Grad Student thesis rsrch one page: comments welcome
however I have my good comments filter on...
Is Internet Reachability a Net Neutrality Issue?
----CRTC Chairperson Konrad von Finckenstein introduced Net Neutrality in his
speech to the 2007 Broadcasting Invitational Summit and again at the 2008
Canadian Telecom Summit mentioning that the CRTC's New Media Initiative will
include "striking a social, cultural and economic balance to deal with Internet
traffic prioritization".
----Traffic prioritization or traffic shaping is a small part of the entire
concept of a neutral network.
----The internet has no minimum standard of acceptable performance for
reachability of websites and data. As an information tool it becomes useless
without this reachability addressed as far as possible.
----The most famous example of non-neutrality in Canada occurred during the
Telus labour dispute (2005). Telus blocked access to a pro-union site by
blocking the server on which it was hosted. Researchers at Harvard, Cambridge
and the University of Toronto (OpenNet Initiative) found that Telus�s actions
resulted in an additional 766 unrelated sites also being blocked for
subscribers. Dealing with blocking access to servers and blocking access to
other networks are very important aims of a neutral internet.
----Example: A York University professor was sitting at his desk at work in
March 2008 trying to reach an internet website located somewhere in Europe. It
was important to his research so when he repeatedly could not reach the site he
contacted his IT department at the University. They were mystified why this
would be the case. The Professor went home after work and found that he could
reach the website from home consistently, for many days and was not ever able
to reach the website from the University campus network.York�s bandwidth
supplier is Cogent which had severed a peering relationship with a bandwidth
provider in Europe called Telia, which was the bandwidth network provider for
the website that the Professor was trying to reach. However at home, the
Professor purchased bandwidth from Rogers (and its upstream providers) who did
not sever their peering relationship with Telia. Cogent did not proactively
inform the University of the issue and the loss of connectivity. Unreachability
due to arbitrariness in network peering is unacceptable.
----Parts of the internet become unreachable for a great many reasons such as
line failure, cable cuts, misconfiguration of equipment and human error but to
add significantly and deliberately to this unreachability due to arbitrariness
in peering is unacceptable. End users whether award winning scholars, backyard
astronomers or teenage scientists require as much reachability of data as the
technology will allow. Political and economic persuasions should not be
permitted to condition and alter the media or the content.
----Recommendation: Bandwidth purchase agreements (Service Level Agreements)
that specify bandwidth, uptime and cost actually define connectivity thus they
should contain a list of peers or network interconnections that will be
maintained for the length of the agreement.
Prepared by Nancy Paterson, York University July 23, 2008 nancyp@yorku.ca
PS anyone willing to proof read a few technical pages of thesis paper? pls
contact off list
There must be more to this story. If Cogent de-peered from Telia the traffic would
normally just have taken another path. Either there was a configuration error of some
sort or else some sort of proactive black-holing on one side or the other. As the
latter would be surprising and very heavy handed, I would tend to suspect the former.
Peering relationships are made and severed all the time with no particular ill-effects,
unless you can point to examples of outright malice (i.e. of the black-holing kind) I
don't think there is much basis for any public policy decisions in this example.
Unreachability due to configuation error is of course relatively common; perhaps I am
wrong, but I don't think the CRTC would really have much to say about that.
"Then Cogent de-peered Telia and suddenly Verizon and others started providing a path
between the two and their respective customers."
Which is as it should be. Then somebody (not clear who) apparently took explicit steps
to stop the traffic from taking these other paths. Surprising. Severing a peering relationship
is one thing, purposely filtering large swathes of the Internet over other all links is quite
another.
As I said, this is surprising behaviour, but not simple de-peering. And I'm sure that any
Tier 1 has enough peering relationships with enough other Tier 1 networks that they can
always buy temporary transit privileges over an existing link.
Which is as it should be. Then somebody (not clear who) apparently
took explicit steps to stop the traffic from taking these other paths.
Surprising. Severing a peering relationship is one thing, purposely
filtering large swathes of the Internet over other all links is quite
another.
As I said, this is surprising behaviour, but not simple de-peering.
And I'm sure that any Tier 1 has enough peering relationships with enough
other Tier 1 networks that they can always buy temporary transit
privileges over an existing link.
This is not surprising at all. One of the networks making arrangements to
purchase transit immediately may help the customers of both networks in the
short term, but the reality is that peering problem still exists and it
immediately shows a weakness on one side. If they're willing to pay, they
may agree to peering with settlements as well or just continue to buy
transit. No transit free network is going to allow this to happen. It is
in their best interest to make the de-peering as painful as possible to get
a quicker resolution that satisfies both parties.
Maybe not the greatest analogy, but think labor strikes and scabs (temporary
workers willing to cross the picket line). If there were no repercussions
to allowing scab workers to cross a picket line (lack of training leading to
mistakes/accidents, pressure placed by the unions, negative publicity
causing customers to boycott the company, etc), then unions wouldn't exist,
or at least wouldn't have the strength needed to put the issue to rest as
quickly as possible.
When your customers (and the other networks customers) are complaining, the
issue gets resolved much quicker. The Telia/Cogent depeering went longer
than most, but it usually gets the job done.
"Then Cogent de-peered Telia and suddenly Verizon and others started providing a path
between the two and their respective customers."
Which is as it should be. Then somebody (not clear who) apparently took explicit steps to stop the traffic from taking these other paths. Surprising. Severing a peering relationship is one thing, purposely filtering large swathes of the Internet over other all links is quite another.
As I said, this is surprising behaviour, but not simple de-peering. And I'm
Why is it surprising? Sounds more like a repeat performance to me.
Back when Level3 depeered Cogent, it was said that Cogent was already buying transit from Verio to reach at least some networks they weren't peering with. After the depeering, why didn't Cogent get to Level3 (and vice versa) via Verio?
Was the reason ever made public?
Tier 1 has enough peering relationships with enough other Tier 1 networks that they can always buy temporary transit privileges over an existing link.
Presumably it follows that tier 2 networks do buy transit. Therefore,
why would anyone buy service from a Tier 1 network except for other
network operators?
This doesn't match with the reality that providers who are Tier 1 seem
to get some very big companies as customers. Why would they do that if
Tier 1 networks offer a substandard service? Is this a scandal in the
making?
As I said, this is surprising behaviour, but not simple de-peering. And I'm
Why is it surprising? Sounds more like a repeat performance to me.
Back when Level3 depeered Cogent, it was said that Cogent was already buying transit from Verio to reach at least some networks they weren't peering with. After the depeering, why didn't Cogent get to Level3 (and vice versa) via Verio?
Surprising because, Cogent (or Telia, but from what you say here, looks like Cogent),
presumably put themselves in a breach of contract position with their (end-user or stub
AS) customers who one would imagine have bought "Internet service" from them. Given
that they have some reasonably big/important customers it is surprising that they would
take that risk, and even more surprising that it didn't bite them too hard. By maybe I am
just easily surprised.
Tier 1 has enough peering relationships with enough other Tier 1 networks that they can always buy temporary transit privileges over an existing link.
Tier 1 means you don't buy transit, no?
Maybe a slightly revised definition of Tier 1 is in order -- a provider that doesn't buy transit
and doesn't sell to end-users or stub systems. Doing either of these things would degrade
them in the nomenclature by 0.5. Doing both of these things makes a Tier 2 provider which
had better have transit from more than one upstream. This way innocents don't suffer the
collateral damage from games of chicken among the titans (unless they were silly enough
to get their only Internet connection from a Tier 1.5 provider). Oh well.
Surprising because, Cogent (or Telia, but from what you say here, looks like Cogent), presumably put themselves in a breach of contract position with their (end-user or stub AS) customers who one would imagine have bought "Internet service" from them. Given that they have some reasonably big/important customers it is surprising that they would take that risk, and even more surprising that it didn't bite them too hard. By maybe I am just easily surprised.
But, AFAICT, Cogent has done this before and even combined it with the publicity stunt of offering free peering to any single-homed Level3 customer for a year.
Tier 1 means you don't buy transit, no?
Maybe a slightly revised definition of Tier 1 is in order -- a provider that doesn't buy transit and doesn't sell to end-users or stub systems.
I don't know that you'll find a Tier 1 that doesn't sell to end-user networks. It's kind of what they do. Once you start buying transit, all the bigger networks probably figure they can get you to "pay us too."
Tier 1 has enough peering relationships with enough other Tier 1 networks that they can always buy temporary transit privileges over an existing link.
Every peering agreement I've seen has language to the effect that an entity can't both be a transit customer and a peer. Even if allowed, the temporary transit privileges would need to be provisioned and turned up which isn't going to happen instantaneously.
Tier 1 means you don't buy transit, no?
"We are a Tier 1 provider" tends to mean "I am a salesperson".
How many buyers out there have SLAs which cover inter-provider/domain
connectivity?
How many sellers are willing to guarantee this level of connectivity
to their customers with a SLA?
How many peering contracts are worth the paper they're printed on, and
have teeth when subjected to attorney review, and none of the usual
30-90 day unilateral severability nonsense?
