which one is the east coast rapper and which one the west? ;-)
i guess i got a bit geeky in my response. NANOG is the north american network operators group (expanding from memory, so don't flame me). the forum where internet network issues are discussed.
internet traffic is exchanged between [tier1] network providers in primarily one of two ways: private peering (essentially running cables between each other's routers), also known as SFI (settlement free interconnection) since the peering usually is done without payment, based on assumptions by both sides on the size of their counterpart. providers can also hook up at public exchange points (NAPs). typically tier1 providers will do both. lower tier providers then buy transit access to other networks through these guys.
supposedly some soliciting by cogent of l3 customers (at the cutthroat prices cogent is known for) set off this skirmish (have to catch up with my NANOG mailbox and stop arguing with wojtek ;-)). l3 has depeered with cogent and cogent is not rerouting to l3 destinations through its alternate transit connections (what's funny is that during the MCI-worldcom merger, IIRC, up and coming l3 was the one that was complaining about private peering being used by the big players to exclude new tier1s).
AFAIK, there is no serious government regulation regarding this stuff i.e., the govt does not step in and say that the big players have the responsibility to keep the internet "whole" (since they have the ability to partition), since that is what the end-user implicitly expects when he gets an internet connection.
in the old internet, this would typically not be an issue (since routing protocols will automatically route around connectivity loss, as long as alternate routes are available), but with the withdrawal of NSF and more and more private peering this is not surprising. nor, from my memory, is this the first time. not only can a provider withdraw peering but also start blackholing traffic from the opponent's space (this practice has also been used in the past to prevent virus/intrusion storms). i find it surprising that old hats like panix didnt multi-home (connect to more than one network provider for internet connectivity), but cost is why they went with cogent, to begin with, i guess.
i would like to believe that this sort of behaviour (that's spelled "behavio-u-r" ;-)) is still frowned upon, but its irrelevant i guess since the suits make the real calls. :-(
--ravi
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