US-Swedish carrier spat 'breaks' Net

[flashl]

Source: Yahoo

NEW YORK - President Bush famously spoke of "the Internets" in 2004. Well, they're here.

Since March 13, customers of two large Internet providers, Cogent Communications Group Inc. and TeliaSonera AB are unable to contact each other through the Internet, unless they have backup connections from other companies.

This means, for instance, that some U.S. Web sites hosted by Cogent customers are inaccessible to surfers in the Nordic countries, where Sweden-based TeliaSonera is the largest telecommunications operator. It's like Cogent and TeliaSonera customers are on different Internets.

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It's not the first time this has happened: Now and then, Internet companies indulge in what Zmijewski calls playing "chicken." If they're fighting over a contract, they disconnect each other, and wait to see who blinks first. The number of irate customers each company faces will probably determine who does.

David Schaeffer, chief executive of Washington-based Cogent, said the two companies had a "peering" contract, under which they exchanged traffic from each other's customers, with neither company paying the other for access. But TeliaSonera continuously breached the terms of the contract by not exchanging traffic in certain locations, and refusing to upgrade connections that were saturated, Schaeffer said.

Yahoo

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080319/ap_on_hi_te/broken_internet;_ylt=Ai6GKeRtGzTJ_IE2RBu17csjtBAF

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Money spat breaks the unbreakable Internet.

[high density]

1. Cogent is a botton rung carrier

This isn't the first time they've had peering issues.

[Xithras]

2. The Internet is far from unbreakable.

A lot of people don't understand how the Internet works. There isn't some big network of cables labeled "Internet" that everyone jacks into. Each telco has its own private network, a network that belongs to them and is almost completely under their own control. Back in the late 80's and early 90's these telcos built connections between their networks that allowed users on one network to talk to another (the Internet itself has been around since the 60's, but the public Internet we use today was mostly built following the final decomissioning of ARPANet in 1990). The telcos then adopted the peering agreements that had existed since the early days of the Internet... i.e. "I'll carry your traffic if you'll carry mine." That's what Internet stands for...Interconnected Networks.

Breaking the Internet is as simple as disconnecting those peering bridges. Most companies won't do this since it's financial suicide, but it does happen on rare occassion. Usually it happens in situations like this one, where Company X is unhappy with the quality of peering they're getting, so they demand that Company Y upgrade their network or link. If Company Y refuses, and if no agreement can be reached on a resolution, Company X may respond by disconnecting Company Y. This prevents the customers of either company from reaching customers on the other company.

The good news is that it doesn't typically effect anyone other than those involved with the two fighting companies. The bad news is that if YOUR ISP happens to be a downstream user of one of these companies, you can find a large chunk of your Internet access missing.

That's where the whole "Chicken" reference comes in. Companies do this knowing that it will cost them customers, but they bank on their competitors caving into their users complaints first.

[FarCenter]

3. Nobody "jacks into" anything

The jack is the female connector, usually in a fixed mounting.

The cord has a plug on the end of it.

You plug into the jack.

[Xithras]

4. Lol!

"You plug into the jack. "

You're asking slang to make sense. "Jacked In" means your plug is in the jack, nothing more. It's a slang term that simply means "to be connected", though I'd bet you already knew that.

If you still want to quibble about it, the term also has another meaning. The term "jack" has been used as a generic substitute word for centuries in slang to replace other unknown or less desireable words. During the old BBS days there was a bit of debate about what being connected was properly called...connected in, hooked up, plugged in, wired in. "Jacked" was simply a substitute word since there was no agreed upon terminology. Think about it... you can be jacked up, you can jack off, you might not know jack, some people smoke jacks, you can be jacked with a knife, your car can be jacked, you can be jacked up on steroids, and if you get mad and jack up your computer, you might say some pretty jacked up things. Jack has been a generic slang word for centuries, and was commonly used to reference any kind of device or person.

By the way, phone jacks are called phone jacks because their proper names were forgetable and nonstandardized (they were originally called telephone plugs, telephone outlets, or even telephone connectors, depending on where you were and who you were speaking with). The term "telephone jack" itself is an example of slang that eventually became a proper name when Bell standardized the Registered Jack series (RJxx) in the 1970's.

[Codedonkey]

5. Where do the series of tubes come in?

Everyone knows you plug into a tube..