WebProNews

Tens of thousands of public internet addresses located on Cogent's  backbone are no longer accessible from Sprint Customers. This disruption is affecting thousands of web properties including WebProNews.com. Drudgereport.com was also affected by this outage but has apparently managed to route around Sprint's network.

According to personnel inside Cogent, negotiations with Sprint regarding peering arrangements fell apart and Sprint "pulled the plug" on all traffic to and from Cogent's network.

This breakage can be viewed at internetpulse.net, a site that monitors peering amongst the largest network backbone providers.

Peering arrangements are common amongst large backbone providers and assure traffic from one network will make it to its destination network. Cogent is no stranger to peering disputes. Cogent pulled the plug on Telia, one of the largest backbones in Europe. Cogent has also had peering problems with Level3 in the fall of 2005 resulting in network breakage.

There is no word from Cogent as to when service will be restored.

Update! Read the PR Newswire report here or here.

Another Update; I have heard from Matthew Sullivan of Sprint who had this to say:

"Jay – I saw your “Sprint pulls the plug on Cogent…” story earlier tonight, and I’d like to offer a few comments on behalf of Sprint if you have an opportunity to update your article.

As you noted, Cogent is no stranger to peering disputes, and any statements by Cogent referencing “negotiations” or “pulling the plug” are tactics to deflect attention from the real issue relating to a contract that was agreed to and signed by both parties.

We simply want Cogent to honor the terms of an agreed upon contract. Also, we’ve provided Cogent with ample opportunity to honor its contract with Sprint or make alternate connectivity arrangements. "