WSJ Source Implies Verizon Intentionally Letting Peering Degrade → My experience with Cogent

I added Cogent into our BGP mix a couple years ago. All has been decent except for every once in a while there would be a congested peer that I'd have to change my announcements and route around. In a couple days it would be fixed and then everything would be fine again. Except Verizon never got fixed and this started over a year ago. So I quit announcing my routes to Verizon via Cogent and routed my outbound traffic through other carriers. This was for traffic destined to Verizon itself and not to any residential services.

Then starting this past Monday, I got complaints from users on Comcast, Brighthouse Networks, and Time Warner Cable that they were having trouble connecting, high latency and jitter. All traceroutes involved Cogent.

I opened a ticket with Cogent and they confirmed their peer with Telia was congested which was causing the problem. So I asked what networks should I route around so that I can turn my Cogent connections back on and still have a good experience for my customers. The NOC's responded saying Level3, Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, TATA, and now Telia. This tells me I can only really use my Cogent links for Cogent customers and maybe European traffic because peering exchanges there are managed with traffic levels in mind.

I personally don't think its just Netflix that has caused Cogent to go downhill so quickly. I do think Netflix needs to belly up and buy paid peering (customer routes) with the eyeball networks. Then we can see if its really Netflix's fault that these public peering connections are so congested or if its bad management on Cogent's end.