Cogent and Level 3 Communications have settled their Internet peering spat, agreeing to continue exchanging traffic on a settlement-free basis under certain conditions that were not spelled out.

Both sides agreed to keep the terms of the agreement private, but Cogent CEO Dave Schaeffer did say those terms include a requirement that notice be given before any future cutoff of peering between customers of the two companies.

“This agreement puts a prohibition in place where if any party wants to break the agreement or exit it, they would have to have a finite period – a notice period to the world – before they could stop peering,” Schaeffer said. “That was very important to us.”

The original peering termination imposed by Level 3 prevented Cogent’s customers from connecting to Level 3 customers via the Internet. Cogent went public with the peering debate, along with a free offer to connect Level 3 customers to its network, a month ago.

In addition to getting a new agreement, Cogent also got a public apology from Level 3 CEO Jim Crowe to its customers, and a lot of publicity. “This dramatically increased our visibility – we have been more under the radar screen,” Schaeffer admitted. “We are of comparable size to Level 3, but not as many people knew about us. A lot more people have heard of Cogent now.”

In addition, he said, the public nature of the dispute should discourage other companies who consider discontinuing peering agreements, which are fundamental to keeping the Internet open to all.

“This should never have happened,” Schaeffer said. “But the big message here is that network operators should think long and hard before they tamper with existing peering agreements.”

During Level 3’s earnings call last week, Crowe issued an apology to customers of both Level 3 and Cogent.

“During the quarter, we modified the nature of a number of relationships with the goal of making sure that the agreement remained equitable to both sides,” he said. “We remain committed to this goal. In one instance this quarter a number of Level 3 customers and Cogent customers were hurt as we pursued this strategy. I apologize to both sets of customers. In addition to achieving the contractual goal with interconnecting carriers we recognize that we have an obligation to customers of the internet and in this instance we contributed to letting them down.”