Cogent and the company formerly know as Level 3 and now properly called CenturyLink had some serious issues on Monday. The internet is rife with rumours as to the cause, as you would expect comments on the Slashdot story focus on the possibility this is related to the recent decision by the FCC to reverse net neutrality rules in the US. There are reports that the issues are continuing today but not at the volume reached yesterday. Backbone ISPs tend to be rather coy about reporting on the root cause of these types of outages much to the dismay of the technically minded such as our readers. Keep an eye on sites like DownDetector if you feel you are currently effected, and consider letting them know.
"Two major backbone internet service providers — Level 3 and Cogent — appear to be suffering from massive outages and downgraded service, according to ISP monitoring service Downdetector. Users in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Atlanta, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. are apparently being hit the hardest. Comcast is also said to be affected to a lesser degree."
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Thank you Mr. Trump for
Thank you Mr. Trump for putting Mr. Pai in the office. Yes, it’s sarcasm.
Obama appointed Ajit Pai to
Obama appointed Ajit Pai to the FCC and Democrats confirmed him. Trump just promoted him. It’s called Corporatism and both Democrats and Republicans are guilty.
My inner conspiracy-theorist
My inner conspiracy-theorist is whispering to me that this is the first part of the chain.
Mr. Pai unleashes the restrictions on the Internet Providers.
The networks suddenly experience a Nation-wide slowdown.
The top tier providers blame heavy network use, and jack up prices on lower tiers.
Internet Service Providers use this to rationalize providing us with “a user experience tailored to our need” set of tiered data “packages” aka fast lane/slow lane/toll lane…
And thus the Internet becomes
And thus the Internet becomes just like the Cable TV of Old with no video content in the fast lane unless the user purchases a package deal from the content provider that just happens to ALSO be the Internet Service Provider.
It’s time to Break up the big content providers and force them to divest of their Internet Service Provider holdings. Force all the big Cable companies to give up offering Internet services and they will not be able to ever turn the Internet into a Cable TV like service.
With No Internet Service Providers also at the same time allowed to provide content services the incentive to monopolize the Internet is mostly gone. Big Cable has been planning it’s Internet takeover for years once Netflix/Others started eating into Big Cable’s business model and the ISP business needs to be separate from the content provider business. This is an Antitrust Issue now that the FCC has backed out of regulating Net Neutrality so now it’s time to bust up the Big Cable Trusts, and any other Technology Trusts that have sprung up over the last 50 Years.
The US is overdue for a big Round of Trust Busting just like there was at the last part of the 19th century into the early 20th century. Big Technology is no different than Big Oil and Big Oil was broken up and even Ma Bell was broken up. So it’s High Time for a new Round of Trust Busting and it’s going to be hard to do unless folks vote out any politicians that are friendly to the Technology Trusts. It’s time for pitchforks, tar, and feathers and that includes getting out of office crooks from both political parties that have been cozy with the Big Technology Trusts for the past 50 years.
And you thought you where really cutting that cable that bled you dry each and every month, but you have just been in a new gilded age of the technology Trusts that are not any different than the Old Gilded age of Oil/Railroad/etc Robber Barrons. What is old is new again and things are more corrupt this time around that ever before!
As the administrator of a
As the administrator of a largish WAN deployment I can tell you first hand that Cogent has had problems for years, and it has nothing to do with Net Neutrality. Either they suck at monitoring their network or they just don’t give AF. The same goes for CenturyLink, although I don’t recall ever tracing a problem back to Level3, much less the same problem for weeks on end.
My inner conspiracy theorist
My inner conspiracy theorist does not like your common sense! 😉
You are probably right about them taking an “if it ain’t broke enough, pretend it’s all right” approach to network management…