THE NET IS SPLIT(Many people cut off from websites)

10/05/05 | various

[Revel]

Many people have not been able to get to several sites on the internet all day. Finally the reason is becoming clearer. Please see the posts below taken from the Drudge thread.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1497077/posts?q=1&&page=101

Sorry I don't have any articles. All I have is what has been gathered on the Thread.

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To: cgk

Hello-

I work for Level 3 and can vouch for the previous comments; we have depeered Cogent, which means that any customer or third party with Level 3, such as roadrunner, will not be able to connect to cogent websites, and vice versa.

Obviously i have a dog in the fight, but its for good reason.

105 posted on 10/05/2005 by DMinus

To: Desert_Girl

well, those questions require pretty detailed answers that i don't care to get into. suffice it to say that eventually it will be worked out by the market. for the time being, the only work around would be complex routing schemes by the carriers stuck in the middle. for those suggesting that they leave their carrier or demand that the carrier go somewhere else for service, such as roadrunner.... all i can say is that they would be shooting themselves in the foot by doing so.

as i said, i have a dog in this fight, but the best permanent solution would be for cogent to agree to a mroe equitable peering relationship and stop using other carrier's networks for a free ride, and then undercutting prices because they have no network infrastructure to pay for.

and be on the lookout; there will be lots more of this stuff coming, and not just between my company and others. this has been a brewing issue for some time now.

116 posted on 10/05/2005 9:01:50 PM EDT by DMinus

Posted by tortoise to Democrat for Bush; All On News/Activism ^ 10/05/2005 · 74 of 118 ^

There is a currently a peering war going on for the Internet backbone between Cogent and Level3. What this means in practical terms is that the Internet has fragmented into smaller subnetworks depending on where you are on the broader network.

The practical consequence is that significant sections of the Internet no longer exist from the perspective of your upstream router. This is not a failure per se, it is the result of two Tier-1 network operators refusing to acknowledge the existence of the other and dumping those network routes into /dev/null.

Posted by tortoise to Phsstpok On News/Activism ^ 10/05/2005 · 75 of 118 ^

There is an open war between two Tier-1 network providers on the peering fabrics. Depending on who your upstream network is, you may or may not be able to see parts of the Internet.

It is neither a DNS problem or really even an ISP problem -- it is an intentionally created rift in the backbone by two powerful factions who decided to play a game of chicken with each other using the Internet.

Posted by tortoise to Desert_Girl On News/Activism ^ 10/05/2005 · 76 of 118 ^

I use RR and haven't been able to get to drudge all day long.

Drudge is fine, but there is a war on the peering fabrics between major networks that has turned ugly. Depending on the details of your connection, you may not be able to get to Drudge even if his site is up. The effect of this problem is that parts of the Internet no longer exist as far as your router is concerned, which may include Drudge's site.

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FROM GOOGLE:

Re: cogent and level3 From: Richard A Steenbergen Date: Wed Sep 14 15:09:13 2005 On Wed, Sep 14, 2005 at 01:41:32PM -0400, Joseph Nuara wrote: Does anyone know what the story is with Cogent and L3? I noticed that my Cogent site (IN NY) is using a path to one of my providers (IN NJ) via asia as opposed to the local and preferred L3 peer. After several days I was finally told that L3 and Cogent are working through some peering negotiations and cogent is moving traffic off their L3 peer in anticipation of a depeering (I guess they are trying to avoid the whole France Telecom thing that happend last time). Does anyone have a better clue as to what is going on and where the negotiations stand?

Unoffical sources say that Level 3 sent a depeering notice to Cogent a month ago, for a disconnection on either the 15th or the 16th of September. Based on the fact that Cogent is offering 0 commit ports to any Level 3 customers they can find (at 50% of their L3 pricing), it looks like they're preparing to shift as much traffic off as possible, and put the rest on transit. With any luck (if you're a Cogent or L3 customer at any rate) they won't be blackholing each other. Guess we'll find out this week. :) As for the path through Asia, sounds broken, send the traceroute to customer support and tell them to get it fixed. Richard A Steenbergen

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:NOS3HJhX9jcJ:www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/msg11606.html+Cogent+and+Level3&hl=en

[Revel]

Which can you get to ?

http://www.cogentco.com/

http://www.level3.com/

[Revel]

Since the links did not post properly:

Which can you get to ?

http://www.cogentco.com/

http://www.level3.com/

[netmilsmom]

I can get into both.
What does it all mean?

[TheOtherOne]

I get to both with no problems.

Using a DSL in Los Angeles.

[SE Mom]

http://news.com.com/Network+feud+leads+to+Net+blackout/2100-1038_3-5889592.html?part=rss&tag=5889592&subj=news

Thanks for this! LOL- I just started a thread too!

Your call Mod:)

[Graybeard58]

What does it all mean?

The sky is falling.

[Revel]

Opps sorry. No matter if they want to pull it.

[listenhillary]

Level3

Sprint network (I think)

[chesty_puller]

Both

[DLfromthedesert]

I got both with no problems; but in the past few days I have gotten blanks when I open up some e-mail, but am able to read them when I switch to hotmail?????

[Revel]

I cannot get to both. I am not an expert on this. There are some people posting on the drudge thread who are. I am asumming that those links are opposite sides. I could be wrong.

[ElkGroveDan]

Quick, somebody call Al Gore. He'll fix it.

[SE Mom]

No need for sorry! I just thought so many people are wondering..and will be wondering WTH is going on..it deserved a thread!

Makes no difference which one stays..you know more about this. I just know how it affected my work day! YUCK.

[Darksheare]

Took me a bit, but I did eventually get to level3's website.

[Xenalyte]

Y'know, I read the entire article, and I am no smarter than I was before I did so.

Might you (or someone) summarize it in non-techie terms?

[aberaussie]

can't get the cogentco address...I am on central florida rr

[tfecw]

Interesting article. I'm surprised i didn't catch this one earlier. Then again when they lock you in a room for 2 weeks and make you write code with a break every 6 hours to smoke and potty, you tend to miss things.

I think the big thing to take away is the following...

The problem is likely to affect only a small number of each company's customers. Many network company customers have several connections to the Internet and can use an alternate connection to reach a site that might otherwise be blocked.

The "web" is pretty much a "web" It may take longer or be less efficient, but you'll still probably get to point B just the same regardless. I think this will be blamed for more problems than it actually causes.

[Publius6961]

Can anyone translate all this into plain English for us non-dweebs?

[Domestic Church]

I got a grey illegal operation screen on cogent.

[gitmo]

Both. I'm on BellSouth DSL.