Comments on: Network feud leads to Net blackout

Two major Net companies stop exchanging traffic, cutting off access to each other's networks for some customers.

If a punk-kid with a worm did this, they'd...

Lock his ass in prison for a million years.

What we have here is a Rogue Corporation that in a Terroristic nature is holding the entire Internet for ransom, disrupting business and work for tens of millions of Americans, and creating Restraint of Trade.

This is a TERRORIST ACTION on the part of Level Three Communications, Inc.

Glad to see James Bond checked in to this [heh], he has a point, if this were the 70's or 80's, this would be prime fodder for a movie with James Bond being sent to kill a madman holding the communications of the world for ransom because of his greed.

Telephone companies are regulated for this very reason. If a Telephone company did this [and one in Kansas owned by a Republican big-wheel in the Kansas Legislature recently did], there would be so many Judges swirling in with injunctions, it would look like a flock of Ravens - just like with that Republican ******* in Kansas who didn't want to terminate VoIP calls to his system.

This works two ways.

Either we give the free-market system a chance, and force Level Three into total abjectg bankruptcy, or we get Congress to make sure this crap NEVER happens again.

In fact, I say, why don't we do both!
They have taken money from my pockets in an act of Corporate Terrorism, hey, we should and do have a right to make sure they go into BANKRUPTCY!

SELL ORDER ON LEVEL THREE!!!

Oh, and call your Congresscritters, if you lost money today because you couldn't work!

[clsgis]

A pox on both spamhouses

Hosting spammers is a sign of general management
incompetence. The net would work better if both
of these spam holes would just shut down.

http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/listings.lasso?isp=level3.net
36 SBL listings including the Blue Stream porn spammer
RFC-Ignorant.org shows Level3's abuse address has
been broken for over a year.

http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/listings.lasso?isp=cogentco.com
16 SBL listings including four ROKSO criminals

Want good Internet service? Choose a provider
with a working abuse address and no Registry of
Known Spam Operations crime gangs.

[System Tyrant]

Spamhaus Sucks!!!

I hold to my opinion that Blacklist don't work.

Here is something I read...
http://theory.whirlycott.com/~phil/antispam/rbl-bad/rbl-bad.html

Which stock do you short more?

Both companies look like they are addicted to financing. A feud of any duration looks fatal to both as revenue streams could crumble. I am in an office that uses Cogent and certain applications like Groove are not working since they appear to be hosted on Level 3. Business decisions will be made shortly to axe applications (VoIP, Groove etc) and/or service providers. Pressure will be on lots of different people and bad will among customers abounds as this nonsense continues. Who knows this situation well? How do you play this financially? Money needs to be made from this stupidity, and more if it continues.

Which stock do you short more?

both stocks were down after market hours.
http://marketwatch.com
look for " LVLT " stock (Level 3)
I think this one is the one I was looking at
" COGN " (Cogent)
so they're Loosing in this!!

Road Runner working 8:50pm

Looks like Road Runner found a work around =D

I'm in NY

I'm in NY with a home cable modem line. I spoke with Time Warner cable a bunch today and then sent the link to this story to a bunch of the news stations both here and in CA.

[killerpenguinz]

Now only if they would do it here

Now only if they would do it here. My connection has been spotty the last 30 minutes, i am assuming the Orlando Division got their head out of the sand and started reprogramming routes, we will have to see.

You mean Cogent's attack and your laziness...

Cogent is more at fault here than Level(3). Level(3) followed the agreement they had with Cogent and gave them proper warning of this incident. Cogent elected not to purchase transit to Level(3) through Verio, as they did with a similar incident between them and ATDN. Cogent has a history of doing this, with ATDN, Teleglobe, and France Telecom, using their customers as pawns in this war. The simple issue is, is that there are no routes connecting Level(3) and Cogent, and it is Cogents responsibility, as the Tier 2, to fix it. Cogent can easily fix it, but they elect not to, and prefer to use this as a marketing opportunity while trying to force Level(3) to resume peering.

Also, sorry to say it, but you or your ISP are at fault if you were affected by this. Had your provider or you been on a properly setup multi-homed connection you would not have noticed any issues. If your site/business is on a single-homed connection to Cogent and Level(3) it is you who decided to save money by being on a single homed connection. My network here is single homed and none of our customers have noticed any issues at all...

You mean Cogent's attack and your laziness...

how can it be laziness if it's the Only internet connection you can get?????
people dont understand, it's the little people that effected by this...
I'm sorry, but I'm not lazy, it's the only choice I have!!!!

[ChazzMatt]

what are you talking about?

People and businesses don't have a choice who their ISP connects with or to. Multi-homed connections? what?

People and businesses sign up for accounts with their telephone company DSL or cable modem providers. And other alternative providers mostly just wholesale from those two -- i.e. in my area Earthlink is just Bellsouth DSL rebranded. So, no one is lazy, it's not the consumer's fault. It's these two corporations.

[eskimolegend]

Everyone, file your complaints with FTC AND FCC (links in the main text)!

We all should file complaints with FTC at https://rn.ftc.gov/pls/dod/wsolcq$.startup?Z_ORG_COD and with FCC at http://svartifoss2.fcc.gov/cib/fcc475.cfm.

[eskimolegend]

Everyone, file your complaints with FTC AND FCC (links in the main text)!

The correct link to the FTC complaint page is https://rn.ftc.gov/pls/dod/wsolcq$.startup?Z_ORG_CODE=PU01. My apologies for an erroeneous address in the previous posting.

[ChazzMatt]

what are you talking about?

People and businesses don't have a choice who their ISP connects with or to. Multi-homed connections? People and businesses sign up for accounts with their telephone company DSL or cable modem providers. And other alternative providers mostly just wholesale from those two -- i.e. in my area Earthlink is just Bellsouth DSL rebranded. So, no one is lazy, it's not the consumer's fault. It's these two corporations.

[ChazzMatt]

sorry

posted under main thread when I meant to reply to a specific low IQ comment.

Irony about your link there...

I can't get to it...There must be some sort of DNS error happening. Is something wrong with the Internet? LOL ok just kidding. But seriously I can't get to that domain.

[Jibran Ilyas]

This is nuts !

So many businesses affected and still no resolution? Come on now!!!!!!!!

"Business decisions" ya OKKKK!

[bob donut]

They're going to be regulated now

Imagine if Qwest or Verizon cut off their phone service because they couldn't make an amicable agreement as to line charges?

The internet needs to be seen as a basic service with regulated uptime requirements for major vendors. They'll hate it, but they precipatated it with their actions.

AGREE

I absolutely Agree......TWO THUMBS UP!!!!!!

My eBay Business is shot because of this

thanks so damned much, corporate american pigs.

SOME OF US ARE POOR AND NEED FREE HOSTING SERVICES IN ORDER TO EARN OUR MEAGER INCOMES. It isn't laziness, it's called trying to make do.
Because photobucket is down completely, and i can't even get the site to load, **all** of my items' pictures are not showing up. so no one is bidding anymore, and my email inbox is loaded up with people telling me my pix are not showing. because i have had some bids i cannot reset the images but can only add links to the same images i uploaded at geocities. few people want to actually click on an image link, they will just see the images are red-x'd out, and go on to the next item.

my business websites are affected too.

i am a seamstress, not an internet expert. i am just trying to make a living while raising 3 kids. for health and other reasons, i am unable to work outside the home and we are dependent upon my income to provide what my husband's income doesn't cover. i don't know how to upload images myself or get them to show up, even though i *have* purchased website hosting for my websites, so for now i am trying to build business by using freebie image hosting at photobucket and geocities because they have formats that are relatively easy for someone like me to understand. it is difficult but i managed to actually create websites at www.fig-n-folly.com and www.plainlysimple.com. i feel all my time is wasted now because no one can see what i do. i guess it's back to the needle and thread for me and hope that someone will take pity on a poor seamstress. placing newspaper ads locally just gets me phone calls from people who don't want to actually pay for my work, but until now the internet had actually provided me with some decent pay for what i do. but now if no one can see what i do, and if no one knows i am here, what good is it?

I'm on MSN

I can understand your pain as I do some selling there myself. I am on MSN and I haven't been able to access photobucket either. Seems like that is the only major problem I am having so far but it is making things very difficult, not to mention the fact that there are other sites that I more than likely can't get to either if I have to until tihs is all straightened out. This is beyond darn annoying and I wish that people would quit viewing money as the most important thing in the world because it isn't.

[billrob458]

The internet consumes resources

Damn the corporate American pigs! If it wasn't for the pigs, there wouldn't even be the internet. Oh sure the universities would all be together, but it is their greediness for the dollar, that has matured the internet into the tech haven it is today.

Try browsing the internet with Lynx and see how you like the internet was before the evil corporations took it over.

I understand your frustrations but for every bad company out there, there are 100's of competitors waiting to pounce.

[ryangrant]

hosting

Hi there, I run a hosting company and I can setup a picture hosting section on my site for very cheap if you would like that. Please let me know what you think and I don't really care how much you pay, just think about how much bandwidth you use and how big your pictures are/how many etc.. let me know your price tag and Ill see what I can do for yeah.(price tag in year not monthly)

Cogent had to know this was coming...

I seriously doubt that Cogent did not know this was going to happen. Level 3 does not seem to be the type of company to do something this serious without prior notice. Cogent is just spinning this to fit their blunder.

If this is affecting you its your own fault

I see lots of people complaining about this problem and its insane. All you fools that say you are loosing money because you can't connect is your own problem. And you all are probably paying 29.99 and expect 100% uptime. Waaaaaaaa. If your livelyhood depends on the internet and you only have 1 connection you're an idiot. This sort of things happens all the time on the edge and doesn't cause smaller IP providers issues??? Ever heard of BGP?

[JB_Smith]

BGP cannot alone resolve this

Level3 has blocked any source/destination packets form ALL IPs in
Cogents CIDR domain. BGP has no bearing to resolve that. Anyone
using IPs is the Cogent CIDR domain from ARIN would be blocked.

[JB_Smith]

Now the point is moot as they are again peering apparently

The two networks appear to be exchanging traffic again.

[testtest]

YOU ARE MAKING TOO MUCH OUT OF THIS

Any decent provider will not be relying on one network and will
have already rerouted traffic through other providers. This
should be a non issue and has been for me and countless
others. With the way you guys are talking, it sounds like the
world is coming to end. Give me a break! The Internet is not
dying! I can't get to Cogent through Level-3, so I just get to
Cogent through WilTel.

This would be like if a road closed down and someone said that
the nation's transportation system is down and we are all
screwed! Give me a break! Just take another road, you idiots!
CNet really knows how to blow stories completely out of
proportion. Network Feud Leads To Net Blackout. Blackout my
ass. If you have a blackout it's your own damn fault for not
having an alternate route.

not really

Every single Road Runner customer was affcted. Thats alot of people, for some reason RR didnt have a backup they could switch over too, the the problem lingered for almost 48 hours.

[CCKitty]

Any new developments?

All of the websites that I have on a particular server were un-available to me through my ISP (Road Runner) during the October chapter of this dispute. Even worse, they were not available to customers of these websites.

Is there any update at this time?

I will have to change my web hosting for these websites if the problem is going to arise again next month. The host is addr.

Any advice? Thanks.