Sprint vs. Cogent vs. Me

Yeah, like I'm gonna win that fight...

By Sole Soul on November 2, 2008 2:05:07 AM from

(Thank Kryo for the link. Or cluster of links.)

So apparently Sprint and Cogent are having a disagreement. This doesn't particularly concern me, other than Sprint being about the only internet access in my area, and the fact that they've decided to cut off all traffic to and from Cogent for the time being.

In theory, this means I can't access this site. (Which brings me to the question of why you guys are hosted on Cogent-I'm not trying to blame anyone here, just curious.) So, for the record, I guess I'm a ghost.

Also, apparently, Cogent has had similar problems in the past. I'm not sure if I'm reading it right or not (I didn't do that much research) but it seems Cogent may have been in Sprint's position last time around; i.e., the one doing the cutting. In any case, I just want to make a point here before I go on.

I understand that Sprint and Cogent have an agreement. I understand that Sprint feels that Cogent has not held up their end in some way or another. I can agree with them doing something about it. However, I cannot agree with them fucking over their customers as a reaction to that, which is essentially what they have done. When you have a problem with another company, you don't alienate your customers to solve it. It doesn't work.

So Cogent apparently has some sort of deal going on where they say, and I quote:

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.

Now I suppose since it says on-net locations that pretty much resolves that question, and I doubt they do residential anyway, not to mention I'm out in the middle of nowhere. But it would seem that 100mbps is kind of low for a business connection, from my point of view, so I'm hoping there's more to it than that.

In any case, while I can find nearly 200 duplicates of the above press release, none of them provide any additional details. I assume one would have to contact sales and go through numerous channels to verify that they are, indeed, a Sprint customer.

Which, allow me to laugh at this for just a moment. Sprint has cut off access with Cogent, both to and from. Cogent, in response, says to all Sprint customers that are affected that until Sprint allows normal connection operations to resume they will provide them with a free internet connection. These, mind you, are the same people who cannot connect to Cogent. I'm wondering how many people they think will actually see it-although I suppose that's how they can manage to offer it for free for the duration.

Now normally I really wouldn't care-I hope to God this thing resolves itself inside a month or I'm going to have to go to satellite (everyone groan with me for a moment), but considering that I'm on 768kbit and there really are not other alternatives in my area, it seemed like something worth looking at.

For the record, moving is not a solution. I'm sorry, for everyone who was about to suggest it. I would if I could.

+130 Karma | 14 Replies

Since the edit button refuses to load for me, while connecting through Tunnel, I'm just going to hope I won't be burned at the stake for double posting.

First point-I'm aware I'm far from alone in this, and that an equally frustrating problem is Cogent customers trying to access Sprint hosted sites.

Second point-If I've misunderstood any of the above, corrections are welcome.

Wow, that's petty...

Hit up a proxy and keep your internet though, I'd groan with you but my own satellite connection has monopolized them already...

There is only one cable company, but it goes by different names in different areas.

Around here (San Diego area) it goes by either COX or Time-Warner, with DirectTV on the side.

It is a total (country at least, but possibly world-wide) monopoly.

It's really funny. I had COX in Ramona, CA. Then I moved to San Diego and had to get Time-Warner. They are identical, down to the commercials they run for their own services to their own customers. When one gets a certain speed connection, the other has it at the same time. They just plug in a different name to it. We are locked in to whichever sudo-company has control in any given area.

"But it would seem that 100mbps is kind of low for a business connection, from my point of view, so I'm hoping there's more to it than that."

The fastest around here is 20Mb/s, so if they are offering 5x that it is really something special. Although if you can't actually get it because you can't connect to them, it is a moot point.

100 Mb/s equates to 12.5 MB/s - and that is faster than anything I have seen for internet speeds. Heck, that is fast enough for Beta quality full-screen, full motion NTSC video.

(you do understand the difference between mega-bits and mega-bytes, right?)

54Mb/s = Blue-ray Disc quality, by the way. So how you can say 100Mb/s is low, ??? I dunno.

I'd check into whether they can actually pull this kind of crap (FCC might be interested).

BTW, now that you bring up the question of monopoly, why is it only one company makes the game Monopoly?

I also never understood how one cable company gets an area to "rule over" and another gets somewhere else. Why isn't there true competition (probably because some politicians got paid so there wouldn't be)?

Moose, I fully understand how large of a connection 100mbps is, but I would assume most companies would vastly prefer 1gbps.

If you take a look at the other speeds they offer-for businesses at least-100mbps pales in comparison.

OC3 to OC48: For our largest customers, we offer OC services from 155 Mbps (OC3) to 2.5 Gbps (OC48). These services take full advantage of connectivity to our non-oversubscibed backbone, able to support all the traffic our customers can produce.

That's right, 2.5gbps.

I'm basing this off my experiences, though, which involve many multiple 100mbps connections being saturated at my college last year, as well as a single 100mbps connection being not quite sufficient to host a pseudo-permanent game server of any reasonable population (we're talking >500 people here, not 10-15 people playing TF2 or the like).

Though I guess if it's just a web server (i.e. no Filefront etc hosted on it) that 100mbps is more than sufficient.

Dr J (!), I believe Moose is pointing out that there's no competition between cable companies because they're just different branded for different areas of the country. For my part, I don't care what they call themselves, or if there's only one company, but the fact that they can't find my house pisses me off.

Mapquest can find it.

Worth looking into, Dr J.

The typical business connection isn't that high. You don't need a 100Mb connection for email access even if you have a thousand employees. Only companies that center around high use would be going for the large end of that.

Well then clearly my perspective is unusual, but my original point regarding it still applies-namely, wondering if they do residential service as well. I would assume there are ISPs hosted via Cogent, so they may not actually do direct, but if they don't do direct, then it's likely I'm not in anyone's "area", in which case I'm back to square one.

I was going crazy tryign to figure out why I could not get on any stardock sites from my laptop. I even sent Stardock support an e-mail, I thought stardock blocked me for some reason since I could get on with a proxy or from work. I spent 2 hours messing around with my firewall and whatnot for nothing.... anyway it apears sprint has stoped the ban, but i have to say i have a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach about all this. what right does and ISP have to block parts of the internet from paying coutmers? do we live in China or something? i'm glad it only lasted a few days because if i missed out on 2.0 of galciv2 or entrenchment because of it i would have been very very upset.

regardless, sprint sucks as a ISP to begin with, and for them to pull thsi shit is beond ridiculous. I plan on cancling my subsription, but what gets me is they are going to want $200 for an ealry cancel fee.

any lawyers around? I smell class action...

clemming, for future reference, use HTTP-Tunnel. It is apparently hosted on Cogent, actually, as it was inaccessible to me for about an hour after the fact, but they rerouted very quickly, and I've been using it and TOR since to access Cogent hosted sites. In any case, although the free service is only 1.5KB/s, it's a lot better than nothing, and it's much simpler to use than TOR.

It also works better than having to find a new proxy every 5 hours when they die out, again.

so i just got off the phone with sprint. three people all said they are, indeed, blocking cogent hosted sites.

none of them had a clue why.

one person blaintanly told me to accsess cogent hosted websites I should use another isp. umh.... WTF am I paying for with sprint? Whats next, i'll try caling my mother on my cellphone and they will tell me I can't and should use another wireless carrier?

anyway i am waiting for a call back from some "manager" to discuss canceling my account without penilty....

I to have sprint as backbone thru millenicom(cause millenicom is truely unlimited access),, i found i could access my stock sights other day,, i found a solution get the free vpn total free and it works,,,

http://www.anchorfree.com/

Connect with Hotspot Shield and BOOM, you are now getting around being blocked. There are many other reasons to use Hotspot Shield (like being secure at a hotspot).

They're just drones-they don't know anything and they can't help you; they're just saying what they've been told to say, or, in some cases, giving you what seems to be a logical solution: Namely, since you couldn't (now can, I assume, since you're posting) access Cogent hosted sites through Sprint, that doing so would necessitate using a different connection method, of which the most obvious (to them) is a different ISP.

They also don't appear to have heard that Sprint has restored the peering, but as it only happened not quite three hours ago, I suppose I can't blame them.

*tempararly resorting peering.

while they figure out thier "long term solution" i'll be on comcast, faster and cheaper... just wish I had that option a year ago when I signed with sprint.

although I am not in love with comcast and their bandwith capping either...250 gigs a month is high, but obtainable now.... let alone in the future.

serously.... what is happing to the internet?

Sole soul: I'm gonna call the FCC. Seems to me that this situation is akin to one state, say Kansas cutting the roads to Missouri because it doesn't like the toll it's charging (not exact, but close).

This seems to violate Interstate Commerce laws, but not being a lawyer I can't say for certain.

I just think the situation you're trapped in is outrageous. I really wish I could help you.

We all seem to be at the mercy of these companies and powerless to do anything about this type of thing.

If anyone wishes to get through to the Consumer complaints division of the FCC: Phone: 1-888-CALL-FCC (1-888-225-5322)

Sole Soul if you could pm me with some info about the area you're in, etc. it might help.

Dr. J.

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Sprint vs. Cogent vs. Me

Yeah, like I'm gonna win that fight...