If you have Sprint, read this:

[HTM|Assraker]

Sprint has blocked all traffic to Cogent effective the other day. If you are having internet trouble, this may be why.

It seems they are unhappy that Cogent charges 70-90% less for bandwidth than Sprint (taking some of their corporate customers) or any other provider, and since Sprint's stock is at rock bottom, Sprint has decided to sue, as well as cut off their own customers.

Also, this fight is about peering. Cogent has/offers free peering to Sprint. Sprint however, does not like the influx of traffic from the Cogent network and wants Cogent to pay them for peering, while there are no fees for Sprint to connect to Cogent.. You see where this is going: Sprint wants the cake and the icing...

When Sprint blocked all traffic coming/going to the Cogent network, they decided not to peer with anyone else (to make up for the loss), or to do some reasonable routing to ensure that their customers service remained unaffected.

This is major folks, for Cogent is ranked number 2 in the world by connections, and number one in the world where traffic volume and distance/traffic ratio are concerned.

Here is a live graph showing current peering:
http://www.internetpulse.net/

Here is some background on Cogent (a good read):
http://www.forbes.com/technology/for.../1013/064.html

Disclosure: I was at one time a customer of Cogent, Level3, AT&T, Telia, and a few others. Cogent has indeed caused prices to drop where business connections are concerned, and they are still dropping. Notice how your internet rates are not though? That shows you how the end users are getting ripped a new one, with no upgrades done to infrastructure of the last mile, but that is a rant for another day.

[HTM|Assraker]

Here is a copy/paste of an article about it:
----------------------
WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- On October 30 at 4:30 pm
Sprint-Nextel severed its Internet connection to Cogent thereby partitioning
the Internet. It is no longer possible for many Sprint customers and Cogent
customers to directly communicate across the Internet. Sprint did so in
violation of a contractual obligation to exchange Internet traffic with Cogent
on a settlement free peering basis. Sprint and Cogent are engaged in
litigation over this matter. Cogent regrets that Sprint chose to take this
unilateral action rather than await a determination by the court as to the
rights of the parties. Cogent remains ready to reestablish, on the same
settlement free basis as previously existed, the connections that Sprint has
severed.

In the over 1300 on-net locations worldwide where Cogent provides service,
Cogent is offering every Sprint-Nextel wireline customer that is unable to
connect to Cogent's customers a free 100 megabit per second connection to the
Internet for as long as Sprint continues to keep this partitioning of the
Internet in place. Unfortunately, there is no way that Cogent can do the same
for the wireless customers of Sprint-Nextel.


All other major wireless carriers have full connectivity to Cogent and are
unaffected by this event.
------------------------------
Source: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/s...s,603138.shtml

[HTM~Par]

Holy hell I just read the Forbes article about Cogent/Schaeffer...and I like the way he thinks! He is the best thing to happen to the internet since...the internet happened.

Fat stupid dumb companies like att

[HTM|Minion]

Crap...

My ping increased from the mid-twenties to 60 or so. I ran a tracert and now I'm being routed through New Jersey? WTF AT&T? Is this related somehow, I notice I'm staying pretty much on "Level3".

>tracert 72.249.10.45

Tracing route to 72.249.10.45 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.0.1
  2     1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.1.254
  3     7 ms     7 ms     7 ms  adsl-70-240-79-254.dsl.hstntx.swbell.net [70.240
.79.254]
  4     7 ms     7 ms     7 ms  dist2-vlan50.hstntx.sbcglobal.net [151.164.11.12
5]
  5     7 ms     7 ms     7 ms  bb2-g14-0.hstntx.sbcglobal.net [151.164.92.206]

  6    56 ms    56 ms    56 ms  70.245.63.206
  7    56 ms    56 ms    56 ms  asn3356-level3.eqnwnj.sbcglobal.net [151.164.89.
250]
  8    67 ms    56 ms    69 ms  ae-32-54.ebr2.Newark1.Level3.net [4.68.99.126]
  9    57 ms    68 ms    57 ms  ae-4.ebr3.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.132.101]

 10    57 ms    69 ms    57 ms  ae-73-73.csw2.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.134.1
66]
 11    65 ms     *        *     ae-71-71.ebr1.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.134.1
33]
 12    79 ms    72 ms    72 ms  ae-2.ebr3.Atlanta2.Level3.net [4.69.132.85]
 13    66 ms    56 ms    56 ms  ae-7.ebr3.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.134.21]
 14    56 ms    67 ms    55 ms  ae-83-83.csw3.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.136.162]

 15    56 ms    57 ms    65 ms  ae-31-89.car1.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.68.19.131]
 16    56 ms    56 ms    56 ms  COLO4-DALLA.car1.Dallas1.Level3.net [8.9.232.74]

 17    56 ms    56 ms    56 ms  ge-1-2.core2.colo4dallas.net [206.123.64.30]
 18    56 ms    57 ms    56 ms  206.123.64.98
 19    57 ms    56 ms    56 ms  72.249.10.45

Trace complete.

[Freak]

I head to Denver now for some reason.

[HTM|Minion]

Looks like you are staying on Level3 too. I have AT&T on the phone, I'll let you know what they say.

[HTM~ZenEye]

weak

[HTM~Par]

Tracing route to 72.249.10.45 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  141.224.92.250
  2    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  141.224.32.33
  3    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  141.224.32.4
  4    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  stpaulties-actc-Gi2-8.r.state.mn.us [207.171.95.
126]
  5     2 ms     2 ms     2 ms  207.250.198.65
  6    13 ms    13 ms    20 ms  peer-02-so-0-0-0-0.chcg.twtelecom.net [66.192.24
4.20]
  7    17 ms    38 ms    16 ms  67.17.109.117
  8    14 ms    13 ms    14 ms  te-3-3.car3.chicago1.level3.net [4.68.110.193]
  9    28 ms    19 ms    20 ms  ae-31-55.ebr1.Chicago1.Level3.net [4.68.101.158]

 10    15 ms    14 ms    14 ms  ae-6.ebr1.Chicago2.Level3.net [4.69.140.190]
 11    52 ms    59 ms    59 ms  ae-3.ebr2.Denver1.Level3.net [4.69.132.61]
 12    58 ms    59 ms    59 ms  ae-1-100.ebr1.Denver1.Level3.net [4.69.132.37]
 13    61 ms    59 ms    59 ms  ae-2.ebr2.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.132.106]
 14    60 ms    60 ms    59 ms  ae-82-82.csw3.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.136.146]

 15    49 ms    49 ms    49 ms  ae-31-89.car1.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.68.19.131]
 16    47 ms    47 ms    46 ms  COLO4-DALLA.car1.Dallas1.Level3.net [8.9.232.74]

 17    47 ms    48 ms    46 ms  ge-1-2.core2.colo4dallas.net [206.123.64.30]
 18    48 ms    47 ms    47 ms  206.123.64.98
 19    48 ms    46 ms    47 ms  72.249.10.45

Trace complete.

Ping still normal, but my connection goes and see Lunch over in Denver before it gets to Dallas.

[Freak]

I suppose if the server was in Denver they'd send us straight to Dallas.lol

[HTM|Minion]

This was my old tracert to colo4, no Level3 at all...lol.

Tracing route to 72.29.117.197 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.1.254
  2     6 ms     6 ms     6 ms  adsl-66-142-153-254.dsl.hstntx.swbell.net [66.14
2.153.254]
  3     *        7 ms     6 ms  151.164.245.1
  4     6 ms     6 ms     6 ms  bb1-g14-0.hstntx.sbcglobal.net [151.164.92.204]

  5    13 ms    13 ms    13 ms  ex1-p2-0.eqdltx.sbcglobal.net [151.164.40.33]
  6    23 ms    13 ms    13 ms  151.164.249.246
  7    13 ms    13 ms    17 ms  hagg-03-ge-1-0-0-459.dlfw.twtelecom.net [64.129.
234.20]
  8    14 ms    14 ms    13 ms  ge-1-2.core2.colo4dallas.net [206.123.64.30]
  9    14 ms    14 ms    14 ms  206.123.64.54
 10    14 ms    14 ms    14 ms  72.29.117.197

Trace complete.

[Freak]

Maybe they hired ex-comcast employee's to help them find the indirect routes. I did notice my ping was still the same though,but some websites take longer to load now.

[HTM|Minion]

I was told it's due to "maintenance" and it should be temporary. I guess time will tell.

[Freak]

Time seems to have made it worse,can't run tracert now.Guess at&t blocked it to keep the complaints down.Dallas I get timed out & to freaks it just sits there forever.

[HTM~ZenEye]

Hope this gets resolved soon. I hate inefficient routing.