FYI - Suspension of Cogent access to ARIN Whois

Mon Jan 27 17:55:29 UTC 2020

I now longer have a dog in this fight, but “The” peering cake was my project (such as it was)...

Cogent has, to the best of my knowledge, always had rather large voids in their IPv6 connectivity. To the best of my knowledge, HE and Google are the most significant of these voids, but I believe there are others as well.

Some quotes I received from Cogent representatives over the years (some may be slightly paraphrased):

	“Hurricane is too small to peer IPv6 with us… They should just buy transit from us.”
	“Why should we peer with HE? Our customers aren’t reporting it as a problem.”
	“Congested links allow us to pass the savings on to our customers.”
	“We see from ARIN whois that you recently registered an ASN. Want to buy transit from us?” (many times over several years)
		(This particular violation of the ARIN Whois AUP/TOS eventually resulted in Cogent being suspended from using the service)

Owen

> On Jan 26, 2020, at 22:41 , Large Hadron Collider <large.hadron.collider at gmx.com> wrote:
> 
> Peering cake? Carbohydrates always entice me to peer... :-)
> 
> On Wed, 8 Jan 2020 10:16:12 -0600
> "Aaron Gould" <aaron1 at gvtc.com> wrote:
> 
>> I’m pretty sure cogent has had issues providing full internet connectivity via ipv6 to google and perhaps he (hurricane electric), perhaps others as well, for quite some time now.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -Aaron
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces at nanog.org] On Behalf Of James Breeden
>> Sent: Tuesday, January 7, 2020 7:04 PM
>> To: Rich Kulawiec; North American Network Operators' Group
>> Subject: RE: FYI - Suspension of Cogent access to ARIN Whois
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Hmm. Wonder if this can be used to cancel some cogent services... I mean, they technically aren't providing access to the full internet now. 🤷‍♂️🤔
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Sent via the Samsung Galaxy Note9, an AT&T 5G Evolution capable smartphone
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -------- Original message --------
>> 
>> From: Rich Kulawiec <rsk at gsp.org>
>> 
>> Date: 1/7/20 7:02 PM (GMT-06:00)
>> 
>> To: North American Network Operators' Group <nanog at nanog.org>
>> 
>> Subject: Re: FYI - Suspension of Cogent access to ARIN Whois
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Jan 07, 2020 at 04:54:22PM -0600, Mike Hammett wrote:
>>> That said, if there's a stern warning about Cogent abusing the system,
>>> maybe their customers finding out is a good thing for the overall
>>> community. ;-)
>> 
>> And that is what I would suggest: reply to all queries with a notice
>> that explains what is happening, why it's happening, and provides
>> contact information for Cogent executives: preferably their *personal*
>> email addresses and phone numbers.
>> 
>> ---rsk
>> 
> 
> 
> --
> Large Hadron Collider <large.hadron.collider at gmx.com>