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Cogent, Telia Resolve Peering Dispute

Cogent (CCOI) and Telia have resolved their peering dispute, and are once again accepting one another's traffic.

Cogent (CCOI) and Telia have resolved their peering dispute, and are once again accepting one another's traffic. Renesys, which track Internet routing, reports that connections between the two providers were restored about just before 6 pm UTC (1 pm Eastern time).

The dispute caused Internet users in nearly 4,000 network prefixes at either Telia or Cogent to be unable to access web sites on the other network. It also caused problems for gamers whose ISPs rely solely on Cogent for connectivity, who were unable to access World of Warcraft. Cogent blamed Telia for the dispute, saying the European ISP had not lived up to agreements to increase capacity at some peering centers.


Given Cogent's rationale for the de-peering, Renesys says there may still be open issues between the two companies:

While this is good for the Internet, Cogent claimed that this dispute was about capacity issues and no one orders and installs new high capacity circuits in a week, especially during a contract dispute. So if there was a capacity issue, there is still a capacity issue. As a result, the situation is bound to be very fluid for the next few weeks.

As with many peering disputes, the Cogent-Telia scrap started with a bang and is ending much more quietly. But for the customers affected - which included Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Delaware, Kansas State University, Reuters America and especially all those Warcraft gamers - the end of the spat will come as welcome relief.