No, but the providers who provide those connections should be multihomed. If they're not, I'd consider switching providers. Simple as that.
Am I the only one to whom this sounds really strange? I really doubt that customers going to buy Sprint EVDO service are asking about "are you multihomed," or that they realize that they should ask such a question, or that the salesman would have any clue, and when the salesman tried to figure out what it meant, he'd come up with it equating to "how reliable is your service," to which he'd answer "Yes, of course, it's very reliable!" because he'd honestly never heard of a "peering dispute." This all gets back to a point that I've tried to impress on several people who are all-too-fixated on contracts and how contracts will make it all work out in the end, or how it is too bad when that doesn't happen. We can all agree that, on a technical level, a provider here in the US cannot guarantee the reachability of portions of China on the end of two tin cans and a string, and to us, this seems obvious. However, it might take a little time to explain this to a non-technical person. However, when two networks that previously had a connection to each other, and who have no technical issue that prevents them from continuing such a connection, then decide to not only eliminate said connection and actively take steps that are meant to coerce the other network into some particular activity, that's something a little different. My concern isn't about the letter of the contract between Sprint and their customers, or the letter of the contract between Cogent and their customers. My concern is that they are being sold "Internet service," and sooner or later someone is going to notice that the incomplete Internet service being delivered is due to decisions actually made by the service provider(s). At this point, there's a very real possibility that the customer will argue that they interpreted the terms of the bandwidth contract to mean "best effort Internet" in the China example sense, not "best effort Internet" where the service provider decided a business strategy made making part of the Internet deliberately unreachable so that they could use their customers as traffic hostages was a good idea. At that point, we could see a court make a determination as to what the obligations are, or worse, we could see government interference with the operation of major networks. "Switch providers" is a nice sound bite, but the reality of it all is that most customers are locked into various types of contracts, and this is an expensive proposition, one that burdens the consumer. I am sure that each side can make a legitimate business case for the actions taken. I don't care. Ultimately, events like this are likely to be a driving force between some "network neutrality" regulation that we are all going to regret on some level. ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.