As the former Manager of Peering at internetMCI/C&W, I find this dispute with PSI very interesting. As mentioned in Mitchell Levinn's posting from yesterday: "C&W and PSINet upgraded circuits used for peering between the two networks earlier this year. C&W's recent action seems inconsistent with the strategy that led to these upgrades." This is the heart of the problem. When I left C&W in 2/00, I had created a plan to upgrade all of C&W's current peering from mostly DS3's to OC3's and OC12's and also increase the density of that peering. For example, if we were using 4 cities say, SF, Chicago, DC, NY, we would then add in Seattle, LA, Dallas, Atlanta, Denver and so on. Other parts of that plan included upgrading connection to the MAE's, AADS and installing peering routers at both the PAIX and Equinix facilities. When I walked out of the door, this plan was being executed. Somewhere down the line, it was derailed. In my opinion, at every company there are people with visions, once they leave even though it may take some time, that vision becomes clouded or it may even leave with that visionary. ------------------------ Marcellus Smith Director - Internetworking Strategies Office 703-287-4224 Cell 703-395-4275 marcellus@aleron.com www.aleron.com -----Original Message----- From: Mitchell Levinn [mailto:levinn@psi.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2001 9:35 AM To: nanog@merit.edu Cc: levinn@psi.com Subject: PSINet and C&W peering C&W did indeed shutdown their peering connections to PSINet this weekend. While there are many potential explanations for their actions, I have no visibility into their decision process. I am disappointed with their decision to disconnect. PSINet continues to seek a resolution with C&W to restore normal connectivity in order to avoid further negative impact to both companies and the Internet. Their decision is hard to understand based on the following: - C&W and PSINet upgraded circuits used for peering between the two networks earlier this year. C&W's recent action seems inconsistent with the strategy that led to these upgrades. - PSINet's recent addition of direct private peering with several of C&W's transit customers relieved the peering connections between the networks of a couple hundred Mbps of traffic (improving connectivity overall and, undoubtedly, lowering costs for those transit customers). This is significant only because C&W claims PSINet no longer has sufficient traffic to justify the connections according to their published standards. In fact, PSINet's overall traffic continues to grow. - Most of the PSINet traffic previously destined for sites behind C&W has alternative paths through other providers. While this sounds like a generally good thing, especially given the actions C&W has taken, it does make it difficult for those that require certain traffic levels to be maintained consistently for peering. Specifically, C&W's customers (or C&W itself) could alter "natural" traffic flow to favor (or not) various connections to meet their published standards (or not). PSINet demonstrated to C&W that if naturally less favorable announcements were preferred, PSINet could make an almost arbitrarily large (or small) amount of traffic flow between the peers. Even so, in C&W's opinion, PSINet will not be able to comply with their peering policy's traffic standards. It is gratifying to note that even without C&W peering, substantially all of the traffic previously flowing between PSINet and C&W continues to be delivered. - At this time PSINet has not disabled the C&W peering interfaces nor decommissioned any facilities. If C&W chooses to, they can re-enable interfaces on their side and bring back the connectivity lost between their non-transit customers and PSINet. PSINet remains open to discuss with them a new bilateral peering agreement if they so choose. PSINet remains committed to servicing its customers and the Internet with the best possible infrastructure and policies. PSINet still maintains hundreds of peering connections with other ISPs throughout the world. While posting about matters between PSINet and its peering partners is not typical, the circumstances and questions arising from C&W's decision required some clarification. Hopefully this additional clarification helps everyone understand the current situation. -Mitch Levinn PSINet