RE: Cogent/Level 3 depeering

["David Schwartz" <davids () webmaster com>]

> On Wed, 05 Oct 2005 19:27:24 PDT, David Schwartz said:

> >     Level 3 cut of Cogent's connectivity. Until and unless they
> > give some
> > reason that makes sense, they are no longer making the effort
> > and are not
> > part of the internet.

> If I had a garden, things would grow *so* wonderfully next year
> if I spread this
> stuff on it.

> So are you saying that if *your* AS was peered at a dozen places, and you
> dropped *one* because it wasn't cost-effective, that you wouldn't
> be part of
> the Internet, even though you still had 11 peers going full blast?

        Being part of the Internet is not about communicating with 11 people and
not the twelfth. It's about communicating with *anyone* (quite literally)
that's willing to make a sufficient effort to communicate with you using the
standards and practices that have evolved.

> By the same logic, Cogent isn't part of the Internet *EITHER*,
> because they're
> not bending over backwards to buy transit to get the L3 routes
> accessible again.

        Bending over backwards was never required. As I said in the part you cut
off when you replied, nobody has to run a line all the way to the server in
my basement that isn't connectected to anything at all. What they do have to
do is make a reasonable effort to communicate with anyone who is willing to
make a similar effort. When you contract for Internet access, you are
contracting to reach everyone who wants to reach you. This "want" is not a
mental thing, it's an action of making the effort to connect to people.

> For that matter, AS1312 isn't part of the Internet either, because we're
> only connected at 2 major points at the moment, and we're not
> making much of
> an effort to get connectivity to places that for one reason or
> another don't
> see a routing announcement for us, or we don't see their
> announcement. And I'm
> sure that with 180K routes, there's gotta be at least a dozen
> that we can't
> actually talk to...

        If they make an effort to talk to you, and you do not make a similar effort
to talk to them, then you're not part of the Internet. The Internet is the
network that has resulted from this philosophy. It is this philosophy that
makes it the Internet.

> But oddly enough, I *seem* to be on the Internet. What's wrong
> with this picture?

        What's wrong is that you are misrepresenting yourself and your connection
philosophy. You are, through your providers and peers making that effort.
Buying Internet access from someone who purports to provide it is one way of
trying to connect with anyone who tries to connect with you.

        DS