GigaOM

Om,

The spat is over settlement free peering.

Before, Cogent and Telia had a “comp” (ie. no $$$) connection between them.

Today, Cogent decided that they didn’t like this arrangement. Instead, they figure that if Telia wants to talk to Cogent, it should pay Cogent (or pay another network that has a “comp” connection to Cogent).

Very hypocritical in light of how much Cogent bitched at Level(3) not that long ago for doing the /EXACT/ same thing that Cogent is now doing to Telia.

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/10-07-2005/0004163871&EDATE

Telia should issue a “Standing offer to Cogent” Press Release.

Telia can use a paid connection to reach Cogent.
Cogent can use a paid connection to reach Telia.

Neither company is.

Peering is politics.

This is not going to ‘Ruin the Web’, although it will cause a little bit of tangle as the order of the jungle is balanced. It’s an unscheduled Internet backbone pissing match. And last months victim is todays bully.

Welcome to the Internet.

Thank you for this information. Not even Telia would say anything about this issue when I contacted them yesterday, they just said “we are having some routingproblems that hopefully will be solved during the night”.

Lets hope for a fast resolution.

Video streaming will flood all peering.

[...] problem with TVU or unable to go to certain webpages. edit: this might be relevant to this? –> The Telia-Cogent Spat Could Ruin the Web For Many - GigaOM The problem is not in TVUPlayer, it’s because you can’t currently go to lots of foreign websites [...]

The strangest thing is that in continental europe Cogent offers 100mbps connects in poped buildings bij telia over these telia fiber lines … that would suggest that they have an extensive partnership

Cogent de-peered Telia because Cogent like to have an European Peering with Telia, so now Cogent believe Telia will say yes to that, but seems to be that the US guys do not understand Swedish mentality, in my opinion Cogent should better ask his upstream Provider Verio to help reaching Telia in future.

This is a regular occurrence with Cogent: their previous “slugfest” with Level(3) is mentioned but not their ‘disagreements’ with OpenTransit (France Telecom), Teleglobe, ATDN etc. Any experienced network operator should know by now that buying transit exclusively from Cogent is a bad gamble.

[...] The Telia-Cogent Spat Could Ruin the Web For Many [...]

TeliaSonera must stop spreading corruption and bribery all over the world!

[...] a gigabit line to Cogent at 365 Main. They’ve been mostly good so far (and cheap), but their recent spat with Telia has cut us off to parts of Europe (at least Sweden and Denmark). Not [...]

[...] been having some serious trouble lately reaching a number of sites, and this is the reason for it; The Telia-Cogent Spat Could Ruin the Web For Many - GigaOM Telia users having trouble connecting to AfterDawn [...]

Yay, “great”. My website doesn’t work in Finland because I’m Sonera’s customer. I was just trying to update my site and now I can’t even connect to my host. I also host pile of sites which they too don’t work.

So it isn’t just Sweden and Denmark, it’s also Finland. :(

Actually it’s not just Telia’s problem, becouse finnish operator Sonera joined Telia few years ago forming group called TeliaSonera, so problem exists in Finland too.

Cogent Peering Strategy

“Cogent is one of the five largest networks in the world in terms of the number of peers with which it works. Cogent executes an open peering strategy as part of providing its robust 100 Mbps and 1,000 Mbps Internet access services. The strategy is a combination of two separate, yet inter-related initiatives: extensive private peering and numerous public peering agreements.”

Sorry Cogent, now you are depeering the largest network in Europe(TeliaSonera). Hope that your Customers will show you the bill.
Cogent=Shit

Capitalizm at its best.

Dozens of my friends are cut off from the servers we regularly use, this is stupid.

Some greedy suit in his office is directly affectin on how I spend my evening.

Thanks for the information, Telias customer “service” are not giving me any explanation. Telia used to be a monopoly and are not very well regarded here in Sweden, nice to see it’s not there fault this time.

It’s interesting that Cogent would demand that TeliaSonera pay to peer with them when Cogent pay to peer with NTT….

Im screwed too, using linux and where i update the system and get programs are in a server that wont work anymore.

Wonder who to yell at?

Time to look if there is a better internet provider here in sweden….

it also fck up everything for me and i am norwegian… im usin a isp called nextgentel.. obviously they are buying internet from Telia

Maybe thats why I couldnt log-on this morning?? J/k, they need to stop fighting though!
http://www.hideNsneek.com

Thank you for the information. Haven’t got anything from Telia. Who exactly has received the letter cited on top of the page?

I have three web sites hosted with an US hotel who I can’t reach at all by Telia. Fortunately, we also have a mobile modem connection by Tele2Comviq. But switching between connections isn’t very practical.

Any idea how long this feud may take? Should we drop Telia and go for Comviq?

congratulation! YOU in
top blogs

I hope Telia keeps it leg straight. Cogent can want whatever they want, but they’re trying to use their (low price) customers content to earn money the other way around. Doesn’t work like that. People who single home their content / servers / datacenter(s) on Cogent can’t be serious about their business. People that have a server somewhere that they cannot reach anymore should just move their stuff to a proper datacenter. Cogent is not playing nice (again!) and everyone should have learned by now that this is no serious party to get involved with.

Only thing I wonder is why Telia won’t use transit to reach Cogent? Or has Cogent blocked traffic to Telia completely, even via paid transit?

Guess what…
Slovenian bigest ISP also uses TeliaSonera for international traffic, so we can’t access our sites as well:(

I am so pissed over this. i am swedish and i just got Bred Bands Bolaget so i am bound for 12 month. are Gogent ever gonna pass over. is this about the AI intelligent internet that check for terrorismen or something. FCK usa,

http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.150995 - link to swedish article about this “problem”.

Telia wont give out any information about this, I have called and e-mailed to their support too. Ands till no information on Telias own homepage to inform the customers.

As a Swede I apologize for the above comment by Advant. We’ll promptly make sure he gets back to his asylum where we will teach him about peering and what happens when one party decides to suddenly depeer.

Om,

As several correspondents have already indicated, this is all pretty standard behaviour. The world of internet peering is a pretty murky one at the best of times, with all kinds of games being played over whom will peer with whom. There is little transparency and most of the tier ones with “open” peering policies will always interpret them in such a way as to deny access into their exclusive cartel; sorry I meant “community”.

We live in a world of commoditised IPT pricing where revenues and margins are in a state of constant decline. While at first sight this may appear to be a good thing for the Internet community as a whole, there is no such thing as a free lunch and suppliers are going to try to generate revenues and reduce costs wherever they can. In practise that means they will de-peer and charge wherever possible and congest settlement free peering links because they don’t represent a revenue stream. Remember that no matter how good the SLA you get with an IPT provider, it terminates the minute traffic goes off-net so there’s little incentive to upgrade peering links when there is no associated compensation for congestion.

The current tiff between Telia and Cogent is merely the tip of the iceberg. Ninety percent of the politics that goes on beneath the surface is invisible to the broader community but the effects are all too evident. Just as the demands of specific revenue generative network based applications are rocketing (Video, VoIP, SaaS etc) the margins and performance associated with the underlying bearer medium are collapsing. At the same time the access networks are seeing network traffic associated with these applications starting to drive up cost and many of them are resorting to traffic shaping to protect their own extremely thin profits.

The larger content and application guys are simply building their own networks to bypass the Tier 1’s for the majority of their traffic. Unfortunately this isn’t really an option for the smaller enterprise that just has to grin and suffer decreasing levels performance, reliability and predictability.

While I’m not sure that in and of itself the Telia-Cogent argument represents much of a long term issue, I would suggest that current internet trading practises are likely to be the cause of increasing Web misery for all of us.

J

Well I play WWIIonline and all servers playnet/crs have are behind cogent servers so im fcked. :(

CCOI quotes down over 4%
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=CCOI&t=1d

This sucks.. I cannot go to afterdawn, gentoo wiki, daily wtf or tvu networks. After this I tried to cool down my nerves by playing Trackmania Nations for a while, but I cannot play that, because I cannot connect to TMN master servers.

As a conclusion, I’ve just added one company to my hate list..

Advant, first of all its called Bredbandsbolaget and have you even tried to access something on Cogents network?
Bredbandsbolaget belongs to telenor which has its own connection to Cogent..

Use a proxy in the meanwhile.

You should ask your Webhosters if they are crayz only buying Cogent, I mean this company is every few month in a peering battle (Teleglobe, FT, Level3, Telia)…who is next? rumors say Deutsche Telekom.
So, Telia is Transit free, Cogent is buying since years Verio because they do not have a AOL Peering. Usually everything would work via Verio (Telia-Verio-Cogent), but Cogent is filtering all routes, so thats why everything is blackholed. In my opinion this is a criminal act from Cogent, but nothing new, they did the same story with France Telecom 2 years ago.

Telia wanted to upgrade the capacity between both providers, so did Cogent. But did not wanna pay for it. So here we are.

Its time to teach Cogent a lesson.
Here are a few ground “rules” when dealing with Cogent:

-Never believe the Cogent Press Release or official statements.
-Fight fire with fire else Cogent will trample you like a steam roller.
-Educate the Cogent customers - some of them simply choose to believe Cogent. Help Cogent customers sign up with another ISP - this is the best way to hurt Cogent.

I learned this when we had our own “unscheduled” pissing match with Cogent.

My ISP also connects to Telia through Cogent there for I dont have certain services since last Friday. I am from Portugal - understand how wide this problem is …

proxy server just give acces to home page so we can write on forums and so, it wont give acces to the games, so we can patch them and log in.

who cares if i spell wrong, i aint good in english at all.
So i know about BBB, i alredy have them, all there trafic goes with Telia. why are you guys on me all the damn time, i cant help any of you

Actually it’s not only Telia that’s involved, it’s the whole TeliaSonera which messes things up for a major part of Finnish internet users as TeliaSonera is one of the main ISP’s in Finland.

Thanks for this info - the connections to some pages in the US haven’t been working since friday the 14th, and i’ve received no info from TeliaSonera. I’d switch provider immediatley, but they’re the only one in my area :(

Augusta, you should show solidarity to your ISP. I will keep my nextgentel line, I simply will stop visit stupid websites which rely only on Cogent. Hope that Telia will teach Cogent a lesson!

[...] Totesin hetki sitten, että tiedotetta ei ole Telia-Soneran Suomen eikä Ruotsin sivuilla. Ulkomaiset lähteet sen sijaan kertovat Telia-Soneran asiakkailleen lähettämästä englanninkielisestä [...]

@victim - simply switching ISPs is easier said than done. Switching from Cogent to another comparable provider could easily triple someone’s bill, if not more.

Cogent support has a different story entirely that lays the blame on Telia. I’m going to be pressuring them to make a public statement with their version of the facts, if nothing else.

Everyone that’s a customer of BOTH services should be pressuring them to resolve the issue. I’m definitely going to be turning up the heat on Cogent.

“Switching from Cogent to another comparable provider could easily triple someone’s bill, if not more.”
1) It is not so easy to find a comparable provider who runs such a shit network than Cogent.
2) Time is over for Cogent low cost IP, you can get IP for 10$ a mbps from a couple of good ISP’s so no need to buy Cogent.

Funny:
http://status.cogentco.com/
Cogent Network Status/DNS Server Status Description: Welcome to Cogent Communications’ Network Status Message. At this time there are no ongoing network outages or issues.

So did they miss something ;-)

[...] Gigaom skriver också om Telia vs Cogent Andra bloggar om: telia, cogent, peering, internet, bgp, WoW [...]

Its all about Money i say.
and Cogent are bigger then TeleSonera

Having used both Telia and Cogent in the past it is difficult to fault either. Both have stable networks and keen pricing.

Clearly the current situation is disappointing for some customers of both companies. It seems it is causing more problems from gamers… annoying, but it’s hardly going to raise eyebrows on either side. The ideal answer for these guys is either to use your playstation or just simply get a life. As neither Telia or Cogent are now in our mix, maybe I take a calmer view. I doubt this is down to commercial reasons but moreso the lack of European peering points. It doesn’t appear that Cogent have responded, so to jump on the anti-Cogent, anti-Telia bandwagon at this stage is childish. Maybe we can expect some more impartial posts from Volker who is either a disgruntled ex-Cogent employee or a current Telia employee :-)

All I can conclude is hooray for Level 3 (as long as they don’t go bust) and NTT…. and if you are a serious host you should never rely on one provider and not suffer these problems.

smile…Greg…no I am get my Salary from AS3320 ;-)

Unbiased then :-)

Maybe this will encourage the other Tier 1 providers to reconsider their peering relationships with Cogent. Level3… give it another shot! Whatever excuse Cogent is giving, I’m sure the same can be made when the tables are turned.

Well, switching to cable modem, that has good offerings and better bandwidth options for me and NO wait time nor starting cost. I have been too lazy to do this before, but this is seriously pissing me off.

Other stuff that affected my decision, they just put price tag on customer service calls and 1€ per paper bill they send(oh save teh enviroment, yeah that was their excuse!).

Sonera’s customer service is widely joked matter here in Finland… and now we would be supposed to pay for it? :)

Bye Bye Telia-Sonera… was good 5 years. I shall welcome my new cable modem overlords!

BTW, maybe we finns are bit net savvy, but this news DID make into finnish national news :)

Oh and I am not alone in switching off from Sonera :)

[...] een indirecte interconnectie met TeliaSonera, dus via een derde partij, door Cogent geblokkeerd, zo meldt [...]

I hope that Cogent gets sued seriously for this!!! A lot of innocent companies lose lots of money over this issue with no access to websites or e-mail.

Hi,

From swedish news site IDG.se and from a friend in the business in NY, it seems as if the dispute is over who should pay for the upgrade of the peering. Cogent complaint that the capacity is too low, and Telia pretty much said they will upgrade if Cogent pay half, so Cogent de-peered.

You sure aren’t the only angry finn!

I also live in Finland and have always had Sonera as my ISP, but it seems now that I have to switch to Elisa. I never cared too much how much the service costs as long as it works, but this makes me wanna consider the cheaper better working ISP’s.

By the way, I have this racing game club http://isrc.proboards101.com that I haven’t been able to reach with TeliaSonera’s connection since saturday afternoon. Is there any workaround or am I just doomed…

OK, has anybody got any suggestions how I can quickly get connected with someone else other than Telia because I need my email and web access to update sites etc.

This situation could go on for ages!

Andy

we have a GigE from Cogent and we have trouble specially to reach Eastern Europe, we are thinking about to take an additional Telia upstream in the next hours so we can solve the problem for our customers, I am sure there are some special rates out from Telia ;-)

“All I can conclude is hooray for Level 3 (as long as they don’t go bust) and NTT…. and if you are a serious host you should never rely on one provider and not suffer these problems.”

All depends on where your traffic is going, Telia is the biggest player in europe, with a large fully owned us network. An extremly good an solid player.

Cogent is not, why are you even comparing these companies, it’s like comparing a God with a small pig.

[...] know working at Telia solved the problem for me: Telia and Cogent have stopped exchanging traffic, due to a payment dispute. This is [...]

You can read the Renesys analysis of this incident here …

http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/03/you_cant_get_there_from_here_1.shtml

Setting up a proxy server. Someone mentioned doing this to overcome the connection problem. Can someone please tell me how to do this.

Thanks

Andy

Hi

I’m also a Sonera customer and i use a virtual server in Germanny to make a tunnel to access Cogent sites, vps4less.de have packages from 3,99€ month, maybe not the best solution/provider but it is working for me…
Have had Sonera because it have been stable and have not been much problems with the line. But on other services like mail seems to have problems all the time.
But now i also have plans to change to another provider, not cause of this issue but all those other crappy things they do against the customers nowadays.
Kuluttajavirasto didn’t accept the electrical billing what i know of but they surely will try to do it anyway…
And also all Sonera customers out there, check your bills, there seems to be much that is wrong in them, its not about much money but its the principle that i don’t like that the customer cant trust the company and that they aren’t honest against the customers…
Most customers seems to trust them and are only paying the bills without checking, and they can easily bill a few extra €€ a month like they have tried to do on a few of my bills…
And of course, always read the Sonera agreement CAREFULLY so you don’t bind to any 12, 18 or 24 months contract that is completely useless (aiming at the Sonera mobile broadband with monthly payment that states it includes unrestricted data transfer and when you read more about it you find out that it is within the principle of respectable use and in the really small text somewhere hidden in the agreement you see that it seems to be on Sonera only 3Gb/month on a broadband connection)…
So in short, i don’t recommend Sonera to anyone anymore…

[...] of you may have heard that there’s an issue right now between two of the world’s largest Internet Service Providers. Basically, they’re refusing to exchange traffic with each [...]

[...] Gets Stuck in ISP Spat Video host blip.tv is seeing its service in Europe affected by a fight between two ISPs. Swedish telecom operator Telia and U.S.-based Cogent Communications are refusing [...]

You just remember this, a kiss is still a kiss,
A sigh is just a sigh, the fundamental things apply,
As time goes by.
And when two lovers woo, they still say ›I love you‹,
On that you can rely, no matter what the future brings,
As time goes by.
Moonlight and love songs never out of date,
Hearts full of passion, jealousy and hate.
Woman needs man and man must have his mate,
That no one can deny.
It’s still the same old story, a fight for love and glory,
A case of do or die, the world will always welcome lovers,
As time goes by.«

Time is the friend of Telia it looks better and better.
Single homed Cogent customers will get multihomed, some Nordic DSL Customers will cancel and what happened after this, where is your weapon Mr. Cogent? It is gone by the wind :-)

@greg:

“Cogent is not, why are you even comparing these companies, it’s like comparing a God with a small pig.” <<

Where do you come up with that? Company size/revenue is not a measure of their network. Cogent is a very lean ship but their network is very significant. TeliaSonera connects across the Atlantic on dual OC192s, total capacity 20Gbps. Cogent has 20Gbps running out of their Marina Del Rey facility alone. They are also the 5th most peered AS as of a recent snapshot. Telia’s AS1299 was ranked #14.

@mattw
first, nice to see that the Cogent Reps take care on this discussion
second dont play with numers if you have no idea. As you should now, Cogent operates a big Network, but TeliaSonera too.

TeliaSonera wholly-owned IP backbone features:
Hardware supplied by Juniper and Cisco
One single global AS number
20-80G Gbit/s between core nodes
180Gbit/s across the Atlantic

[...] After we broke the news about the Telia-Cogent spat, many of you emailed us to point out that Cogent constantly has problems with other Internet providers, and has become sort of a pariah in the wholesale bandwidth business. To that Schaffer says: They’re just jealous. [...]

Adding to Volkers post, Telias transatlantic capacity is second to none! Also the biggest owner of the TAT-14 transatlantic cable.

Can you connect to http://www.isketch.net?

[...] opinion out there seems to be that Cogent is the bad guy this time. This is mainly based upon the original post on [...]

This problem is still present (19th) - amazing that operators are allowed to blackmail each other like that - with zero regards to us users. This should be illegal (someone should “sue” them). If these are 2 of the top 5 it is a searious threat against the Internet (which we rely on for increasingly important tasks). They should not be allowed to “terrorise” regular people. One of those two should face criminal charges in court.

It seems that Cogent customers can’t reach WoW servers in Europe, which are inside TS’s network.
I guess this will backfire badly for Cogent. lol

We have not had access to our domain registrar in the US (50+ domains) or to our web hoster (20+ domains) in Canada or several of the other US businesses with which we would normally be in contact, since midday on Friday the 14th. We are totally ticked off at Telia’s customer service, because they lied to us repeatedly when we queried the problem (finally got a hold of them on Monday). While we waited on the telephone, the reps made a show of performing various ping tests to show us that the problems with POP emails and DNS resolution, etc., could not possibly be their fault, which left us bombarding the above two suppliers with requests that they sort their systems out - after all, we are business customers working with international clients and need to stay connected.

Since Friday we have lost count of how many bounced or disappeared emails there have been, and are now encountering an unprecendented number of disgruntled customers, some of whom think we have been ignoring them, when in reality, we had no idea that they were trying to contact us.

Telia KNEW there was a problem and did not have the decency to say so when asked. The fellow said that he could absolutely say that there was “no blockage in the system - that never happens with Telia, and everything is working normally”. Not once did he mention Cogent and this rather glaring issue. And I find it hard to believe that he would not have known about it after three days of problems.

If I had not thought to check the connection through my Tele2 mobile after four days of torture then I would not have realised that the obstacle to those connections was Telia.

As an afterthought, my WoW server seems to go faster lately.
I thought it was because of the last patch. Mr Gullible, that’s me.:-)

We have put together a quick slideshow showing the routing changes through BGPlay (Routeviews)
http://www.backbone-news.com/2008/03/18/cogenttelia-peering-dispute-routeviews/

[...] Malik caught this story Friday, and his comment section is full of angry Swedes and Finns ready to take up arms. If only [...]

[...] http://www2.meltedcube.com/blog/web-internet-telecom/isp-quarrel-partitions-internet/ http://gigaom.com/2008/03/14/the-telia-cogent-spat-could-ruin-web-for-many/ [...]

This is really annoying. Im from Denmark and am using a small ISP called BolignetAarhus. Apparantly they are also buying in with Telia, which menas that I can’t access my work-wiki (Socialtext) or the fun game Poxnora. Some of their stuff must be located in Cogent’s domain.

Hope they will come to some kind of agreement soon!

Until then - is there any possible workaround?

Ok let’s have a reality check.. Cogent contracts to a settlement-free peering arrangement with Telia in the US. This arrangement is of limited value to Cogent as Telia’s content/eyeball customer base in the US is minimal. So why does Cogent agree to this? Answer: Because Cogent wants to expand their network in Europe, and peering with Telia- and/or any other major European incumbent- in Europe will of course add value to their customer’s experience. So does Telia keep up their part of the bargain by allowing Cogent a peering point in Europe? Answer: No. So the question everyone needs to answer is why Cogent should continue to peer with Telia in the US? Saying Cogent should be ’sued for this’ is at best ridiculous when it is Telia who are in breach. Unfortunately like most European incumbents, Telia don’t like it up ‘em

RE: Mike Fisher

Iam guessing(probably right also) that Cogent wanted to charge Telia for the transit, which is, odd but fair enough. Then Telia did the same thing, and Cogent started crying. Most likely due to the fact that Cogent is sending alot more traffic then it’s getting from Telia, and they started crying.

Something they have done against several other carriers. Every single year.

Nope. That’s not what happened. If Cogent’s aim was to charge Telia for transit it would have never agreed to the settlement-free peering point, as, at the time it was agreed, it had no network in scandinavia. Once again you miss the key point: The simple fact is that Telia refuses to peer with Cogent in Europe but wants to enjoy the benefits of settlement-free peering with them in the US and no amount of your ‘guessing’ changes that fact.

RE: Mike Fisher.

Well, unless you can backup what you are saying, you’re like me, speculating. And what you are saying don’t make sense either, since TeliaSonera is transit free in both europe and north america.

Cogent might be leasing the lines from Telia in europe, but that dont in any way say Telia must peer with them in europe.

I have received no communication from Sonera. Yeah, right, Telia’s fault. Let’s just remember it was Cogent who cut the wire! Also, it is standard American business policy to resort to extortion. It all goes to prove that Americans are lousy people. But yes, Telia has the worst customer service I have ever come across in my entire life!

This stupid thing hasn’t affected my “Online life” in pretty much any way, but it makes one realize how fragile the Internet is, being controlled by evil corporations run by arrogant americans, who are a threat for the entire world. USA must be defeated! Europe must never rely on unreliable Americans, coz they will backstab anyone to get what they greedy-ass want.

[...] then your friend’s problem might be related to the current situation with Cogent and Telia (see here for details). If that’s the case then it may just be a waiting game. __________________ Inyri Forge FileFront [...]

History of Cogent peering issues:
AOL (2003)
Level 3 (2005)
France Telecom (2006)
TeliaSonera (2008)

4 out of the past 5 years have had problems… not exactly the best track record.

ya its not Telesoneras foul this time.
but prob Telia dont want to pay for the upgrade at all
since thay dont see that it will give them anythingt that makes it better for them.

I’m thinking lawsuit against Cogent Communications Group. This cannot go on. Are there others who are thinking the same thing?

Just chiming in here, another norwegian. (nextgentel isp - a very popular isp, here in norway… I assume several others also route through telia)

It’s certainly not minor, considering just how many fairly “important” sites it affects. A few days ago, I found at least a third of the sites I frequent - were unreachable. Just to mention a couple real nuisances: filefront and mediafire.

I really can’t understand how this is even considered remotely acceptable behaviour. This is like the beginning of a net segmentation between the US and europe. Even speaking purely money wise, and disregarding the ethics of it, all those international companies affected by this - with offices in both the US and Europe.

When it started I figured it was a technical difficulty, I can barely believe it’s being done intentionally.

David Schaeffer, chief executive of Washington-based Cogent, said the two companies had a “peering” contract, under which they exchanged traffic from each other’s customers, with neither company paying the other for access. But TeliaSonera continuously breached the terms of the contract by not exchanging traffic in certain locations, and refusing to upgrade connections that were saturated, Schaeffer said.

That forced Cogent traffic to take long detours, according to Schaeffer. For instance, it sometimes had to carry data from a Cogent customer in Europe across the Atlantic to the U.S., then hand it over to TeliaSonera, which carried it back across the Atlantic to its European destination.

Cogent cut its direct links to TeliaSonera on March 13. For a while, customers of the two companies were still able to connect indirectly, through intermediaries connected to Cogent and TeliaSonera, but that possibility disappeared on Friday, according to Renesys

Schaeffer said the loss of alternate routes had nothing to do with Cogent, and speculated that TeliaSonera has refused to pay other providers for traffic destined for Cogent.
link below to the real story:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080319/broken_internet.html?.v=2

what a boring story, I start crying, Cogent is the Victim, very sad story.

No World of Warcraft Gaming for Cogent customers.

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=3190831945&sid=1

We are aware that players whose ISP connections rely only on Cogent may not be able to connect. We’re working to obtain information from Cogent in order to assist them in addressing their issue, and will provide further details as they come available.

Cogent has decided not to exchange traffic directly with TeliaSonera’s AS 1299 or indirectly with AS 1299 through a third-party provider. As a result, Cogent has partitioned the Internet and disrupted the flow of traffic between Cogent and TeliaSonera customers. While this has a negative impact on some users of the Internet, this effect is the result of Cogent’s decision and is unfortunately beyond TeliaSonera’s control.

While this has a negative impact on some users of the Internet,

thay must mean alot of users, telia is big

screw Cogent, stupid US bastards..

Well, there seems only to be one solution to this. Put financial pressure on the two companies. Telia nor Cogent will get my business in the future.

Until my contract runs out. Proxies will have to do.

[...] Posted on March 21, 2008 by kfsone Cogent have had yet another peering spat, this time with most of Europe, resulting in a zero-warning de-peering of [...]

At Last I see whats happening. I thought that wunderground.com had a problem as my weather page was not showing the wunderground link. I then tried my tele2 mobile and all was well. I hope that this problem gets sorted asap as I am missing clients on my website

Customer Communication regarding TeliaSonera International Carrier and Cogent!

Dear Valued Customer,

We would like to provide you with an update about your TeliaSonera IP service:

Cogent Communications (AS174) has disconnected from TeliaSonera (AS1299), with the effect that the Internet is partitioned and, at the time of writing, customers of Cogent Communications and TeliaSonera cannot exchange Internet traffic directly or through a third party. Your IP Transit or IP Connect service may be affected as a result of this action.

Cogent Communications has decided to comment openly about disconnecting their network and their decision to partition the Internet. While we do not believe that it is constructive to air a commercial dispute in the public domain or to negotiate through the press, we feel obligated to address certain matters that have been put at issue by Cogent.

The accuracy of reported information has been quite variable and we would like to state to our customers that, whilst we will not comment on specific peering relationships, we would like to correct some information that been given to the media. First, if TeliaSonera had received prior notice explaining that Cogent intended imminently to disconnect all IP connectivity from TeliaSonera, then TeliaSonera would have attempted to notify its customers. Second, prior to Cogent’s abrupt decision to sever connectivity, TeliaSonera had rejected Cogent’s alleged breach of contract claim and explained TeliaSonera’s belief that Cogent had failed to satisfy certain contractual requirements. Cogent, in turn, responded to this impasse by disconnecting all connectivity with TeliaSonera .

TeliaSonera has long-standing and successful relationships with all Tier-1 networks. These relationships would not be possible if TeliaSonera could not meet connectivity obligations to a standard acceptable to Tier-1 peer networks. As has always been the case, TeliaSonera remains open to a commercial dialogue with Cogent and believes that it should be possible to reach a contractual arrangement acceptable to both parties. We recommend that our customers contact either the TeliaSonera Customer Service Centre or your Account Manager to discuss any specific concerns that you may have that have not already been addressed.

We sincerely apologise for all the inconveniences.

This affects me and my friends a lot, the web access has been incredibly restricted. I’m chaning ISP, goodbye Telia.

The really sad part about this is all the people saying they’re switching from Telia, even though some damn suit at Cogent is the responsible arsehole.

And whatever people say, it’s quite clear that Cogent are the whoring bastards trying to get some more money, because Telia hasn’t had these kinds of issues before (that I can remember, nor that I can find), but according to people who’ve posted here, Cogent has.

So in short, problems like this will be around as long as there are whoring suits hungry for money.

cogent fault or not, I’m too damn pissed about TeliaSonera customer service here in Finland. Here in my city there are internet crashing like every week and sometimes the damn service doesn’t work at all. I’m too fed up of this shit! TELIASONERA SUCKS!

I second that, Telia isnt so great, here in northern sweden its always going down too and recently its been incredibly slow. Well now this, last week a site i use every day just stopped working, after alot of hair pulling and trying to find some explanation everywhere i was sent this article, well this explains it. It is just ridiculous!, so what exactly is going to happen now? lots of bickering between two companies.

Please, start boycott Cogen. They are piece of shit on Internet - providing only problems, demandings, money-money-money.. A typical american company? Cogent has already shown in past that they are going to cut off lines, if other don’t do what they want. They did it again!!

PLEASE, ISPs and people START BOYCOTT COGENT! Cogent must be cut off from Internet!

I too live in Norrland, northern Sweden. The speed of my Telia connection is disgraceful to say the least. As a Scotsman living abroad I find it disgraceful that a company as big as Telia have not sorted out any other work-around for their customers to function normally.

It doesn’t matter who’s fault it is. The fact is - we, the customers are left high and dry. As a webmaster in charge of a lot of sites I have been unable to access a large amount of my domains.

Come on Telia - Get your finger out of your arsehole and start providing a full service for your paying customers.

Andy Montgomery

RE: Mike Fisher.

You are so wrong. Why don’t you get your head out of your a**. I said to sue because cogent use tactics which are absolutely filthy. I dislike both companies though the one cutting the line is responsible - period. They could have settled this in court or through negotiation (like ethical companies do). It doesn’t matter AT ALL which company is right or wrong - Cognet cut the cable so to speak.

The real problem, as several others posters mentioned, is that these tactics threatens the open structure of the Internet. 5 companies (in probably fewer, western, countries) can heavily disrupt Internet if they feel like doing so. International treaties is a must to prevent these ridicules disputes!

Issues are present as of today (24:th Mars).

Telia is trying to downplay the effect on their Swedish website. Saying it only affects a very small number of webb-sites. BullS* it affect loads of webb-sites. I did a tracert run from several European countries and carriers (19th) and so did my hosting provider - it affected huge numbers of users and websites (and many operators besides Telia).

I’ve seen traffic turned on and of on specific sites which indicate Telia is trying to re-route access to Cognet nets - though I suspect Cognet is countering those moves with new barriers.

Nooooooo! Newgrounds doesn’t work! :(

Dont Blame TeliaSonera, Blame Cogent!

FIRST OF ALL:
Ongoing peering issue is between TELIASONERA INTERNATIONAL CARRIER(as1299) and Cogent, NOT TELIA SWEDEN(as3301) or SONERA, so if you wanna complain about bad broadband quality or bad customer support, TSIC(as1299) has got NOTHING to do with it. Except being within the same company group and that they are offering transit to them.

SECOND:

Fact: Teliasonera International carrier(as1299) has total transatlantic capacity of 160+90 Gbit/s.(Homepage and ip-network map not up-to-date)
Links between Paris,London,Copenhagen-NYK,Washington(ASH).

Stating that TSIC should have 20G or “second to none” transatlantic capacity is just a joke.

Fact2: Cogent and TSIC only connect eachother in US, TSIC have different peering requirements for EU and US.

I leave the speculating of why they dont peer in EU and the rest to you guys.

Telia now have a statement up, in swedish explaining the problem. I dont read swedish so my girlfriend translated but they havent got alot to say really. They say they are going to re route important traffic, so what classes as important?, hmmmm. They say they dont know when the problem will be solved either. Looks like they are downplaying it all, as said above, saying it only affects a small number of sites, well what alot of help they are.
So seeing as telia customers cant get through to cogent. I looked them up but ofcourse nothing. How does anyone go about complaining to this stupid fat ass american company?.