SEACOM fibre clients blocked from accessing Property24 and AutoTrader

I'm no network engineer, but doesn't the peering only affect the routing the traffic from SEACOM clients to the effected domains. In which case, why can't these clients still connect to the domains but just by international links instead of the peering links, or are SEACOM's clients actually blocked from accessing the sites - thats just wrong if thats the case.
 
sorry, but this isn't really how the internet works. it's dynamic. having peering in place gives you a shorter path than your existing transit/breakout. remove peering and the shorter path disappears, replaced by another, longer path. it shouldn't be the *only* path.

if the _only_ path to Seacom was through the peering, that's entirely something the website owners are responsible for.

removing peering != "blocking" as your story claims.

also, " SEACOM told MyBroadband at the time that its initial open peering arrangement allowed many networks to enjoy costless transit across its network.".

whoever was quoted doesn't understand what transit is. transit != peering. access to their network and their customers != transit, but peering. transit is when their network would be used to reach a third AS not belonging to the peer.
 
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As many have said denying peering is not blocking anything but forcing traffic via an alternative and probably longer path. If a network is inaccessible as a result of depeering then its not advertising it’s network correctly or there is some static configuration which designates the incorrect destination which has not been updated.
 
Bernie said:
I'm no network engineer, but doesn't the peering only affect the routing the traffic from SEACOM clients to the effected domains. In which case, why can't these clients still connect to the domains but just by international links instead of the peering links, or are SEACOM's clients actually blocked from accessing the sites - thats just wrong if thats the case.
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They are "filtered". But you are correct they should have been pushed to an upstream but in this case it is bait and switch.
 
Y'all can shoot the messenger, or you can thank me for following up and read the "message in a bottle" contained in the article.

I can't make up statements for people, but there's a clue in the article: "One client said that SEACOM told them that it was Property24 that was filtering and blocking traffic from the SEACOM network to their websites."

There's a war going on behind the scenes here, folks.

Unfortunately, SEACOM has declined to provide a detailed technical explanation of what happened for them to decide to de-peer smaller networks. Based on conversations I've had with people in the industry, this is what I've been able to piece together:
  • Networks/ASN operators would peer with SEACOM at NAPAfrica, then through some shenanigans would effectively get free transit to other Internet exchange points where SEACOM peers. This was apparently a big problem for transit traffic within Africa.
  • SEACOM apparently approached networks who were doing this to negotiate some kind of transit agreement with them, but this never got very far. Apparently the whole free/open peering situation created a loophole that all these (smaller) networks were afraid to have closed, so they wouldn't even meet with SEACOM.
  • SEACOM responded by throwing out the bathwater, the baby, and the whole tub. I'm not sure if there is a technical solution that would allow a more nuanced approach instead of just going with the blunt instrument that is selective peering, and unfortunately no-one who knows anything about networking at this level seems to want to talk about the nitty-gritties.
 
Jan said:
Y'all can shoot the messenger, or you can thank me for following up and read the "message in a bottle" contained in the article.

I can't make up statements for people, but there's a clue in the article: "One client said that SEACOM told them that it was Property24 that was filtering and blocking traffic from the SEACOM network to their websites."

There's a war going on behind the scenes here, folks.

Unfortunately, SEACOM has declined to provide a detailed technical explanation of what happened for them to decide to de-peer smaller networks. Based on conversations I've had with people in the industry, this is what I've been able to piece together:
  • Networks/ASN operators would peer with SEACOM at NAPAfrica, then through some shenanigans would effectively get free transit to other Internet exchange points where SEACOM peers. This was apparently a big problem for transit traffic within Africa.
  • SEACOM apparently approached networks who were doing this to negotiate some kind of transit agreement with them, but this never got very far. Apparently the whole free/open peering situation created a loophole that all these (smaller) networks were afraid to have closed, so they wouldn't even meet with SEACOM.
  • SEACOM responded by throwing out the bathwater, the baby, and the whole tub. I'm not sure if there is a technical solution that would allow a more nuanced approach instead of just going with the blunt instrument that is selective peering, and unfortunately no-one who knows anything about networking at this level seems to want to talk about the nitty-gritties.
Click to expand...

So basically smaller ISP's were using Seacom's peering at NAPAfrica not to only access Seacom's customers (which is the spirit of peering) but also to transit to third party customers of other peering locations where Seacom also peers?
 
cobusv said:
@Jan why dont you reach out to Mark Tinka and see if you could maybe get a response out of him, i mean if anything he will definitely know the details
Click to expand...

Yeah, Mark Tinka would almost certainly know.

Everything official has to go through SEACOM's comms (and legal) department. We've tried asking SEACOM for comment about this several times and that one-liner in this article is, as far as I know, the best we've got so far regarding its peering being exploited for transit.
 
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