ISP Quarrel Partitions Internet

Cogent's network reaches throughout the United States and Europe, but now Swedish netizens can't travel any of these paths via Cogent's network.
Illustration courtesy of Cogent Communications There's a rift in the internet, pitting the Swedes and the Yanks against one another and making it difficult for millions to visit websites hosted across the Atlantic.

U.S.-based Cogent Communications shut down their links to the Swedish-based ISP Telia last Thursday in what Cogent describes as a contract dispute about the size and locations of the pipes connecting the two ISPs.

Like many large ISPs, Cogent and Telia interconnect their networks at multiple points and trade roughly equivalent amounts of traffic, an arrangement called peering.

The feud has continued through Tuesday, keeping it impossible for Swedes, along with other Nordic and Baltic residents, to reach sites hosted on Cogent's network and vice versa.

That's likely much more of a customer service problem for Telia than Cogent, due to geography and the size of Cogent's network (see illustration above).

Cogent broke up with Telia for the good of the internet, according to Cogent spokesman Jeff Henrikson.

Telia wasn't providing fat enough pipes at some peering locations and wouldn't fix the problems, according to Henrikson.

"Some traffic flow was impeded and some traffic was redirected further than it needed to go," Henrikson said. "They weren't responding to requests to comply with our contract, and we weren't left with much alternative but to terminate the contract."

Henrikson said Cogent is willing to get back together with Telia, but only if they fix the problems.

"This will lead us to having a stronger and better internet with full levels of traffic flowing freely across our networks," Henrickson said.

At first Telia customers got to sites hosted by Cogent through alternate paths, but that workaround was killed quickly, according to the analysis of internet bandwidth watcher Earl Zmijewski of Renesys.

For around 12 hours, most Telia customers did access Cogent via Verizon (56% of the 4474 networks), Level 3 (16%), AT&T (6%) and others, but then that abruptly stopped. We're guessing it's because Cogent eventually slammed the door shut on these alternate paths to their network from Telia, since none of Cogent's customers accessed Telia via alternate routes during this time. Like divorce court, depeering is supposed to be painful, otherwise you might not get what you want. You only hurt the ones you love.

This situation differs from when Cogent was mad about internet backbone provider Level3 breaking up with Cogent in 2005, since that spat was about which carrier was sending more traffic to the other, Henrickson said.

A VOIP phone call from THREAT LEVEL to Telia for comment did cross the Atlantic and ring the 24-hour hotline, but no one answered.

Om Malik caught this story Friday, and his comment section is full of angry Swedes and Finns ready to take up arms. If only they could reach their Facebook pages to organize...