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9-0-article-tgtimes-peering-cake.md (2992B)
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1 # Peering Cake for IPv6 by tgtimes
2
3 The Internet Protocol is the fundamental encoding and communication
4 convention that permits computers to reach each other across multiple
5 LANs.
6
7 An Protocol to allow Inter-Network communication.
8 Andy Tanenbaum wrote a beautiful introduction about the underlying idea:
9
10 https://worldcat.org/en/title/1086268840
11
12 The part of Internet visible from a single user looks like a tree, with at
13 its root the service provider. Regardless how complex the branches are,
14 there is usually "the gateway", implying a single one per network, to
15 allow traffic to "exit", implying a single direction to go for reaching
16 the outter world. The routing configuration rarely changes, and is often
17 boiling down to "going out", implying beyond the gateway is outside..
18
19 The part of Internet visible from a service provider, however, looks like
20 a mesh, a more balanced graph, with many possible gateways, many possible
21 "exit" directions, and no more idea of "outside".
22 If you pick one possible gateway picked at random, hoping them to nicely
23 find the correct destination for your IP packets, they may realistically
24 cut your connection and never ever talk to you again,
25 depending on how much traffic you suddenly sent (routing your IPs to
26 0.0.0.0). This happens frequently. Network admin mailing lists are
27 constantly active with many people discussing with many others.
28
29 Network admins themself are usually friendly among themself, even across
30 concurrents, but companies do not always play nice with each other.
31
32 There is a legendary dispute known by all Internet Service Provider (ISP)
33 netadmins: the two biggest international internet network providers,
34 Cogent and Hurricane Electric, are disconnected.
35 The two major IPv6 Carriers, those giants connecting the ISP togethers
36 across continents, are currently refusing to exchange IPv6 packets with
37 each other. This means that with IPv6, from a country connected to only
38 Cogent, it is not possible to reach a country connected to only Hurricane
39 Electric, and the other way around.
40 For this reason, all ISPs from all countries connections with many more
41 carriers for IPv6 than it is for IPv4, resulting in either lower stability
42 or higher cost.
43
44 This strategy permits Cogent to remain competitive face to its larger
45 concurrents. Hurricane Electric, on the other hand, have much more
46 commercial advantage to perform peering with Cogent, to therefore exchange
47 traffic. In the diversity of attempts to get Cogent to change its mind,
48 Hurricane Electric decorated a large creamy cake with a message, and
49 shipped the cake to the headquarters of Cogent.
50
51 Here is what the message said in 2009:
52
53 Cogent (AS174) Please IPv6 peer with us XOXOX - Hurricane Electric (AS6939).
54
55 https://www.mail-archive.com/nanog@nanog.org/msg15608.html
56 https://live.staticflickr.com/2685/4031434206_656b2d8112_z.jpg
57 https://www.theregister.com/2018/08/28/ipv6_peering_squabbles/
58 https://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2009-October/\
59 014017.html