Re: Cogent-TATA peering dispute?

[Mark Tinka <mark@tinka.africa>]

On 5/18/24 06:04, Jon Lewis wrote:

> Cogent has been trying to establish themselves as a "tier 1" carrier 
> in markets outside their home turf, and Asia is one of the markets in 
> which the established operators are doing their best to keep Cogent out.
>
> Back when I was helping to run a global anycast CDN, Cogent was one of 
> our transits [in US and EU POPs].  I identified a bunch of sub-optimal 
> service to networks in Asia who were silly/cheap enough to buy transit 
> from Cogent.  Since none of the established players would peer 
> in-market with Cogent, and since we didn't have Cogent transit in any 
> of our Asian POPs (why would we?), anycast request traffic from those 
> Cogent customers would cross the Pacific and land in California rather 
> than hit a nearby POP with NTT, Tata, Singtel, etc. transits.
>
> I suspect Cogent has either reached what they consider to be customer 
> critical mass in Asia, or is tired of their Asian customers 
> complaining about latency (since traffic to any other in-market 
> non-Cogent connected network routes via the US or EU) and has decided 
> it's time to play peering chicken to force Tata to peer with them in 
> Asia.  Why shouldn't they?  The only reason Tata, NTT, etc. won't peer 
> with Cogent in-market is because they don't want Cogent to be able to 
> compete with them in their home market.

They have a similar problem in Africa with the major African IP Transit 
providers; and they are far less deployed in Africa than they are in Asia.

Mark.