According to Alex Muse, DSLReports and GigaOm, Cogent and Sprint de-peered this morning in a tiff of some kind. Cogent claimed this year that it was settlement free - coupled with its roots in the PSInet backbone network made it a Tier 1 provider. Cogent has had issues with other backbones including Level3 and Telia.
Cogent is incensed at the move,saying it violates a contractual obligation to exchange internet traffic on a settlement-free peering basis, and is taking legal action. It wants Sprint-Nextel to re-establish the link on the same basis.
So Cogent decided to make an offer:
Cogent is taking the moral high ground, and offering every Sprint-Nextel wireline customer that can't connect to Cogent's customers a free 100MBps internet connection until Sprint reconnects, though it says it can't do the same for wireless users. [IT examiner]
Technorati
Del.icio.us
Slashdot
Digg
Thank goodness for BGP and multiple vendors. Forcing the traffic of a client over to their slower but fully peered Verizon Business line has gotten us out of the mess, at least for now.
If this isn't a good justification for having multiple ISPs and BGP I don't know what is.