Internet Partitioning - Cogent vs Level 3? 450
slashmicah asks: "Internet partitioning and Tier 1 ISPs are something most people don't know much about (myself included). Today, however, some Slashdot readers might have run into some issues involving these two topics. Cogent Communications and Level 3, both Tier 1 ISPs, are apparently having some 'undisclosed' disagreements, causing an Internet partition by turning-off or deactivating their peering point. Cogent Co. has released a statement explaining their side of the problem, however they have no mention of when the problem will be fixed, or when they will sort it out. This partitioning is a problem because any [single-homed] computers that are connected through Cogent Co, can not connect to [single-homed] computers connected through Level 3. Having spent all day sorting out this problem, I ask Slashdot: Isn't there a better way that the issue of peering can be handled/regulated? If not, does the future hold a scenario in which the Internet is split into several separate networks, only to be connected at the whims of large corporations?"
Reminds me of... (Score:4, Interesting)
A quote about censorship. Come on, we all know it. The internet will see that as damage and route around it. The very fact that you mention that this affects single homed computers on one or the other network means that even at the onset of this "partitioning" it is ineffective.
To get the problem fixed (Score:2, Interesting)
OK, WTF time here (Score:4, Interesting)
If my grandma can't check her email for a day, I don't really care that much. If my doctor is consulting with a cardiac specialist over using VoIP (V being either voice or video) concerning an acute health problem then I have a much larger problem with outages. As long as we have important economic or healthcare services running over the internet--which is the foreseeable future--this sort of thing needs to either be avoided or have a pre-planned workaround.
I guess this explains some of the unresponsive hosts I came across today. And here I was thinking it must be Bob's Worm of the Week.
Re:OK, WTF time here (Score:3, Interesting)
Dual-homed networks are not affected by a simple depeering.
Re:Interesting scenario, though most likely untrue (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, there are several sites I can't get to from home now. I didn't have any problem getting them from work (UT Austin). I have effectively zero power to rectify this. Annoying.
Now, if Cogent offered me some way to connect to them for an additional $5/mo... would I?
Think... if the government allowed an additional $5/mo. for each Tier 1 my ISP (Time Warner) is connected to... my cable modem bill would instantly double.
That's a scenario that bothers me more than the dissolution of the Net does. Flip side, the Internet would get a whole lot more redundant really quick...
public peering! (Score:5, Interesting)
In all seriousness, these private companies will work it out when they realize that their paying customers are pissed and leaving because they're no longer selling very complete connectivity. Just like in the past, it won't take long. If TV has taught me anything, these problems are usually wrapped up pretty nicely in about 28 minutes.
Re:Interesting scenario, though most likely untrue (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah I am just a network guy but I bet I know more about this than the "expert" "predicting" gas prices on CNN.
Re:Your statement is incorrect (Score:4, Interesting)
As seen on any network, a sufficient degree of inefficiency will result in DoS. How many peerage agreements would have to be cancelled for this to happen? While I freely admit I couldn't compute a number for an effective local DoS vs regional Dos vs global DoS, I would still be extremely interested in making sure it won't happen.
Cogentco website problems (Score:2, Interesting)
"Ping request could not find host www.cogentco.com. Please check the name and try again."
but, when I ping it from nwtools.com, it works just fine [nwtools.com]. I can connect to many other websites, but not to cogent. I am on a verizon DSL, if that makes any difference. Does anyone have any ideas as to what's going on?
This could spell problems (Score:3, Interesting)
wow they could both be sued for huge sums of money...
Re:public peering! (Score:3, Interesting)
And with the U.N. wanting to take a more active role in the Internet, maybe they need to start trying to manage such things. If it is a utility now, like phone service, maybe we need to do more to regulate how those relationships happen, since I'm sure that if Level 3 decided not to terminate calls from Sprint, someone at the FCC would be on it pretty quickly.
Re:OK, WTF time here (Score:3, Interesting)
My point is that this service has reached a saturation level in this society such that it must have reasonably high availability and be reasonably priced in order for society to continue functioning normally.
Essentially, it is another piece of infrastructure that we have become dependent on. Yes, I can live with internet access for a week. I did when I moved because the sole local provider has its head up its rear. However, businesses and other entities will have problems functioning at their normal levels if the internet becomes unavailable or less suitable for their normal uses for a prolonged period of time. In the case of potable water, it is simple to predict what problems will arise if availability is reduced or eliminated. What effects can we expect if the effective capacity of the internet shrinks? You know as well as I do that there are many critical systems on the internet, and if the problem gets bad enough some of them will become unusable. How much spare capacity do we have to cover the overhead associated with routing around peerage points that are disconnected for no good reason (good as in technically sound basis for doing so).
This is the issue that concerns me: While the internet is designed to handle failures and remain operable, how many failure points or shutdowns will it take before the internet in this country is unable to meet the demands required by our infrastructure? I've read nothing anywhere that attempts to address this question. While this single cancelled peerage isn't enough (as proven by the fact that I'm responding to your post), I would rather know how much "give" the system has and impose clear regulations so that corporate hissy fits like this don't push things too far. Perhaps this one cancellation is virtually trivial. My concern is the possibility of a larger spate of peerage cancellations causing problems. The internet is as crucial as telephone service to keeping things running smoothly in the US. We have oversight and regulation of the telecommunications industry along with several other services that have been deemed critical to either personal health and safety or to the national interest. I believe the internet has become so integrated into the personal, business, and political spheres that it may need similar treatment.
The point would be to ensure that the system which is supposed to resistant being broken will not only remain functional but will also always be functional enough to support essential infrastructure. Perhaps my off-the-cuff examples of what is essential and what is not were not perfect, and I'm sure either one of us could provide better ones with a bit of thought. Refuting a specific example as being flawed does not, however, address the general concern. How much of this sort of bedwetting behavior can we allow from ISPs before the consequences become bad for a society that is becoming increasingly reliant on the internet?
Seen it before in Australia (Score:5, Interesting)
Optus didn't appreciate that and promptly blocked all data between themselves and Telstra. Customers with Telstra were pretty much screwed because they couldn't contact anything and with their network going nuts even sites within Telstra sucked a lot. Still, for a couple of days there, it was two halves of an internet available in here. Was amusing to watch really.
No Rules. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:public peering! (Score:3, Interesting)
Outages piss me off, but I don't think I'd be motivated enough to deal with the hassle unless we we're talking about more than a week. We have direct links to all of our mission-critical stuff, and backup (T1 or slower, eugh) links to the internet, so we'd survive, but not without real irritation.
Not surprised. Used to do this for a living..... (Score:2, Interesting)
We once had to backhaul a huge number of routes because of a peering issue between PSInet and @home I think. Fiber had been pulled all the way to the mark outside the building. All PSI had to do was literally connect up the line. It turned into a pissing match between the two CEO's and just sat rotting for MONTHS.
I remember back when NO ONE would peer with Quest because they were all datacenters and not dialup, so they had no advertising value. So no one would peer, not even if Quest paid. (depending on who bennifits most, the determines things like who pays how much etc). So Quest went around buying up little backwater mom&pop ISPs only for the peering. If they wanted a peering point with a certain net in a certain area, just find who has one, and buy them out. It was funny.
Conspiracy (Score:2, Interesting)
Calm down. Anomalys happen. No biggie. (Score:1, Interesting)
FURTHER, the author is not entirely correct in saying that single-homed computers downstream of cogent cannot talk to single-homed computers downstream of L3. While it's true the AS_PATH such that the traffic cannot currently cross directly from cogent to L3, it's NOT true that single-homed cogent customers cannot talk to single-homed L3 customers. FALSE. There are almost definetely SEVERAL other [AS_]paths to practically ANY network downstream of cogent OR L3. The lowest-cost path may be currently inoperable, and may forever be inoperable, but another AS_PATH will take it's place, and the capacity shift WILL be dealt with by the infrastructure engineers at whichever isp(s) have assumed the next best path. The author ought to correct this as his premise violates the very technique by which the internet offers redundancy.... alternate paths in the case of severed links.
Chill peeps
G's up Backhoes down
Re:Interesting scenario, though most likely untrue (Score:3, Interesting)
And it's been about 8 hours and they still haven't.
At this stage, you'd be better off with a smaller ISP, because they have fewer connection points to update with the new routing table rows.
Re:Question from the clueless (Score:3, Interesting)
I've seen a few other sites (ucomics) that are on the "other side of the rift" that I haven't been able to get to today. Fortunately, the office was not one of them (or I'd have had to drive the 5 hours into work).
Actually, the problem is because.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Now, since there is apparently some lack of understand of what peering is by the author of the article.... Peering is when 2 companies run a line between themselves. They aren't selling bandwidth to each other, but they share the line cost and traffic between them only goes between them. It helps speed up routes and in many cases helps avoid bottle necks at some of the central hubs.
Actually, for small business the economics change (Score:4, Interesting)
Case in point: I've run my own data center for 12 years (18 if you could dial up bbs crap). This week, I'm shutting it down. I need more reliability for an important application, and it will be cheaper for me to outsource the public facing side to a data center (In my case, linux boxes at ServerBeach -- I can plug them, they've made me happy).
This is coming from someone with 13 years running his own shop; who owns good firewall, routing, and standby power equipment; as well as servers. Still, it will be cheaper from month 1 to outsource today. For less money, I don't have to buy (or maintain) hardware, get more bandwidth, multi-homed servers, way more reliable power and facilities, and a lower power bill.
The market is changing. More and more consumer broadband utilities (which is what they are) will have to drop out of the single homed dedidcated circuit market. Dissagree? Time Warner doesn't. Why do you think they're building state of the art colocation facilities and datacenters in the markets they serve?
Because soon public facing servers for any serious purpose will live primarily in big datacenters. The only companies to host their own, will be hosting them in their own big corporate data centers.
Corporate Silent Treatment (Score:4, Interesting)
When I asked for an explanation of this, it had to do with a corporate silent-treatment of sorts; because Paltel/Jawwal (the Palestinian telco [reference.com]) was suing Cellcom for licensing infringement and illegal operation, the Cellcom network decided to boycott the Palestinian phone carriers. This caused all sorts of problems for Palestinian society, and the effect was that everyone in Palestinian areas were ditching the local telco and getting Israeli Cellcom cell phones. Jawwal was facing dire times, after their offices were raided by Israeli military and tech imports were prevented because of blanket security concerns.
For folks on the ground, this was just one more manifestation of the intifada/occupation, even the corporations were going at it.
More background available here [countercurrents.org], here [66.102.7.104] and here [amin.org].
Re:Level 3's official statement (Score:4, Interesting)
Inexcusable (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:OK, WTF time here (Score:2, Interesting)
Article: http://www.physorg.com/news6940.html [physorg.com]
Actual Paper: http://netlab.caltech.edu/pub/papers/Doyle-topolo
And, to clarify and correct myself, it looks like they are claiming that the internet is not scale-free. Which is not quite the same thing as being power-law, but is generally related.
Re:This is bad. Very bad. (Score:3, Interesting)
The fact this effects 95% of NYC cable modems is going to piss off a lot of execs at many different companies and bring more light to this situation then L3 or Cognent can imagine. I've gotten calls from lots of clients who want to know if they should be calling Time Warner board members because they can't VPN into their office from home.
Having to explain to them it's not really a Time Warned RR issue and who's 'isssue' it is should not be any of ours job. This should not happen. Dirty pool is being played and it's crippling the Internet for a large number of users.
And there's not a damn thing* anyone can do about it.
(* actually, i saw a suggestion by someone to download the Google WiFi beta VPN client, and use it to add a second route to your home PC, via the Google datacenter pathways to the fractured side of the net. That this is the only recourse is very scary)