Cogent Communications

Cogent was founded in 1999 at the peak of the industry's growth and was funded by angel investors including members of Keiretsu Forum.[5] In three years, Cogent acquired 13 other failing carriers, purchasing $14 billion in capital for $60 million, including $4 billion worth of Property, Plant and Equipment.[6]

• September 2001 – Acquires the assets of NetRail[5]
• February 2002 – Acquires Allied Riser[7][8]
• April 2002 – Acquires Building Access Agreements from OnSite Access
• April 2002 – Acquires Major US Assets of PSINet[9]
• September 2002 – Acquires Major Assets of FiberCity Networks
• February 2003 – Acquires Fiber Network Solutions[10]
• May 2003 – Acquires Assets of Applied Theory
• January 2004 – Acquires LambdaNet France & Spain[11]
• March 2004 – Acquires Fiber Network and Equipment in Germany Out of Former Carrier1 Assets[12]
• September 2004 – Acquires Global Access[13]
• October 2004 – Acquires Aleron Broadband[14]
• December 2004 – Acquires NTT/Verio Dedicated Access Business in U.S.[15]

Cogent has been controversial in the ISP market for low bandwidth pricing and its public disputes over peering with AOL (2003),[16] Level 3 Communications (2005),[17] France Telecom (2006),[18] Limelight Networks (2007),[19] Telia Carrier (March 2008),[20] and Sprint Nextel (October 2008).[21]

On March 14, 2008, after Cogent stopped routing packets from European network provider Telia (AS 1299), their two networks lost mutual connectivity.[20] The connection was reestablished March 28, 2008 with interconnection points in both the United States and Europe.[22]

On June 6, 2011, Cogent automatically stopped peering with The Department of Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) causing a disruption for 3 days.[23]

In November 2015, CenturyLink signed a new long-term bilateral interconnection agreement with Cogent Communications.[24]

Cogent has yet to agree on peering with the biggest IPv6 connectivity provider, Hurricane Electric. As of March 2016, direct connectivity between the two networks is impossible.[25] Cogent and Google have also stopped IPv6 peering in 2016.[26] This is rumored to be closely tied to Cogent leveraging Google's IPv4 traffic via a paid customer or to maintain Settlement-Free Interconnect with another network.[27]

In February 2017, Cogent blocked many piracy and streaming sites including The Pirate Bay.[28] This was unintentional due to a poorly crafted Spanish court order.[29]

• Official site
• Cogent Communications SEC Filings