Re: Cogent & HE

["Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick () ianai net>]

On Jun 8, 2011, at 7:05 PM, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 08, 2011 at 06:39:02PM -0400, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
> > Yes, both refuse to buy transit, yes.  But HE is able, willing, and 
> > even begging to peer; Cogent is not.  These are not "the same thing".
>
> I'm ready, willing, and lets say for the purposes of this discussion 
> begging to peer with every Tier 1, but some of them aren't willing to 
> peer with me. Does that mean I should stop buying transit and blame them 
> for my resulting lack of global reachability? If I could convince my 
> customers to accept that line of bullshit it would certainly reduce my 
> transit costs, but I have a sneaking suspicion they wouldn't. :)

Your statement and mine are not in contradiction.  I did not say anywhere that HE was perfect, only that they are not 
the same thing.  I stand by what I said.  You care to argue the point?

Also, HE is _giving away_ v6 transit.  You don't like it, stop paying your bill. :)

Put another way, you don't like how both are acting, then don't buy from either.  Why not just peer with both.  Oh, 
wait, that's right, you can't peer with Cogent, but HE is happy to bring up sessions for the cost of a single e-mail, 
and dump (their version of) full v6 routes to you.

Yeah, Richard, totally the same thing....


> Ultimately it is the responsibility of everyone who connects to the 
> Internet to make sure they are, you know, actually connected to the 
> Internet. Choosing not to do so and then throwing up your hands and 
> saying "oh I can't help it, they won't peer with me" is not a valid 
> excuse, at least not in my book or the book of anyone who pays me money 
> to deliver their packets. And this isn't even a case of not being ABLE 
> to buy sufficient capacity via a transit path (ala Comcast), this is 
> just two networks who have mutually decided two remain partitioned from 
> each other in the pursuit of long term strategic advantage. Ultimately 
> both parties share responsibility for this issue, and you can't escape 
> that just because you have a tube of icing and some spare time. :)

Things are a bit more complex than that.

You can't simply say "if someone won't peer with you, you must buy transit".  Otherwise, Cogent would be the only tier 
one left, since they care about their customers less than anyone else.  This is not good for me or the Internet, and I 
refuse to support it.


> > On the flip side, HE is an open peer, even to their own customers, and 
> > _gives away_ free v6 transit.  Taking their free transit & complaining 
> > that they do not buy capacity to Cogent seems more than silly.  Plus, 
> > they are doing that I think is in my best interest as a customer - 
> > open peering.  Trying to make them the bad guy here seems counter 
> > intuitive.
>
> I know you're not naive enough to think that HE is giving away free IPv6 
> transit purely out of the kindness of their heart. They're doing it to 
> bulk up their IPv6 customer base, so they can compete with larger 
> networks like Cogent, and make a play for Tier 1-dom in exactly the same 
> way that Cogent has done with IPv4. And more power to them for it, it 
> may well be a smart long term strategic move on their part, but with 
> every wannabe Tier 1 network comes partitioning and peering disputes, as 
> they try to trade short term customer pain for long term advantages.

Of course.  The question is not: "Is $COMPANY acting in $COMPANY's best interest?"  The answer to that is: Duh.

The question is: "Which $COMPANY's best interests more closely align with mine?"  If you have the slightest doubt here, 
you are highly confused.


> Sorry to all the HE guys, but trying to simultaniously complain about 
> your treatment at the hands of other networks and their peering disputes 
> while emulating their actions is bullshit and you know it. :)

We disagree.  See the first paragraph in this post, HE is not emulating Cogent, Telecom Italia, etc.

You are bitching about both HE & Cogent.  If I were paying either for v6 transit, I would bitch too.  But I am not 
paying HE - no one is! - and they _are_ doing things differently than Cogent.  So why not support the one whose long 
term interests both best fit mine and the Internet's?  (Plus, to be honest, I have a lot more faith in Mike & Martin to 
continue doing what's best for me & the Internet than Dave.  And by "a lot more", I mean something on the order of 
"more than 50%" vs. "less than 0.01%".)

-- 
TTFN,
patrick