Its interesting that such a vicious dispute has taken place. It has been my experience with Cogent infact that when issues exist that they are quite willing to at least listen and arrive at some reasonable solution. I know when I have had issues all be it more technical than billing they acted quite quickly and responsibly. My advise in dealing with them as it would be in dealing with a nybody is be reasonable and very calm. Most of the engineers and upper management have really good heads on their shoulders and seem willing to work things out. That's been my experienc anyway. Scott On Mon, 6 May 2002, Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:
Well how am I supposed to arrange a payment on a Sunday afternoon?
As well I'd say I've already paid them more than enough to use their IPs - I never brought up a BGP session with them and never passed a single packet to them. I'm surprised to hear that such extortion techniques are considered acceptable.
Read your contract with Cogent carefully. I know our contract states that any IP addresses allocated must be returned at termination of contract. As with all PA address space, I would suspect this is the norm.
Ours too but we'd still be reasonable, even with a company we had a major dispute with (altho we might give them 1 month instead of 6 to return them!).
I think they're on dangerous ground, whether or not their contract says the IPs should be returned if they not only stop routing them but then start contacting third parties that they have no relationship with and ask them to stop routing them with the end result being that your business cannot function then I'd say this looks more malicious than pure business and I'd suggest to them a courtroom might view it that way too.
I dont like legal battles tho, so I'd probably contact them.. suggest they are harming your business illegally and that a month or two is not unreasonable to get alternative arrangements in place, dispute or not.
Steve