ADV-NEWS, Business spat snarls Net traffic. 18 per cent of the Internet has been blocked off.

Business spat snarls Net traffic
Steve Alexander, Star Tribune
October 7, 2005

A battle that erupted Wednesday between two companies that provide the on-ramps
to about 18 percent of the Internet has blocked off millions of Web surfers.

Some Time Warner cable modem customers and an estimated 30 million dial-up
customers nationwide are affected by the standoff between Level 3 Communications
and Cogent Communications, which handle Internet traffic for many corporate
clients.

Minnesota customers of Time Warner's high-speed service, Road Runner, apparently
were spared because the Minnesota operations use a different connection to the
Internet. But Time Warner conceded that its operations in some other states were
affected.

Nationwide, many customers of the dial-up Internet services of AOL, MSN and
EarthLink reportedly were affected.

The dispute underscores the fragility of the Internet. Although the Net is
widely viewed as a seamless worldwide network, it is instead a patchwork of
individual networks that pass Internet traffic from one provider to the next
until it reaches its destination.

Two of those networks stopped communicating with each other Wednesday because of
a business dispute, forcing some Internet traffic to be rerouted and bringing
other traffic to a standstill.

Colorado-based Level 3 reportedly handles 6 percent of worldwide Internet
traffic, and Washington, D.C.-based Cogent handles 12 percent. The two firms
normally let Internet traffic pass between them at no charge, but on Wednesday
Level 3 broke the connection, saying Cogent was abusing the link by sending too
much traffic over it. Level 3 said Cogent would have to pay for the connection
to be reestablished.

Cogent denied abusing the connection, refused to pay and charged that Level 3
was upset because Cogent has been undercutting Level 3's prices and taking away
some of its big customers among the Internet service providers that sell access
to consumers and businesses. Cogent's clients include Harvard University. Upping
the ante Thursday, Cogent offered a year of free service to any Level 3 customer
adversely affected and willing to switch to Cogent.

The result of the fight is that for millions of people who have never heard of
either company, certain websites were inaccessible. For example, the site for
Boston's Museum of Fine Arts was not available Thursday afternoon, its Internet
connection severed. Other sites, such as Boston.com (the Boston Globe) and the
Drudge Report, were cut off from only a portion of the people trying to reach
them.

Time Warner said Thursday that the dispute had disrupted service to some of its
high-speed Internet customers.

Alternate pathways

"For our Road Runner customers, that means some sites they might normally visit
are not available to them right now. We are working to find alternate pathways
so our customers can be reconnected with these websites as soon as possible,"
Time Warner said.

Cogent said millions of dial-up customers of Level 3 were hurt.

"Virtually all the dial-up customers of MSN, EarthLink, AOL and United Online
(operator of the NetZero and Juno services) can't get to the 12 percent of the
Internet we handle, primarily in North America and western Europe," said Dave
Schaeffer, chief executive officer of Cogent Communications. "That's about 30
million dial-up customers."

For Internet users, the key to the disruption was whether they relied solely on
Level 3 or Cogent for their connections.

Customers depending solely on Level 3 could not contact websites in the 12
percent of the Internet handled by Cogent. Level 3 would not say how many
customers that involved.

The 10 percent of Cogent customers with no other link to the Net could not
access the 6 percent of the Internet served by Level 3.

Customers of either company that had paid extra for multiple Internet
connections could reach affected websites through roundabout paths.

The free connections between the big companies that run the Internet are called
"peering arrangements." They are common among the firms that control portions of
the "Internet backbone," the tens of thousands of miles of fiber-optic
telecommunications cables that make up the Internet.

"These collegial peering relationships among big companies allow traffic to flow
efficiently across the Net without most customers knowing anything about the
under-the-hood relationships," reported News.com, a technology website. "But
when these relationships go sour, the feuding parties' lack of flexibility can
result in blackouts like the one that occurred this week."

No compromise

Level 3 and Cogent appeared unwilling Thursday to compromise to restore normal
Internet service, in which nearly any computer owner can visit any public
website in the world.

"There will be no connection between Level 3 and Cogent unless Cogent pays for
the connectivity," Level 3 spokeswoman Jennifer Daumler said. "We're committed
to our decision." She declined to say how much money was involved.

"There is no solution except for Level 3 to reestablish their connectivity with
us," Cogent's Schaeffer said, "or for their customers to come to us."