We recently learned this evening that Sprint and Cogent are having some issues in terms of their Internet peering agreements - or lack of agreement. Sprint is refusing to route traffic to Cogent sites due to pending litigation, according to this press release put out by Cogent. This could impact some of Eyejot's customers because Eyejot is connected to the Internet through fiber services provided and maintained by Cogent. In fact, we heard from one user through Twitter that they had tried to reach Eyejot's web site over the weekend and could not. We were surprised, at the time, because we've never experienced any unplanned down-time.
It wasn't until we started looking around that we found this issue between Sprint and Cogent. There's a discussion thread on the topic at Slashdot. You can also take a peek at the Internet Health Report and click on the link for details over the last 24 hours. Isolating traffic between Sprint and Cogent will reveal major problems. Mikael Richnas, writing for ARN, also covers the topic in his piece Sprint-Cogent dispute puts small rip in fabric of Internet. He describes not only the current incident but also one that Cogent had with Level(3) a few years back.
There are bound to be strong opinions posted for both sides. From our perspective it's just rotten and, in the end, most of us that run companies with connections to the Internet discover that there's almost always a singular point of failure. Sure, there are routing options, like BGP, available - but that's for fairly well established and larger companies with big IT infrastructures and resources (or extremely well-funded start-ups). For most companies, their connectivity often hinges on some big ISP and their notion of what's right and wrong and whether they feel compelled or pressured to adhere to their agreements and to service their customers. Sometimes the issues they face or suggest exist are technical. Sometimes political. Sometimes they react (or overreact) improperly to a DCMA tack-down request.
Some of us are hoping, someday, there's a giant, extremely high-speed, wireless mesh and the Internet as we know it becomes unshackled and free from control by companies and governments. With this model, information (both voice and traditional data) can flow, through multiple simultaneous paths, completely encrypted, from computing device to device, from country to country and continent to continent. Phone companies and Internet carriers - and all the fiber they own will become irrelevant. Will this happen? Can it happen? When?
Until then, we'll keep a look out for what's happening between Cogent, our provider, and Sprint. If you discover you're unable to reach Eyejot, please contact us (if you can) and let us know. You can always write us a letter and stick it in an envelope. A real one.
