Cogent sent the following email to our clients this afternoon. If you are on a Cogent network or are trying to reach someone on a Cogent network you may have network interruption from 11PM until 5AM tomorrow. Here is the email:

Dear Cogent Customer,

As a valued customer, Cogent is committed to keeping you informed about any changes in network status. This email is to alert you about fiber maintenance that will potentially impact our network. This maintenance is not expected to cause downtime for your Cogent internet service. You may experience unusual routing and/or latency, but we are doing everything we can to minimize the impact of this maintenance by Abovenet/MFN.

Start time (e.s.t.): 12:00 am 2/18/06
End time (e.s.t.): 6:00 am 2/18/06
Work order number: WO3402
Order ID(s): 1-3ST9Y

During this time, Abovenet/MFN will be making permanent the temporary restoration of some of Cogent’s long haul fibers in New York. After we reviewed their Scope of Work, they modified their work plan, and depending on the amount of damage the backbone circuits may not go down at all. However, if the damage is extensive, requiring a new cable pull or conduit replacement in the manhole we could experience as much as 6 hours of downtime on our backbone spans between New York and Philadelphia and New York and Washington DC. Please note your connection will experience no downtime, but you may experience routing anomalies and latency for 6 hours while Abovenet completes the repairs.

We will be updating our network status page at
http://status.cogentco.com throughout the night as the work proceeds and will do everything possible to minimize impact.

In addition, we have added temporary capacity on the protect path of our long-haul network from New York to Washington DC to carry some of the traffic that would normally take the path Abovenet will be working on. This will help reduce overloads on any of our remaining backbone paths.

If you have any problems with your connection after this time, or if you have any questions regarding the maintenance at any point, please call Customer Service at 1-877-7COGENT and reference this ticket number: WO3402. You can also check for updates at http://status.cogentco.com.

We look forward to continuing to bring you excellent service. Thank you
for being a Cogent Customer.

Sincerely,
Customer Support
Cogent Communications
support@cogentco.com