Cybertelecom Federal Internet Law & Policy An Educational Project

Industry: Cogent

Peering

• Peering Information
• Likely Tier 1 per FCC [AT&T / Bell South Merger ¶ 127] [SBC / AT&T Merger Order ¶ 115 2005] [Verizon / MCI Merger Order ¶ 116 2005] [Level 3 / GC Merger ¶ 22 2011]
• "Atlas 10" 2007 with 2.77%. ATLAS Internet Observatory, 2009 Annual Report
• Cogent Transit Free, Renesys 2008; Tier 1 per ENISA 2011

Peering Disputes

• Centurylink
  • Centurylink and Cogent enter into interconnection agreement, Centurylink Press Release (Nov. 24, 2015) ("This agreement allows the exchange of Internet traffic in a balanced, scalable and mutually economical manner to accommodate the growing use of the Internet.")
  • Joan Engebretson, Centurylink / Cogent: If Free Peering is the Norm, What about VoIP Interconnection, Telecompetitor Nov. 24, 2015 ("Cogent CEO Dave Schaefer confirmed on a call with Telecompetitor that “Cogent has never paid for interconnection agreements” and he said that statement is still true after the signing of the CenturyLink agreement.")
  • Colin Anderson, M-Lab Research and Infrastructure for Interconnection Performance Monitoring, M-Labs presentation at NANOG 63, Slides 13-14, 32 (Feb. 4, 2015) https://www.nanog.org/sites/default/files/wednesday_general_internetperformance_anderson_63.14.pdf (showing sustained congestion between Cogent and AT&T, Centurylink, Comcast, Verizon, and TWC from approximately May 2013 to end of February 2014)
• TWC
  • Press Release, Joint Statement from Time Warner Cable and Cogent Communications Oct. 8, 2015 ("Cogent Communications (Nasdaq: CCOI) and Time Warner Cable Inc. (NYSE: TWC) have entered into a long-term, bilateral interconnection agreement for their public IP networks. This agreement allows the exchange of Internet traffic in a scalable and reliable manner to accommodate the growing use of the Internet.")
• AT&T
  • Cogent (Netflix) / AT&T
    • Sean Buckley, Cogent’s Schaffer: Our interconnections with AT&T, Verizon are nearly congestion free, FierceTelecom Oct. 1, 2015
    • Cogent Communications, Inc., Cogent and AT&T Enter Into Interconnection Agreement (press release), June 10, 2015 (Cogent’s CEO stated “[b]oth Cogent and AT&T’s customers will benefit from this agreement for years to come. We are putting customer needs at the forefront by enabling an expanded, secure and resilient interconnection environment.”)
    • Sean Buckley, Cogent’s Schaffer: Our interconnections with AT&T, Verizon are nearly congestion free, FierceTelecom Oct. 1, 2015  
• Comcast
  • Written Statement of Dave Schaeffer, Chairman and CEO, Cogent Communications Group, Inc., Before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law, Hearing on Competition in the Video and Broadband Markets: The Proposed Merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable, May 8, 2014
• Verizon
  • Cogent and Verizon Enter Into Interconnection Agreement WASHINGTON, DC and NEW YORK, May 1, 2015
  • Jon Brodkin, Verizon and Cogent Settle Differences, agree to boost Internet Quality, Ars Technica, May 1, 2015 ("The good news may be thanks partly to the Federal Communications Commission decision to reclassify broadband providers as common carriers, because Cogent could have complained to the FCC if the deal wasn't signed.")
  • Sean Buckley, Cogent’s Schaffer: Our interconnections with AT&T, Verizon are nearly congestion free, FierceTelecom Oct. 1, 2015
  • Press Release, Cogent and Verizon Enter Into Interconnection Agreement, May 1, 2015
  • Jon Brodkin, During Netflix Money Fight, Cogent's Other Big Customers Suffered Too, Ars Technica (Nov. 6, 2014)
  • Unbalanced Peering, and the Real Story Behind the Verizon/Cogent Dispute, David Young, Verizon June 19, 2013 ("What the article doesn’t say, however, is that Cogent is not compliant with one of the basic and long-standing requirements for most settlement-free peering arrangements: that traffic between the providers be roughly in balance. When the traffic loads are not symmetric, the provider with the heavier load typically pays the other for transit ")
  • John Bergmayer, ISPs Should Do the Job They Are Hired to Do, Public Knowledge Blog, June 19, 2013,
  • Om Malik, Having Problems With Your Netflix? You Can Blame Verizon, Gigaom June 17, 2013
  • Om Malik, Verizon: That Peering Flap (about Netflix) is Cogent's Fault, Gigaom June 20, 2013
  • Stacey Higgenbotham, Peering Pressure: The Secret Battle to Control the Future of the Internet, Gigaom June 19, 2013
• Europe
  • Telefónica and Cogent Enter Into Interconnection Agreement MADRID and WASHINGTON, D.C., – May 4, 2016 ("Telefónica (IBEX: TEF) and Cogent Communications (Nasdaq: CCOI) today announced they have entered into a long-term, bilateral interconnection agreement for their public IP networks. This agreement allows the exchange of Internet traffic in a balanced, scalable and mutually economical manner to accommodate the growing use of the Internet.")
  • Commission closes investigation into internet connectivity services but will continue to monitor the sector October 3, 2014
    • European Commission: Deutsche Telekom, Telefónica and Orange no longer under investigation for internet connectivity services NOEERR 08.10.2014 ("Despite the lack of evidence in this case, the EC pointed out that the acting of telecoms operators in the transit market – also often referred to as “wholesale market for internet connectivity” – can have a negative impact on competition on the downstream level of providing internet access and IP-content services. In fact, the vertical integration of telecoms operators (i.e. providing both, internet access or content services at the retail level and upstream connectivity services at the wholesale level) is susceptible to network operators foreclosing content providers from crucial connectivity services or providing an unfair advantage for own proprietary content services (such as DT’s “Entertain”), the EC said. In particular, the absence of an alternative third party transit operator on certain routes can lead to traffic congestion causing a deterioration in the service quality of competing content providers, especially those whose content requires a high bandwidth (e.g. video streaming).")
    • EU scraps Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica investigation Reuters ("The Commission took action following concerns raised by U.S.-based Cogent Communications.")
  • Commission confirms unannounced inspections in Internet connectivity services July 11, 2013 European Commission
    • DT, Orange, and Telefonica Raided Over Interconnection Abuse Fears Gigaom
• China Telecom
  • Doug Madory, Cogent Depeers China Telecom (Mar. 7, 2012) ("On March 5th, 2012 at 14:00 UTC (10:00 PM China Standard Time), Renesys observed that Cogent (AS174) and China Telecom (AS4134) appear to have dropped their mutual connectivity.")
• ESNet
  • Steve Cotter, 2011 Summer ESCC ESnet Update (14 July 2011) ("Cogent finally came back with a hard "no" so ESNet now reaches them via third party provider")
  • Steve Cotter, Important: Status regarding Cogent Connectivity, ESNET (this appears to no longer be avail a be at the ESnet website), available at Archive.org
  • Members of the ESnet community:

  As many of you know, on Monday, June 6, 2011, at approximately 2:00 PM PDT (5:00 PM EDT), ESnet's two redundant peerings with Cogent communications went down.  ESnet staff were immediately alerted of the outages and began investigating.  Because the peerings at two locations on opposite sides of the country went down at roughly the same time, we had reason to believe that the outage was caused by an intentional action on the part of Cogent.  However, because it was after business hours at Cogent's East Coast headquarters, we were unable to get any information from Cogent until the next morning.
  
  This outage resulted in sites that were singly-connected to Cogent being unable to reach sites connected to ESnet. Other sites were not affected. These sites included contractors and outsourced providers for some of the ESnet lab sites.  ESnet staff quickly realized the gravity of the situation and discussed work-arounds with sites, while we worked in good faith to understand what Cogent was doing and to resolve the situation. However, we had difficulties reaching Cogent's peering coordinator. We eventually found that he was on vacation, and Cogent would not restore peering to us without first talking to him.
  
  When we did reach the peering coordinator, he indicated that ESnet was de-peered by Cogent due to an automated process that checks each peer against Cogent's peering policy.  (ESnet was below Cogent's minimum traffic volume threshold for the traffic exchanged over peering links with Cogent.) He indicated that ESnet, as a non-commercial, research and education network funded by Congress, should be able to get a peering waiver.  Unfortunately, the one person at Cogent who could grant the peering waiver was not available that day.

  Our status as a tier 1 ISP 

  For 25 years, ESnet has been a "tier 1" ISP. That means that ESnet does not pay for transit; instead we peer with other tier 1 ISPs, and that effectively covers the entire Internet. However, the disadvantage of being a tier 1 ISP is that if we are de-peered by any other tier 1 ISP, it effectively opens a "hole" in our routing table (and in the Internet itself). In this case ESnet customers couldn't get directly to Cogent customers.
  
  Such peering issues have happened in the Internet before, with similar results. At times, Cogent has de-peered other tier 1 ISPs and vice versa. Within the past few years, a peering dispute developed between Cogent and Sprint which affected their customers in a similar manner. Obviously ESnet was eager to resolve the issue and resume our normal peering with Cogent.
  
  Unfortunately, we were told on Wednesday morning that the person who needed to approve the peering waiver was unexpectedly out of the office. We spent all day Wednesday trying to get a temporary peering arrangement with Cogent so that we could resume something close to normal operation.
  
  We've learned that several of our customers -- as well as their affected vendors -- have received descriptions of this unfortunate event that are fundamentally inconsistent with ESnet's understanding of the facts. They claim that ESnet was notified of the de-peering (we received no notification from Cogent); ESnet chose to drop the peering (we did not); ESnet refuses to resume the peering (we are desperately trying to resume the peering with Cogent and we have been stymied at every attempt); and that ESnet wasn't "paying its bills" (ESnet and Cogent have a settlement-free peering arrangement which means that there are no bills to pay). Hopefully this sets the record straight and repairs some of the damage to our reputation resulting from inaccurate statements made by Cogent to its own customers.

  What we are doing about this

  ESnet engineers are scrambling to find alternative solutions to this problem that will not cause additional hardship for our customers. This is complicated by the difficulties in being a tier 1 ISP--we cannot ask another provider to provide transit to Cogent (and its customers) because other tier 1 ISPs will de-peer ESnet, causing further disruption to our customers. We are working on a plan to resolve this outage and provide more stability to our peerings.  It remains our hope that Cogent will restore the peering as we have asked, and as they initially promised.  We will provide further updates as we can. 

• Hurricane Electric / Cogent Peering Dispute (2009)
• AOL & Cogent peer (2008)
  • Cogent is now transit free (aka a Tier 1 backbone). Todd Underwood, Cogent Becomes Transit-Free, Renesys (June 26, 2008).
  • Todd Underwood, Cogent Becomes Transit-Free, Renesys (June 26, 2008).
  • Colin C Haley, 'Peering' Into AOL-MSN Outage, Internet News (Sept. 5, 2003)
  • Yuki Nuguchi, Peering Dispute with AOL Slows Cogent Customers Access, Washington Post (Dec. 27, 2002), available at Cyberia-l archive (accuracy unverified)
  • Max Smetannikov, War at the Core, Internet.com (Jan. 24, 2003), available at
• Sprint / Cogent (2008)
• Cogent Communications Press Release, Sprint and Cogent Reach Agreement on Exchange of Internet Traffic (Dec. 22, 2008) (“Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S) and Cogent Communications (Nasdaq:CCOI) announced that they have reached a multi-year interconnection agreement for the purposes of exchanging Internet traffic. This agreement will benefit the customers of both Sprint and Cogent and resolves the earlier dispute to the satisfaction of both Parties. The agreement is in accordance with both Parties' previous and long standing interconnection policies and agreements. The specifics of this agreement are confidential.”)
• Sprint Statement to Customers on its de-peering with Cogent Communications (date uncertain 2008), available on Sprint forum (original no longer available at Sprint and not available in achive.org)
• Cogent Communications Press Release, Sprint-Nextel Severs its Internet Connection to Cogent Communications (Oct. 30, 2008) ("On October 30 at 4:30 pm Sprint-Nextel severed its Internet connection to Cogent thereby partitioning the Internet. It is no longer possible for many Sprint customers and Cogent customers to directly communicate across the Internet.")
• News
• Scott Wooley, The Day the Web Went Dead, FORBES (Dec. 2, 2008)
• Rich Miller, Sprint, Cogent Resume Peering, Keep Arguing, Data Center Knowledge (Nov. 2nd, 2008)
• Cade Metz, Sprint de-partitions the Internet, The Register (Nov. 3, 2008).
• Mikael Ricknäs, Sprint Reconnects Cogent, But Differences Are Unresolved, NETWORK WORLD (Nov. 3, 2008)
• Om Malik, Cogent, Sprint Disconnect Networks, May Cause Web Slowdown, GigaOM (Oct. 30, 2008)
• Rich Miller, Major Impacts from Cogent-Sprint Peering Flap, Data Center Knowledge (Oct. 31, 2008)
• Todd Underwood, Wrestling with the Zombie: Sprint Depeers Cogent, Internet Partitioned, Renesys Blog (Oct. 31, 2008)
• Todd Underwood, Sprint and Cogent Peer, Renesys Blog (Nov. 1, 2006)
• Cogent / Telia (2008)
  • Mar. 28 Peering restored
  • Mar. 13 Cogent depeers with Telia [Brown Slide 7]
  • Verizon seen as transit between Telia and Cogent for 12 hours and then disappears. Internet partitioned.
  • Feb. 27 Telia promoted to Tier 1 by Renesys [Brown Slide 6]
  • Earl Zmijewski, You Cant Get There From Here, Renesys Blog (Mar. 17, 2008)
  • Martin A. Brown, Alin Popescu, Earl Zmijewski, Peering Wars: Lessons Learned from the Cogent-Telia DePeering, NANOG 43 NYC June 2008
  • "Cogent gets transit from NTT to reach AOL" Slide 6
  • Earl Zmijewski, He said, She Said: Cogent v Telia, Reneys Blog (Mar. 21, 2008)
  • Ryan Singel, ISP Quarrel Partitions Internet, WIRED (Mar. 18, 2008)
• 2007: Rich Miller, Cogent De-Peers Limelight Networks, Data Center Knowledge Sept. 30, 2007 (" Reports this weekend on the mailing list for the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG) indicated that Cogent “de-peered” Limelight on Friday and WV Fiber on Sept. 17.")
• 2005: Level 3 / Cogent Peering Dispute
• 2000: PSINET / AOL Depeered
  • Todd Underwood, Cogent Becomes Transit-Free, Renesys (June 26, 2008).

Timeline

• 2012 Takes on Netflix as content customer, resulting in interconnection disputes with Broadband Internet Access Service providers
• 2004 Cogent acquires many companies [Cogent History]
• 2002 Cogent acquires PSINET, Fibercity Networks. [Cogent History]
• 2001 Cogent acquires Netrail. [Funding Universe]
• 1999 Cogent Founded [Cogent History]
• 2001: PSINet Peering dispute with Cable & Wireless
  • PSINet declares bankruptcy
• 1999: PSINet buys naming rights to Baltimore Ravens stadium
• 1991: PSINet helps establish CIX
• 1989: NYSERNET (a member of NSFNET) creates PSINet [Greenstein 2015 p. 77]

DNS Root Servers

• Cogent operates DNS Root Server C

Financial

• Cogent Communications Reports Second Quarter 2015 Results and Increases Regular Quarterly Dividend on Common Stock, August 6, 2015

News

• Cisco takes a stake in Cogent, CNET 6/20/03
• Cogent Expands Reach With NY Deal, Wash Post 8/16/02
• Cogent Selected by C-SPAN for Fast, Reliable Transport of Distance Learning Video and Data Transmissions June 17, 2002

PSINet News

Cisco takes a stake in Cogent, CNET 6/20/03

Court Approves Final PSINet Breakup Internet News June 18, 2002

Cogent Communications Acquires PSINet April 2, 2002

Cogent Communications to Acquire Key U.S. Assets of PSINet Feb 27, 2002

PSINet To Sell European Business, ITWorld 4/26/02

PSINet Sells European Operations Internet News April 26, 2002

PSINet Sales to Recover Millions for Creditors Wash Post 4/18/2002

PSINet to sell European business for $9.5 million, NWFusion April 26, 20012

Cogent Completes PSINet Acquisition  Internet News April 3, 2002

Cogent grabs PSINet assets NWFusion March 1, 2002

Baltimore NFL Stadium To Shed PSINet Name Wash Post Feb 12, 2002

Ravens Dropkick PSINet Internet NEws February 12, 2002

GW University buys PSINet headquarters Business Journal Jan 30, 2002

PSINet Says Sayonara to Japanese Holdings, Internet News 1/28/02

C&W to buy PSINet Japan, NWFusion Dec 17, 2001

Cable & Wireless Press Statement December 10, 2001

PSINet Sells Japanese Operations, Inews 12/10/01

PSINet Completes Sale of Canadian Operations Internet News October 15, 2001

PSINet Subsidiary Agrees to Sell Two Metamor Properties Internet News September 10, 2001

PSINet Agrees to Sell Chilean Operations Internet News June 14, 2001

Cable and Wireless Statement June 7, 2001

Net blackout marks Web's Achilles heel CNET June 6, 2001

When private peering arrangements go bad:  Cable & Wireless shuts out 14 ISPs, including PSINet. NWFusion 6/11/01

C&W Briefly Drops Peering Agreement with PSINet ISP Planet June 7, 2001

As Predicted, PSINet Files Chapter 11 ISP Planet June 2, 2001

PSINet files for bankruptcy protection CNET June 1, 2001

PSINet slides into bankruptcy  IDG News Service 06/01/01

PSINet won't submit SEC filing on time CNET May 16, 2001

PSINet names new CEO, prepares to restructure, NWFusion May 1, 2001

PSINet Reduces Founder's Role As Default Looms Internet News May 1, 2001

PSINet defaults on financial agreements CNET May 1, 2001

PSINet Announces NASDAQ Delisting Internet News April 24, 2001

PSINet's departure NWFusion April 9, 2001

PSINet Punts The Standard April 2001

PSINet Sells Another Division Internet News March 26, 2001

PSINet sells business unit, NWFusion March 13, 2001

PSINet Sells Inter.net Subsidiary Internet News March 2, 2001

PSINet To Sell European Business, ITWorld 4/26/02

PSINet Says Sayonara to Japanese Holdings, Internet News 1/28/02

PSINet Sells Japanese Operations, Inews 12/10/01