Level 3 claims Cogent is sending far more traffic than Level3 to Cogent. Thus, Level3's viewpoint is that Cogent relies on them more than they rely on Cogent. Thus, it no longer makes sense in their view point to maintain a free interconnection as there is no similar balance of traffic ratio.
This has always bugged me. Is a Cogent customer sending traffic to a L3 customer or is a L3 customer requesting the traffic from a Cogent customer? Traffic is traffic, L3 has eyeballs, Cogent has content producers. Of course most of the traffic will flow from Cogent -> L3. L3 chose to sell to eyeball customers, Cogent chose to sell to content producers. If the L3 customers didn't create the demand for the traffic then I'm sure Cogent wouldn't be sending them the traffic. IMHO the only valid complaint L3 has is wether Cogent is hot-potato routing the traffic causing L3 to 'incur more cost'. That should all be spelled out in the peering agreement. -- Matthew S. Crocker Vice President Crocker Communications, Inc. Internet Division PO BOX 710 Greenfield, MA 01302-0710 http://www.crocker.com