Cogent vs. Level 3
October 6th, 2005Seems that right now, Cogent and Level 3 are no longer peering with each other.
Lots of (single-homed) people got disconnected. Cogent is known for its cheap, very cheap bandwidth. Not that high quality, but, well, cheap.
As somebody said on slashdot :
Cogent fancies itself a Tier 1 provider […], and L3 IS a Tier 1 provider.
[..] Whichever company blinks first .. loses. If L3 blinks, they re-peer with Cogent, which gives Cogent more political power when it comes to other Tier 1s. If Cogent blinks first, they either send their packets via other Tier 1 providers to get to L3 or buy transit from L3. If Cogent blinks .. other Tier 1 providers are going to look at it and say ‘hey, we could be making money too’ and multiple instances of today will replay themselves out across the net.
Cogent’s sells bandwidth for cheap … too cheap to actually make any money at it, and now the house of cards is folding.
Wonder if this is the start of bandwidth prices increasing. I do remember the prices from 4 years ago, just after the Internet bubble bursted. On one moment we had to pay 900 EUR/Mbps… Compare that to today. Will certainly keep an eye on this!