Re: Sprint v. Cogent, some clarity & facts

[George William Herbert <gherbert () retro com>]

Patrick writes:
> 3. Standard transit contracts do not guarantee full connectivity
> If you are a Cogent customer, it is very unlikely your contract will  
> allow you SLA or other credits for not being able to reach Sprint  
> unless you negotiated something special.  I doubt Sprint's standard  
> contract is much different.  Transit contract SLAs end at AS  
> boundaries.  This is because Network A has no control over Network B  
> and therefore will not give credit if Network B fails.  Of course, you  
> can still sue, threaten to terminate, etc., but the letter of the  
> contract almost certainly says nothing about packets going beyond your  
> transit provider's ASN.

I am not aware of any major content provider who still has
any agreements in place that don't say anything about routing
past the provider's network.

Some weren't paying any attention when they signed up initially
and didn't get the specific provisions.  But once bitten by such,
renewals Do Not Happen without additional clauses being inserted.

I don't rule out there still being such agreements, but I think that
anyone with a clue and enough traffic to think about multihoming
has been exposed to this and should have insisted on some legal
protection about best-effort to route to rest of world.  It never
fails to impress me how many people have little clue, though...


-george william herbert
gherbert () retro com