[ NNSquad ] Re: Peering dispute cuts off Sprint<->Cogent Internet traffic

[kris foster <kris.foster@gmail.com>]

On Oct 31, 2008, at 1:38 PM, Barry Gold wrote:
> OK, so what has happened to the "treats censorship as damage and  
> routes around it" Internet?  Even if Embarq and Cogent are no longer  
> talking to each other, the routers should be automatically finding  
> routes via other carriers and sending the packets -- around Robin  
> Hood's barn if necessary, but the Internet is supposed to be  
> _robust_.  Jon Postel designed it that way -- I've read the RFCs.   
> That's what ARPA specified when they paid for the development of  
> first the ARPANet and later the Internet -- and what NSF paid for  
> when they branched off NSFNet and allowed commercial traffic.

I don't believe this is the correct interpretation of censorship in  
this context. As for routing around damage, this is quite possible and  
there are likely people achieving this today, a node acting as a  
tunnel broker in a third party's network would do the trick.

> Are these guys programming their routers to just drop packets with  
> certain destination IP addresses, instead of finding the shortest  
> available route?

BGP in general models business relationships. At the level Cogent and  
Sprint are playing at neither has a relationship with a third party  
that provides them with each others routes. And without peering  
between Cogent and Sprint their view of the internet simply excludes  
each other.

> I'm beginning to think that Congress (or perhaps an international  
> body similar to the WTO) should make the core RFCs (IP, TCP, BGP,  
> FTP, HTTP, SMTP, and RFC 822) have the force of law.  And anybody  
> who violates those protocols should be fined and/or have their  
> connections turned off.

This is layer 8 and above, not found in the RFCs.

Kris