Many users from several Internet Service Providers (ISPs) all over the world have been unable to access some of their favorite torrent and streaming websites for more than a week. This is the result of Cogent Communication, an internet backbone provider, in blocking their users.
Acting as the internet backbone provider, Cogent plays an important role inside the internet ecosystem. With data centers in many places around the globe, Cogent helps millions of people in accessing websites from their web browsers.
Cogent blocks many users from accessing torrents and streaming websites by blocking their ISPs from accessing the IP addresses for those websites
Users in Cogent forum have been discussing and reporting that that Cogent has started blocking the numerous IP address of several websites catering to copyright infringement.
Websites affected include:
123bay, Baymirror, Bit-torrent-am, Bit-torrents, Bushtorrente, Couchtuner, Cyro, Etproxy, Eztv-proxy, Gameofbay, Hdmovieswatch, Ipt, Iptorrents, Iwannawatch, Katproxy, Limetorrents, Megashare, Movie, Movie2k, Movie4k, Moviesub, Mp3monkey, Mp3skull, My-pirate-bay, Mypirateproxy, Nbxclusive, Pirate, Piratebit, Pirateproxies, Piratewiki, Plixid, Primewire, Proxxy, Putlocker, Rarbgproxy, Rarbgunblock, Solarmovie, Spacemov, Stafaband, Themovie4u, Thepiratebay-proxy, Thepiratebay, Torrentbutler, Torrentbush, Torrentcd, Torrentdownloads, Torrentfunk, Torrentproject, Torrentroom, Torrents-pro, Torrentus, Torrentz-pro, Torrentz, Torrentzcd, Tubeplus, Ukbay, Ukpirate, Unblocked, Urbantorrent, Vitorrentz, Watchmovie and Watchseriesfree.
All of those websites runs through CloudFlare's network which protects them against DDoS attacks. Using CloudFlare, they are assigned with the public IP addresses 104.31.18.30 and 104.31.19.30. While those IP addresses can be reached without a problem by most people, Cogent's network restrict users using several ISPs from accessing those sites.
According to Cogent's own backbone routing check, this applies to the company's entire global network.
Cogent is one of the largest backbone provider that underpins the internet. If the blocking was made by intention, the war between pirate sites and rights-holders isn't ending any time soon. This could also because those ISPs had too much spam coming from their network, forcing Cogent to cut them off.
Users that want to access those websites, need to have a workaround. For example, they can use VPN or Tor or proxy to bypass the restriction.