step, though.
> 
> Well, FT took the step as you say.. they are the instigator here.
> 
> But, they are in their right to do so and would have given proper written
> notice 
> to Cogent so this isnt as much a surprise to them as is being suggested
> either.
> 
> Steve
> 

-- 
Daniel Golding
Network and Telecommunications Strategies
Burton Group




Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Daniel Roesen

On Fri, Apr 15, 2005 at 12:36:22AM +0200, Daniel Roesen wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 05:29:46PM -0400, Patrick W Gilmore wrote:
> > Is Cogent filtering the prefixes they get from Verio?  Or is Verio 
> > filtering what they send to Cogent?  Does it matter?
> 
> Or OT tagging their announcements to Sprint in a way that prevents them
> being announced to Cogent in order to force Cogent into buying transit.

Scratch that. I was under the (mis-)assumption that Sprint peers with
Cogent.


Best regards,
Daniel

-- 
CLUE-RIPE -- Jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- PGP: 0xA85C8AA0


Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Daniel Roesen

On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 06:52:49PM -0400, German Martinez wrote:
> > Or OT tagging their announcements to Sprint in a way that prevents them
> > being announced to Cogent in order to force Cogent into buying transit.
> 
> For people interested hereafter our route-server: 
> 
> telnet://route-server.opentransit.net

That doesn't show what your outgoing route-map/policy-chain looks like
towards your Sprint hand-offs. :-)

Just to make sure: I'm NOT implying you do that tagging, I just say that
it's a technical possibility which wasn't mentioned.


Best regards,
Daniel

-- 
CLUE-RIPE -- Jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- PGP: 0xA85C8AA0


Partial Transit (was Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent)

2005-04-14 Thread Deepak Jain

And if they don't get their collective acts together, I am certain they 
will both lose a lot of customers.
[Hijacking the thread here a bit]
I think this is a good point you brought out. Neither provider is 
providing _full_ transit to their customers. If this becomes acceptable 
to a set of customers [say the multihomed ones] then providers will have 
to set a new price point probably significantly lower than the price 
point today for "partial transit". In this case, partial transit is 
defined by the provider as the set of ASes they may or may not have 
connectivity to at a certain point in the contract -- rather than the 
other case of partial transit where the customer decides what ASes are 
interesting.

I think both providers in these depeering conflicts would be unhappy 
with where the customers would price this new partial-transit level of 
service at. Essentially, the responsibility of maintaining 
full-connectivity is pushed further onto those who have 2 connections.. 
now they need 3 or more to ensure they have 2 reliable/consistent paths 
to each destination of interest. I for one think that the providers that 
 force their customers into this role should not be compensated at the 
same level as the providers that do a much better job of universal 
connectivity.

In other words, "break routes at your own risk." Smart customers will be 
watching [sooner or later ;)]..

disclaimer: I am not a customer of cogent, teleglobe, opentransit, and 
most companies that practice rabid peering discussions -- even for layer 
1/2 transport if I can help it.

Deepak Jain


Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread German Martinez
On Fri Apr 15, 2005, Daniel Roesen wrote:

> Or OT tagging their announcements to Sprint in a way that prevents them
> being announced to Cogent in order to force Cogent into buying transit.

For people interested hereafter our route-server: 

telnet://route-server.opentransit.net

German


pgpKgj703o483.pgp
Description: PGP signature


RE: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread David Schwartz


> Is Cogent filtering the prefixes they get from Verio?  Or is Verio
> filtering what they send to Cogent?  Does it matter?
>
> I think you have a very good point - FT is buying full transit.  Cogent
> is the one without full reachability.
>
> Doesn't mean that FT didn't know this would be a problem when they took
> the step, though.

Cogent has offered to exchange traffic with OT in a manner that is
cost-effective for both sides. OT said, "no, do it in a way that is more
expensive for both of us". Which one is making a reasonable effort to
exchange traffic with anyone else willing to make a similar effort? To me,
that is the standard by which connectivity should be judged.

DS




Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Daniel Roesen

On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 05:29:46PM -0400, Patrick W Gilmore wrote:
> Is Cogent filtering the prefixes they get from Verio?  Or is Verio 
> filtering what they send to Cogent?  Does it matter?

Or OT tagging their announcements to Sprint in a way that prevents them
being announced to Cogent in order to force Cogent into buying transit.

> I think you have a very good point - FT is buying full transit.  Cogent 
> is the one without full reachability.

Indeed. That's the inherent danger of "playing tier 1".

I myself find being tier 2 much more comfortable. :-) I'm not sure
wether the effort to become (and maintain!) tier 1 status (and I'm
talking of the technical term == transit free) is economically a good
idea (anymore).

> Doesn't mean that FT didn't know this would be a problem when they took 
> the step, though.

I wonder how much non-BGP-transit traffic is on Cogent (static
customers, colocation). My guess is that it's quite low and one might
say "well, BGP routes around the problem". People do have multiple
upstreams (often seen in the setup "primary Cogent because of price, and
1-2 others secondary for quality and resilience").


Best regards,
Daniel

-- 
CLUE-RIPE -- Jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- PGP: 0xA85C8AA0


Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Stephen J. Wilcox

On Thu, 14 Apr 2005, Patrick W Gilmore wrote:

> 
> On Apr 14, 2005, at 5:16 PM, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:
> 
> >> Surely FT's customers pay for access to Cogents network and vice 
> >> versa?
> >
> > In such a case, FT has done its part by paying Sprint for full transit
> > service. It is Cogent who is not accepting the route from their 
> > transit,
> > and who intentionally does not carry the global routing table. If I 
> > put up
> > a filter on my transit that says I will not accept routes from you 
> > unless
> > you peer with me, should your customers leave you because I did this?
> > Doesn't sound very fair to me. I guess it depends how important I am,
> > doesn't it?
> 
> Is Cogent filtering the prefixes they get from Verio?  Or is Verio 
> filtering what they send to Cogent?  Does it matter?
> 
> I think you have a very good point - FT is buying full transit.  Cogent 
> is the one without full reachability.
> 
> Doesn't mean that FT didn't know this would be a problem when they took 
> the step, though.

Well, FT took the step as you say.. they are the instigator here.

But, they are in their right to do so and would have given proper written 
notice 
to Cogent so this isnt as much a surprise to them as is being suggested either.

Steve



Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Patrick W Gilmore
On Apr 14, 2005, at 5:16 PM, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:
Surely FT's customers pay for access to Cogents network and vice 
versa?
In such a case, FT has done its part by paying Sprint for full transit
service. It is Cogent who is not accepting the route from their 
transit,
and who intentionally does not carry the global routing table. If I 
put up
a filter on my transit that says I will not accept routes from you 
unless
you peer with me, should your customers leave you because I did this?
Doesn't sound very fair to me. I guess it depends how important I am,
doesn't it?
Is Cogent filtering the prefixes they get from Verio?  Or is Verio 
filtering what they send to Cogent?  Does it matter?

I think you have a very good point - FT is buying full transit.  Cogent 
is the one without full reachability.

Doesn't mean that FT didn't know this would be a problem when they took 
the step, though.

--
TTFN,
patrick


Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Richard A Steenbergen

On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 09:58:08PM +0100, Neil J. McRae wrote:
>   
> > If Cogent cared about connectivity to FT's customers, it 
> > would man up and pay for the transit to reach them. However, 
> > Cogent cares more about the long-term benefits of settlement 
> > free transit than it does about the short term benefits of 
> > being able to reach FT's customers today, so they choose not 
> > to pay for the transit in the hopes that FT will blink. Not 
> > that there is anything wrong with that, but that is the cold 
> > hard reality of the decision that they have made. It might 
> > even be the right decision. If you don't like it, no one is 
> > putting a gun to your head and making you buy Cogent (or FT) transit.
> 
> Surely FT's customers pay for access to Cogents network and vice versa?

In such a case, FT has done its part by paying Sprint for full transit 
service. It is Cogent who is not accepting the route from their transit, 
and who intentionally does not carry the global routing table. If I put up 
a filter on my transit that says I will not accept routes from you unless 
you peer with me, should your customers leave you because I did this? 
Doesn't sound very fair to me. I guess it depends how important I am, 
doesn't it?

If I may, you sound like someone whom FT has depeered in the past? :)

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>   http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)


Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Patrick W Gilmore
On Apr 14, 2005, at 4:58 PM, Neil J. McRae wrote:
Surely FT's customers pay for access to Cogents network and vice versa?
Apparently not
--
TTFN,
patrick


RE: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Neil J. McRae

  
> You're missing the big picture.

No I don't think so :-)

> If Cogent cared about connectivity to FT's customers, it 
> would man up and pay for the transit to reach them. However, 
> Cogent cares more about the long-term benefits of settlement 
> free transit than it does about the short term benefits of 
> being able to reach FT's customers today, so they choose not 
> to pay for the transit in the hopes that FT will blink. Not 
> that there is anything wrong with that, but that is the cold 
> hard reality of the decision that they have made. It might 
> even be the right decision. If you don't like it, no one is 
> putting a gun to your head and making you buy Cogent (or FT) transit.

Surely FT's customers pay for access to Cogents network and vice versa?



Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Patrick W Gilmore
On Apr 14, 2005, at 3:47 PM, Alexander Koch wrote:
[..] If I was an FT customer and
I'd seen this signal I'd be phoning Cogent now for a quote.
I want my packets to make it to the destination. For some
Euros more I get real transit from real networks. See, all
the world is fine again. He who wants to save even more
money gets what he pays for.
I bet your viewpoint would maybe change if you had nearly
exclusively DSL traffic and hardly B2B- type traffic. I
could be wrong, of course.
You are wrong.  I've heard the stories & rumors, but empirical evidence 
> "so-and-so said".  We send more than enough bit over Cogent to both 
business and broadband users to be statistically significant, and the 
packets get there.  "YMMV", but our _experience_ sending packets over 
AS174 is more than acceptable.

Do you have any real experience sending traffic over / through AS174?
To be clear, I could say the same about FT.  Both run perfectly fine 
networks, and both give very decent pricing.  This is not to say we 
have never had a problem - we've had problems with every network on the 
'Net pretty much.  But we were happy with both of them - until now.

And if they don't get their collective acts together, I am certain they 
will both lose a lot of customers.

--
TTFN,
patrick


Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Richard A Steenbergen

On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 08:19:41PM +0100, Neil J. McRae wrote:
> > They've recently slashed their prices to even more absurdly 
> > low new levels, and are actively targetting their peers' 
> > customers, particularly in Europe. Anyone who didn't expect 
> > to see exactly this kind of fallout as a result really hasn't 
> > been paying attention.
> 
> Well considering the market isn't growing as much as it used to the
> only way to grow is to take business away from other people. If
> OT can't deal with that on the street then they should close up
> shop and go sell kites or something.

They should certainly do something about it any rate rather, instead of 
stick their heads in the sand and hope it all goes away. Depeering Cogent 
is doing something.

> Clearly Cogent are doing something that gives them a cost advantage 
> otherwise they wouldn't be able to sustain this, so rather than compete 

Yes, its called losing money hand over fist. As long as people keep giving 
you more it makes it very easy to keep doing what you are doing.

> with Cogent, FT try to fiddle with Cogent's costs. If I was an FT 
> customer and I'd seen this signal I'd be phoning Cogent now for a 
> quote.

You're missing the big picture. FT depeering Cogent increases costs for 
both sides, in fact probably more so for FT than Cogent. This has nothing 
to do with cost, and everything to do with FT believing that giving Cogent 
access to its customers for free is enabling Cogent to continue selling 
services below market rate, disrupting business for everyone. They may be 
right. Certainly if everyone took the same position, Cogent would be 
unable to continue to operate as it does now, so there is some truth to 
that belief.

Despite what some people may think, peering is not a god given right that 
you are in any way entitled to receive. Two networks peer when they feel 
that there is mutual benefit, not before and not after. You may not agree 
with the other network's decision not to peer with you (and in many cases 
they me be wrong, and simply don't understand the benefits that are 
there), but it is their decision to make.

If Cogent cared about connectivity to FT's customers, it would man up and 
pay for the transit to reach them. However, Cogent cares more about the 
long-term benefits of settlement free transit than it does about the short 
term benefits of being able to reach FT's customers today, so they choose 
not to pay for the transit in the hopes that FT will blink. Not that there 
is anything wrong with that, but that is the cold hard reality of the 
decision that they have made. It might even be the right decision. If you 
don't like it, no one is putting a gun to your head and making you buy 
Cogent (or FT) transit.

> No, it won't change anything - other than for a short period of
> time customers will suffer, wouldn't it be nice if we remembered
> about the customers.

If you don't like it, buy from someone else. If you sell transit, now is 
an excellent time to pick up disgruntled customers from both sides. Either 
side could end the lack of connectivity if they wanted, yet they both 
clearly see business reasons not to do so.

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>   http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)


Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Daniel Golding


This is a matter of human nature, I suppose. Everyone is terribly pleasant
when they hear what they want. The true test is what happens when folk hear
the "wrong" answer.

I've depeered and I've been depeered. I've seen folks on the receiving end
of bad peering news handle it with consummate professionalism. I've also
seen folks act like spoiled children, forgetting the fundamental rule of
peering: 

Peering is a business relationship. Peering is about meeting the mutual
business needs of two networks. Emotionalism , "hurt feelings", and actions
that violate the bounds of trust and the normal bounds of professionalism
have no place in internetwork peering.

Depeering is always a gamble and, as such, is to be generally avoided as
unnecessary risk. Given that, folks need to resist their urge to put black
hats on networks who decide that certain peering relationships have outlived
their usefulness. The true picture is always more complex than the spaghetti
western. 

If enough folks are actually interested, I'd be happy to do a talk at an
upcoming NANOG on depeering (methods, etiquette, likely outcomes, necessary
pre-action analysis). This might be good for a future peering track.

- Dan

On 4/14/05 1:38 PM, "Steve Gibbard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 
>> On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 11:28:00AM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 
>>> in depeering. However, dealing with Cogent on peering matters is
>>> incredibly unpleasant. I can understand networks and peering
>>> coordinators feeling that it just isn't worth it.
> 
> Just for the record, I've dealt with Cogent's peering people on behalf of
> a few networks over the last two years, and in my experience they've been
> extremely pleasant to work with.
> 
> -Steve



Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Alexander Koch

On Thu, 14 April 2005 20:19:41 +0100, Neil J. McRae wrote:
> [..] Clearly Cogent are doing
> something that gives them a cost advantage otherwise they wouldn't
> be able to sustain this [..]

Do you seriously view it that way? See the financial
analysis available on the web about Cogent and tell me the
same thing again.

> [..] If I was an FT customer and
> I'd seen this signal I'd be phoning Cogent now for a quote.

I want my packets to make it to the destination. For some
Euros more I get real transit from real networks. See, all
the world is fine again. He who wants to save even more
money gets what he pays for.

I bet your viewpoint would maybe change if you had nearly
exclusively DSL traffic and hardly B2B- type traffic. I
could be wrong, of course.

Alexander



RE: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Daniel Senie
NOTE: Off-list, as I'm not sure this is on-topic enough to post.
At 03:19 PM 4/14/2005, Neil J. McRae wrote:
> They've recently slashed their prices to even more absurdly
> low new levels, and are actively targetting their peers'
> customers, particularly in Europe. Anyone who didn't expect
> to see exactly this kind of fallout as a result really hasn't
> been paying attention.
Well considering the market isn't growing as much as it used to the
only way to grow is to take business away from other people. If
OT can't deal with that on the street then they should close up
shop and go sell kites or something.
This is an OK analysis as far as it goes. However, if Cogent has a business 
plan (and mind you I have not read theirs) that says "we will go borrow $10 
billion, sell services at below cost until we bankrupt our competition, 
then jack up our prices" then that would not necessarily be OK.

I don't know if Cogent is selling below cost. Amazon certainly built their 
business by doing so, losing money on every order. They did a nice job 
wiping out small book stores I expect. Are we better off for that? If 
Amazon were based in Korea and were selling products below cost into the US 
market, the US Government would scream "dumping" and insist on trade sanctions.

The point of this is that competition is one thing, unfair competition by 
selling below cost (for more than a loss-leader or two) is not in the best 
interests of the economy or the future of any given industry.

 Clearly Cogent are doing
something that gives them a cost advantage otherwise they wouldn't
be able to sustain this, so rather than compete with Cogent, FT
try to fiddle with Cogent's costs. If I was an FT customer and
I'd seen this signal I'd be phoning Cogent now for a quote.
If I was Cogent I'd be getting the champers out, for FT
to take this action they clearly feel threatened!
> What remains to be seen from all of this is who blinks first,
> if anyone else jumps in at the same time, and if any of it
> changes anything in the marketplace.
No, it won't change anything - other than for a short period of
time customers will suffer, wouldn't it be nice if we remembered
about the customers.



RE: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Neil J. McRae

> They've recently slashed their prices to even more absurdly 
> low new levels, and are actively targetting their peers' 
> customers, particularly in Europe. Anyone who didn't expect 
> to see exactly this kind of fallout as a result really hasn't 
> been paying attention.

Well considering the market isn't growing as much as it used to the
only way to grow is to take business away from other people. If
OT can't deal with that on the street then they should close up
shop and go sell kites or something. Clearly Cogent are doing
something that gives them a cost advantage otherwise they wouldn't
be able to sustain this, so rather than compete with Cogent, FT
try to fiddle with Cogent's costs. If I was an FT customer and
I'd seen this signal I'd be phoning Cogent now for a quote.

If I was Cogent I'd be getting the champers out, for FT
to take this action they clearly feel threatened!

> What remains to be seen from all of this is who blinks first, 
> if anyone else jumps in at the same time, and if any of it 
> changes anything in the marketplace.

No, it won't change anything - other than for a short period of
time customers will suffer, wouldn't it be nice if we remembered
about the customers.



Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Richard A Steenbergen

On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 10:38:28AM -0700, Steve Gibbard wrote:
> 
> >On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 11:28:00AM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 
> >>in depeering. However, dealing with Cogent on peering matters is
> >>incredibly unpleasant. I can understand networks and peering
> >>coordinators feeling that it just isn't worth it.
> 
> Just for the record, I've dealt with Cogent's peering people on behalf of 
> a few networks over the last two years, and in my experience they've been 
> extremely pleasant to work with.

Since I forgot to mention it in my last e-mail, Cogent does indeed have 
some exceptionally good folks working for them, particularly their peering 
people. However, we all know that in this particular case the issue is not 
about personalities, technical competence, ratios, etc.

Anyone who doesn't know that Cogent has severely disrupted the IP transit 
industry's economy across the board with its pricing has been hiding under 
a rock for the past few years. They've recently slashed their prices to 
even more absurdly low new levels, and are actively targetting their 
peers' customers, particularly in Europe. Anyone who didn't expect to see 
exactly this kind of fallout as a result really hasn't been paying 
attention.

What remains to be seen from all of this is who blinks first, if anyone 
else jumps in at the same time, and if any of it changes anything in the 
marketplace.

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>   http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)


Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Steve Gibbard

On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 11:28:00AM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

in depeering. However, dealing with Cogent on peering matters is
incredibly unpleasant. I can understand networks and peering
coordinators feeling that it just isn't worth it.
Just for the record, I've dealt with Cogent's peering people on behalf of 
a few networks over the last two years, and in my experience they've been 
extremely pleasant to work with.

-Steve


Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Patrick W Gilmore
On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 11:28:00AM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Its easy to accuse people of criminality - that's what you just did. 
How
about some proof?

Cogent's ratios are very very bad. That's why some people don't like
peering with them. Being sent to sales is a common, if regretable 
tactic
in depeering. However, dealing with Cogent on peering matters is
incredibly unpleasant. I can understand networks and peering
coordinators feeling that it just isn't worth it.
Ratio problems can be solved without hurting customers.  Time and time 
again people use excuses - and most of them really are just excuses - 
to depeer people.  Feel free, your network, your choice.

However, as a customer of many big networks, we get to choose too.  And 
we think we will stop choosing people who don't play nice with others.

FT can claim "we saw their prefixes through Verio".  Cogent can claim 
it was FT's "unilateral decision".  Who cares?  End of day, both 
networks are disconnected from a significant fraction of the Internet.

The point of the INTERnet is INTERconnectivity.  Not really that hard, 
people.

--
TTFN,
patrick


Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Richard A Steenbergen

On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 11:28:00AM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Richard,
> 
> Its easy to accuse people of criminality - that's what you just did. How 
> about some proof?
> 
> Cogent's ratios are very very bad. That's why some people don't like 
> peering with them. Being sent to sales is a common, if regretable tactic 
> in depeering. However, dealing with Cogent on peering matters is 
> incredibly unpleasant. I can understand networks and peering 
> coordinators feeling that it just isn't worth it.

No, you got me wrong. I wasn't suggesting that anyone was doing anything 
criminal. I was suggesting that Cogent was now so large that if any of the 
folks who were pissed off at Cogent's disruptive pricing actually wanted 
to make an impact against them, they would need to get together and take 
action collectively.

Teleglobe tried to depeer them, but ended up needing Savvis to transit the 
bits to maintain global reachability, which cost them a pretty penny while 
costing Cogent nothing. In the end, they promptly re-peered. 

I could certainly see anti-Cogent folks making the point that Cogent has 
amassed a customer base of people who are fully prepared for poor or 
partial connectivity, and who just don't care because of the price point. 
In the game of who can stick their fingers in their ears and hum the 
longest, I think Cogent will win. At least, if they continue to take on 
networks who don't like them one-at-a-time, and continue the policy of 
complete unreachability during depeering. :)

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>   http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)


RE: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Neil J. McRae

> It has nothing to do with generating revenue, and everything 
> to do with Cogent's disruptive pricing pissing people off. 

Given other examples of this with OT that I have experience with 
I don't believe this is the case. Perhaps with Teleglobe
but certainly not with OT.

Neil.



Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Richard A Steenbergen

On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 02:43:49PM +0100, Neil J. McRae wrote:
> 
> > OpenTransit just depeered Cogent.
> > 
> > Currently OT sees Cogent behind Sprint/Verio:
> > AS path: 5511 1239 2914 174 13129 I
> > 
> > but packets are disapearing in a blackhole.
> 
> A colleague of mine at an OLO was telling me 
> that when OT de-peered them the contact number
> to discuss it was a France Telecom sales person!
> 
> Its kind of like an tyre fitter from kwik fit
> coming over and puncturing your tyres and then 
> expecting you to drive into Kwik Fit and pay
> them to fix them uuhhh I don't think so - 
> do they honestly think that this type of activity 
> is going to generate them any revenue?!

It has nothing to do with generating revenue, and everything to do with 
Cogent's disruptive pricing pissing people off. The real question is who 
will blink first, since the last time this was tried (a few weeks ago, by 
Teleglobe), Cogent won.

For the folks trying this, I have one word of advice:

  Collusion \Col*lu"sion\, n. [L. collusio: cf. F. collusion. See
 {Collude}.]
 1. A secret agreement and cooperation for a fraudulent or
deceitful purpose; a playing into each other's hands;
deceit; fraud; cunning.

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>   http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)


Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Fredy Kuenzler
william(at)elan.net wrote:
>> OpenTransit just depeered Cogent.
>>
>> Currently OT sees Cogent behind Sprint/Verio: AS path: 5511 1239
>> 2914 174 13129 I
>>
>> but packets are disapearing in a blackhole.
>
>
> So what makes you think they depeered and its not just a temporary
> outage or configuration error?
In fact, we just discussed today during lunch that some carriers in
Germany are about to depeer Cogent for business reasons.
Fredy


RE: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Neil J. McRae

> So what makes you think they depeered and its not just a 
> temporary outage or configuration error?

You've never dealt with opentransit then ? :D



RE: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Neil J. McRae

> OpenTransit just depeered Cogent.
> 
> Currently OT sees Cogent behind Sprint/Verio:
> AS path: 5511 1239 2914 174 13129 I
> 
> but packets are disapearing in a blackhole.

A colleague of mine at an OLO was telling me 
that when OT de-peered them the contact number
to discuss it was a France Telecom sales person!

Its kind of like an tyre fitter from kwik fit
coming over and puncturing your tyres and then 
expecting you to drive into Kwik Fit and pay
them to fix them uuhhh I don't think so - 
do they honestly think that this type of activity 
is going to generate them any revenue?!

Regards,
Neil.



Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Alexander Koch

On Thu, 14 April 2005 06:39:27 -0700, william(at)elan.net wrote:
> >but packets are disapearing in a blackhole.
> 
> So what makes you think they depeered and its not just a temporary outage
> or configuration error?

Cogent filters all their peers' routes (or the major peers at
least) so when they depeer those are pretty much blackholed
from Cogent's view. Like Teleglobe lately.

Alexander



Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Jonas Frey

William,

i've got an (inofficial, hence i wont pass it) statement from Cogent
about the situation.

Jonas

On Thu, 2005-04-14 at 15:39, william(at)elan.net wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Apr 2005, Jonas Frey wrote:
> 
> > OpenTransit just depeered Cogent.
> >
> > Currently OT sees Cogent behind Sprint/Verio:
> > AS path: 5511 1239 2914 174 13129 I
> >
> > but packets are disapearing in a blackhole.
> 
> So what makes you think they depeered and its not just a temporary outage
> or configuration error?




Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread william(at)elan.net

On Thu, 14 Apr 2005, Jonas Frey wrote:
OpenTransit just depeered Cogent.
Currently OT sees Cogent behind Sprint/Verio:
AS path: 5511 1239 2914 174 13129 I
but packets are disapearing in a blackhole.
So what makes you think they depeered and its not just a temporary outage
or configuration error?
--
William Leibzon
Elan Networks
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent

2005-04-14 Thread Jonas Frey

OpenTransit just depeered Cogent.

Currently OT sees Cogent behind Sprint/Verio:
AS path: 5511 1239 2914 174 13129 I

but packets are disapearing in a blackhole.

Jonas