[nycbug-talk] Cogent and Sprint - a signal of things getting Oldschool?

[Alex Pilosov]

On Fri, 31 Oct 2008, Isaac Levy wrote:

> Many of us remember how various peering wars especially in the late 90's
> made aspects of using the internet difficult and unreliable, (latency
> and reliability issues).  Recent years, IMHO, have been much better-
> (though people on this list from various ISP's may say different :)
Not really, seems to happen about as often, you just stopped paying 
attention.

> Well, suddenly alarms are going off in my brain, yesterday's net hiccups
> feel like bad old times.
> 
> My DSL (Speakeasy) gets quite slow for small periods of time since
> yesterday.  OpenBSD 4.4 release today is coming down *slowly*.  My
> home-office telecommute work day is sucking rocks. My neighbor (Comcast
> Cable), reported less than 20k bandwidth for long periods of time last
> night.
Correlation does not imply causation.

> Admittedly unscientifically, from my endpoint --> traceroute to known
> points in NYC, now go through mzima where they used to always go through
> some level3 pipes- so I *believe* I'm not crazy to say the Sprint/Cogent
> de-peering affected my piddly DSL, (as it reportedly seems to affect a
> lot more people).
Yes, gamerz coming out from woodwork  and "OMG IM PINGIN 10"

> MY SMALL QUESTION (paging mr. Pilosoft...)
> 
> Cogent.  What's their deal?  Are they really the McBandwidth that people
> speak of?  Do they undercut the other carriers, as seems to be the
> legal/financial problem today- or are they a logical business
> manifestation in a market slow to change- (and in technology, I'm
> implying change moves with Moore's law)?
Yes and no.  They *were* the destructive-pricing leader, but nowadays, 
they are roughly par for the course. Cogent however is very much willing 
to play the blinking game - since both Cogent's and Sprint's customers are 
inconvenienced, both will be upset and demanding credits/etc - cogent 
however is much better at telling their customers to suck it. :)

>  From my view of available bandwidth in North America, all the big
> carriers have not met my expectations- none of them have had incentive
> to continue to invest in their infrastructure.  I know this is a huge
> and arguable notion, but the way that amortized expenditures have played
> out in the open market make an environment where carriers want to
> squeeze as much use out of any infrastructure deployed.
Sorry, can you make a more vague statement?

> Can anyone on list who deals with pipes from the datacenter perspective
> Clarify WTF is up with Cogent for a 'Colo consumer' like myself?
What's the question really? What is the fuck with cogent fails to parse.

> Is this de-peering related to the big economic meltdown in some tangible
> way?
Don't see how.

> I'm NOT saying this backbone/growth situation is an evil conspiracy,  
> (though the big carriers do have a trollish history of greed and  
> neglect); maintaining stability of the market as we know it can really  
> stifle growth, e.g.:
> 
> "Union Protests Verizon's Neglect Of Copper"
> (in favor of FIOS expendatures, 6 months ago)
> http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/93261
F unions. Seriously. Every single one of them needs to be disbanded, and 
leaders put in jail. But that's separate point.

> The workers seem to have had a valid point, (and are picketing more
> recently on similar lack-of-sane-resources issues).  However, as an end
> user, I need the coming fiber *like yesterday*.  And there is the rift.  
> Upgrades.
No, they just want moar money, more work, and monopoly in their work. They
can't care less about the customers.  They are upset VZ is letting go of
coppre techs, and too dumb to learn fiber. (Etiher that or VZ figured out
how to avoid hiring union people to deal with fiber).

> I would argue that to continue to compete and grow internationally,
> American businesses desperately need increased bandwidth all around-
> especially at the datacenter.  I argue that carriers need to be
> supported in, as well as held accountable for, planning upgrade cycles.
We all held them accountable, with our wallets. It's called 'free market'.

> All the IT managers on list, at a myriad of tech and non-tech companies
> big and small, can understand tech growth strategies. With servers and
> computers, the cost of upgrade is commonly understood.  In healthy
> (lucky) environments, growth is even planned for- that's part of an IT
> manager's job.  We all get it. With that working understanding, the
> slow/expensive/unreliable offerings from internet carriers are truly
> frustrating.
It's complicated. Lack of clue is a general problem in this industry, but
this applies equally for carriers and customers, and dare to say, more
customers than carriers. Fortunately, in my experience, having clue on
*one* side of the relationship is generally sufficient to overcome lack of
clue on the other side. Hint hint.

> Those here who know me, know that for years I always argue for a sort of
> "Separation of Content and Infrastructure", which I argue is similar in
> it's aim to the US Constitutional "Separation of Church and State".
It's not about content. it is about separation of 'last mile' (which is a 
natural monopoly and should stay that way) and everything else. Telecom 
Act of 96 promised competition, but telcos managed to get around it while 
winning rights to long-distance operations.

> The myriad of other businesses the 'big backbone telcos' are running,
> (the wireleess phone mafia, ringtones, media/content distribution [think
> Viacom], CDN's, software/application/web development, etc...) This is as
> repressive as a world where Wall Mart was in charge of the roads and
> streets- what if Wall Mart built roads in place of the US Department of
> Transportation?
Er, I dunno. I think the roads would be better maintained, honestly. This
is somewhat a different subject. (As you might now, many toll roads are
now built and operated by commercial enterprises).

> Seriously- I feel this may be a critical moment to be thinking the
> notion of US Government regulation or involvement in internet
> infrastructure.  Fundamental concepts and principles, not just technical
> implementation details.
I hope not. 

> "If Obama Appoints a Tech Czar . . ." By Garrett M. Graff
> http://www.washingtonian.com/blogarticles/people/capitalcomment/8378.html
> "Names kicking around Silicon Valley and the tech community as CTO
> candidates include Google’s Vint Cerf, one of the founders of the
> Internet, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, eBay founder
> Pierre Omidyar, and Lotus pioneer Mitch Kapor."
Wankers. Except for Kapor.

<snip>

> Who has internet backbone?
I dunno. But I can has cheezburger.

-alex