[governance] IGF-Is Peering a Net Neutrality Issue?

[Alejandro Pisanty]

Tim, John,

isn't this the operational stuff that YorkU's tech staff deal with day in 
day out? They sure earn their low salaries many times over and are kept 
awake till 2 AM for it. They sure would want to be able to do better, to 
have a more competitive providers' landscape around, better SLA's on 
offer, and so on, But I doubt that they are starting a demonstration in 
front of the seat of the executive or legislative powers, much less the 
Foreign Office, to ask them for a global edict to aid them.

The lesson I do extract from this exchange is that while tech folks have 
schooled ourselves, some along a lifetime since high school, in history, 
economics, philosophy, political science, public-policy principles and 
applications, international relations, etc., it still remains seen in bad 
taste to ask for the reciprocal. C.P. Snow, where are you in this our 
direst hour?

Alejandro Pisanty

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . .  .  .  .  .  .
      Dr. Alejandro Pisanty
UNAM, Av. Universidad 3000, 04510 Mexico DF Mexico

*Mi blog/My blog: http://pisanty.blogspot.com
*LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/pisanty
*Unete al grupo UNAM en LinkedIn, http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/22285/4A106C0C8614

---->> Unete a ISOC Mexico, www.isoc.org
  Participa en ICANN, www.icann.org
.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .


On Mon, 21 Apr 2008, McTim wrote:

> Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 01:29:39 +0300
> From: McTim <dogwallah at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: governance at lists.cpsr.org, McTim <dogwallah at gmail.com>
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org, nancyp at yorku.ca
> Subject: Re: [governance] IGF-Is Peering a Net Neutrality Issue?
> 
> On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 8:46 PM,  <nancyp at yorku.ca> wrote:
>> Is Peering a Net Neutrality Issue?
>>
>>  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 transit bandwidth supplier is Cogent which had severed a peering
>>  relationship with a bandwidth provider in Europe called Telia. Telia was the
>>  bandwidth network provider for the website that the Professor was trying to
>>  reach. Thus the Professor could not reach the website over the University's
>>  network. 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. The University had to open a trouble 'ticket' in order to
>>  receive an explanation from Cogent regarding the reason for the failure.
>>
>>   Is this a net neutrality issue? Definitely.
>
> Definitely not.  I agree with Jon, if we start stretching the
> definition of NN to be whatever we want it to be, we will never have
> NN, as the goalposts will forever move.
>
> This is a business issue between providers and their customers.  If
> you can't rely on your upstream, then get a new one (or get a second).
>  As you know from our offlist mails, YORK U has AS802 and a /16 of
> address space, with these resources, you can multihome easily.  Oh
> wait, you ARE multihomed, to AS549 (ONET AS ONet Backbone) and AS174
> (Cogent). AS549 is connected to Cogent and to AS26677 (ORION ASN
> Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network ORION), which in turn
> is connected to AS852 (ASN TELUS Communications Inc), who are
> connected to 124 peers, AS1299 (Telia) among them.  Traffic should
> have gone to Telia via those links.  From what I can see from route
> reflectors, AS549 only sent and received routes from AS802 for about
> an hour on 2008-04-08 during the last two months.
>
> Scroll down to the bottom of
> http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/03/he_said_she_said_cogent_vs_tel.shtml
> for an opinion on this.
>
> If peering is a NN issue, then so is the fact that I pay 2x what folk
> in the EU pay for only a very small fraction of the bandwidth they
> get, or the fact that some folk can get FiOS, while others are "stuck'
> with twisted copper pair/wireless/$CONNECTION_TYPE.
>
>
> Cogent never informed York
>>  University that it was severing their relationship with a good part of Europe's
>>  internet by de-peering with Telia.
>
> Why would they, really?
>
> The fact is that AS802 gets more European routes from Tiscali (via
> Cogent) than from Telia, many more.
>
> In fact the SLA (Service Level Agreement)
>>  between the University and Cogent is (typically) a very slender document which
>>  defines bandwidth, uptime and price solely.  It is usually the case that one
>>  receives more documentation when purchasing a motorhome for example, than when
>>  one purchases large bandwidth.
>
> I don't see why this is germaine.
>
> -- 
> Cheers,
>
> McTim
> $ whois -h whois.afrinic.net mctim
> ____________________________________________________________
> You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
>     governance at lists.cpsr.org
> To be removed from the list, send any message to:
>     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org
>
> For all list information and functions, see:
>     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance
>
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance