“Our goal is not to hurt anyone. “Just to prevent the Russian government from having another tool in its military box,” Schaefer told The Washington Post.
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Cogent, based in Washington, D.C., is one of the world’s largest providers of what is known as the Internet backbone – roughly comparable to the interstate highway system, providing the main channel for data flows that local companies then direct to individual domains. Schaefer said Cogent’s networks carry about a quarter of the world’s Internet traffic. Cogent has several dozen customers in Russia, many of whom, such as state-owned telecommunications giant Rostelecom, are close to the government.
Russia, like most countries, is connected to the world by several major suppliers, but Cogent is among the largest. The company began closing its Russian companies at noon on Friday, but did so gradually. Some customers have requested a delay of up to several days until they find other Internet sources, Schaefer said, and the company is trying to meet those demands.
“We are quite confident that we are not interfering with anyone’s ability to obtain any information,” he said, although he acknowledged the possibility of delays and other disruptions with Russia.
In a letter sent Thursday to one of Cogent’s Russian clients and received by The Washington Post, the company wrote: 2022. The economic sanctions imposed as a result of the invasion and the increasingly precarious security situation make it impossible for Cogent to continue to provide you with services. All ports and IP address space provided by Cogent will be restored from the date of termination. “
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Ukrainian officials are lobbying US Internet companies to suspend services from Russia and have also asked ICANN, a California-based nonprofit that monitors aspects of global Internet functionality, to suspend Russia’s main Internet domain, .ru. ICANN rejected the request on Wednesday.
While Ukraine’s calls to limit online sources of Russian government propaganda have sparked widespread sympathy and some action by key US companies, efforts to cut Russia off from the Internet have generally sparked a backlash from digital rights activists. They argue that isolating Russians from online services – and especially social media – deprives them of access to information about the war in Ukraine, leaving government-controlled media as the only source of news.
“Cogent’s move is wrong. “Cutting off the Russian people from the global Internet hurts those who seek to obtain and share the truth,” tweeted Rebecca McKinnon, vice president of the Wikipedia-based foundation. “Including many Wikipedians who contribute to the page about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, despite government threats.”
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News of Cogent’s upcoming campaign began circulating on Thursday after Mikhail Klimarev, executive director of the Internet Society for the Protection of the Internet, which advocates for digital freedoms in Russia, published a copy of Cogent’s termination letter to a Russian client in his Telegram. channel.
“Very bad news,” Klimarev wrote in his Telegram post. “I will be happy if it is not confirmed.”
But it was soon. Telecommunications analysts are closely following Friday’s events to see how much Cogent’s action affects Internet services in Russia. Doug Madori, director of internet analytics for web monitoring firm Kentik, wrote in a blog post: “A backbone operator that excludes customers in a country the size of Russia is unprecedented in Internet history.
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Other US backbone suppliers have been discussing disrupting Russian customers in recent days, and following Cogent’s example would increase the impact.
Lumen Technologies, another major link for Rostelecom, declined to say if it could. But it is said that he is not taking on a new Russian business.
“Lumen has stopped selling all new products and services to both Russian-based and non-Russian companies where the services will be provided in Russia,” the company said, adding that it had terminated a deal to provide services to a Russian financial institution. .
Network security researcher Barrett Lyon said Cogent’s move alone would immediately affect North American traffic, causing delays in Atlantic connections, especially in video. Russians trying to watch streaming video from the United States are expected to be the first to see the deterioration.
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“Cogent is usually seen as a network option with a lower price. As a result, they bring a lot of video traffic and cheap packages, “said Lyon. “This traffic will be redirected to other networks and redistributed, causing a huge load on the network in networks that want to carry traffic to Rostelecom.”
As of Friday morning, Cogent had direct connections to more than 6,000 network blocks or large chunks of Internet addresses processed by Rostelecom, one of the largest regions in the United States.
Earlier Friday, when Rostelecom announced its fourth-quarter earnings, it said it would postpone forecasting future results due to uncertainty caused by the conflict in Ukraine.
This is an evolving story. Please check again for updates.