I've noticed that ever since the whole AOL / Cogent thing went south Level3’s performance has been sluggish. Ping times to and from my servers over Level3 has gone from between 10ms and 30ms to between 80ms and 170ms. Data that used to travel over Level3’s network is now being sent over other carrier’s networks by my DC’s BGP routers. I asked the BGP Engineer and he said that several of Level3’s peering points are being overloaded by data from Cogent and that this is resulting in poor network performance. I’ve also noticed that data from other servers in various locations that used to travel over Level3 is now being routed over other networks even if it results in more hops. Is anyone else experiencing diminished performance from Level3’s network. My DC is in San Diego.

Alot of people are noticing the diminished performance. The Engineer was correct, due to AOL dropping Cogent's peering, a majority of Cogent's data now has to travel over Level 3, which, Cogent is trying to enlarge the connections they have with Level3.

Last I heard, they're being a bit slow about the negotiations and are losing a fair amount of customers thanks to it.

There are many threads about it, a quite large post in the Webhosting forum (AOL cuts Cogent's peering...or something like that) and another in the Dedicated forum (Cogent desperate for peering..)

Ryan F:

Were in San Diego, and our Cogent line has been performing better than Level(3) for quite some time now.

We just ruled out cogent by cancelling 3 servers in Miami and also dropping our own line. We cannot keep up explaining customers on rr.com and aol why they cant see their pages and why they run super slow. Piece of **** we have to deal with this at the end of the year.