Think the Web is slow, today, eh?

Published on October 31st, 2008

Sprint-Nextel has decided to sever its Internet connection with Cogent, another Internet service provider, according to a statement from Cogent.

Internet health data supplied by Keynote Systems indicates that Cogent and Sprint are no longer exchanging traffic.

As a result, it is no longer possible for many Sprint customers and Cogent customers to directly communicate across the Internet.

The two ISPs are currently engaged in litigation over their exchange of Internet traffic, so-called peering. In shutting down the peering between the two, Sprint violated a contractual obligation to exchange Internet traffic with Cogent on a settlement-free peering basis, according to Cogent…

In the short term, Sprint and Cogent costumers are stuck in middle, but in the end Lindqvist thinks they will be forced to work out their differences. “It’s usually a question of who chickens out first,” he said.

Grown-up corporate dispute resolution in action.

19 users responded in " Think the Web is slow, today, eh? "

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# 1 Paddy-O said, on October 31st, 2008 at 8:17 am

“As a result, it is no longer possible for many Sprint customers and Cogent customers to directly communicate across the Internet.”

Silly & meaningless statement.

# 2 StaunchRepublican said, on October 31st, 2008 at 8:41 am

@#1″Silly & meaningless statement.”

This offends you in some way? How so? It pretty much defines your sojourn, here on DU.

# 3 Paddy-O said, on October 31st, 2008 at 8:50 am

#2 Learn how internet traffic is routed. Are you really that ignorant of the subject?

# 4 Eric said, on October 31st, 2008 at 8:54 am

Well, private peering is almost always faster than running through MAE East/West/Whatever, otherwise why would you set up a private peering agreement?

Anyone have a couple of examples of big sites that use Cogent’s network?

# 5 Paddy-O said, on October 31st, 2008 at 8:57 am

#4 Correct. But I don’t think most of the internet traffic to and from your computer is “private peering”.

# 6 StaunchRepublican said, on October 31st, 2008 at 8:59 am

@#3″Silly & meaningless statement.”

One point awarded for consistency.

# 7 John said, on October 31st, 2008 at 9:08 am

I have a theory. People in charge (think CEOs and other high level executives) lost a lot of playground fights as kids. These picked on brats grew up… well no, they didn’t grow up. They just got older and earned MBAs.

I can just picture the conference rooms at both companies with a bunch of guys with fake tans and expensive suits yelling into the speaker phone, “I know you are, but what am I?”

# 8 pjakobs said, on October 31st, 2008 at 9:18 am

#5: Paddy-O said I know for a fact that most of my i-net traffic goes through private peering since the largest German carrier only has minimal bandwidth at the public peering points.
Private peering between the big players carries huge amounts of traffic.

# 9 Paddy-O said, on October 31st, 2008 at 9:30 am

#8 pjakobs – I never said, “I know for a fact that most of my i-net traffic goes through private peering since the largest German carrier only has minimal bandwidth at the public peering points.”

# 10 pjakobs said, on October 31st, 2008 at 10:14 am

#9, Paddy-O

let’s not get hung up with my inabilty to perform such simplistic tasks as copy and paste without failing.
Point is: private peerings do some of the real heavy lifting on the net.

# 11 ECA said, on October 31st, 2008 at 11:42 am

For those that dont understand the NET…
THINK about 4-6 BALLS of yarn..
Each ball is made up of 100’s of SHORT strands and not 1 complete string..
Only where those short strings get KNOTTED to another ball can different sections TALK across the net.
You can have 4 Phone companies ALL having a HUB in a large city, and NEVER interconnect with each other.
Wondering the NET in the USA, is like wondering a 4D maze…
Iv seen EMAIL and online chats…to someone NEXT DOOR..Bounce around the WHOLE USA, to finally get to the designated person..
AND dont THINK, that the net takes the BEST route. generally it takes the ONLY route. If 1 section gets Disconnected from 1 company..the ODDS are, you wont be able to get THREW/out/in to those services or Persons..

It would be cool if EVERY metro had a HUB for all connections and interconnections…BUT IT ISNT THAT WAY.. Im in IDAHO and my ISP connects me from Arizona.. I have a friend 10 miles away on a different ISP, and Mail to him doesnt go FROM HERE, to BOISE, to HIM…It goes from Idaho, to Colorado, to Cali, to WASHINGTON to BOISE Idaho, to my friend.
And if 1 interconnect between ANY location is DOWN, it probably WONT GET THERE.

# 12 FRAGaLOT said, on October 31st, 2008 at 12:33 pm

Paddy-O
Assuming that this peering with Sprint and Cognet is one of the many trans-Atlantic connections, then this is a significant issue here. For those of us living in the US, this is probably a non-issue to us in the short term. It’s not like packets will never make it to Europe anymore, there are many other paths and routes to get there. Could also cause some sites to never work due to extra hops, and short TTLs.

But this is not so much of a network lag traffic issue but more of a bone head political money grubbing bullshit maneuver where two companies are squabbling over something that INDEED has a big impact with European net users who often visit sites located in the USA.

# 13 FRAGaLOT said, on October 31st, 2008 at 12:42 pm

ECA
It’s not like if one node goes down you’ll lose your entire net access. That only applies to maybe the first 2-3 hops (or the LAST few hops to your destination) you see on a traceroute were to go down.

The internet is designed to re-route packets around the globe. Just because your connection goes from IDAHO to AZ dosen’t mean it’s the ONLY route, but that is indeed the best route that your ISP has set up right now, which could change over time. It has noting to do with physical DISTANCE, but the number of HOPS it takes to get from point A to point B. So for right now ID to AZ is a short hop, that probably bypasses a dozen extra hops that would lead to the same destination.

If the AZ node went down, it can be re-routed elsewhere that’s on your ISP’s network but it will take more “hops” to get there.

The problem is when a big connections, like this one mentioned in this story, go down the packets will have to take more hops to get it’s destination, and if you have a short TTL you may never get to the destination.

# 14 ECA said, on October 31st, 2008 at 2:31 pm

Frag..
The NET STILL isnt a net..
Qwest probably has only 6-12 interconnects to OTHER companies..
Its the same with the other companies also..
ANd you DONT get the fastest either..

Long ago, I thought there was a Routing program to direct your programs thru…I aint seen it in awhile..
You could ping each site, and see the interconnects and Choose a route..

# 15 John Paradox said, on October 31st, 2008 at 6:35 pm

Ironically, I couldn’t read this a few hours ago because of a local outage.

Happy Halloween
Happy All Saints Day

J/P=?

# 16 Mister Mustard said, on October 31st, 2008 at 7:16 pm

#15 – JP

I often cannot read things that are posted here, because there was “AN ERROR ESTABLISHING DATABASE CONNECTION” or some other mumbo jumbo.

# 17 pedro said, on October 31st, 2008 at 7:47 pm

#7 You might be on to something. Which leads me to beleive that J will be a hell of a CEO.

#16 I think you have to talk with Perkel about that. Something about localhost.

# 18 Pestilence said, on November 1st, 2008 at 7:27 am

I am able to see the effect of this already. The company I work for uses Cogent as it’s main ISP and our cellular provider is Sprint-Nextel. Traffic to/from our Blackberry users is taking an increased amount of time from the data center. Sometimes it’s only a few seconds, other times it’s been 5 minutes plus depending on the traffic being passed.

# 19 Mr. Fusion said, on November 1st, 2008 at 5:21 pm

Yes, there has been quite a bit of server problems at DU’s end.

I know Marc is working on it and wish him the best.

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