From some cursory research, ARIN is the organization that handles IP addresses for most of North America, including Canada and the USA. Alongside the IP addresses, they maintain a list of contact...
From some cursory research, ARIN is the organization that handles IP addresses for most of North America, including Canada and the USA. Alongside the IP addresses, they maintain a list of contact information for each address, so third parties can contact the administrator of the IP address in case of any issues.
It appears that Cogent's sales team has been using this contact information to contact the IP address administrators (including to ARIN's CEO himself), attempting to sell Cogent's solutions, something ARIN's terms of use specifically prohibit. Therefore, ARIN is laying down the banhammer and prohibiting Cogent themselves from accessing the WHOIS database that ARIN maintains. (ARIN has said they're only blocking Cogent's own computers from accessing the database, and that Cogent customers will still be able to access it.)
Alongside the email linked here, there's also a PDF of the letter ARIN sent to Cogent about this issue.
I have no personal experience with Cogent, but judging from postsonreddit, they're not exactly the most-liked ISP.
From some cursory research, ARIN is the organization that handles IP addresses for most of North America, including Canada and the USA. Alongside the IP addresses, they maintain a list of contact information for each address, so third parties can contact the administrator of the IP address in case of any issues.
It appears that Cogent's sales team has been using this contact information to contact the IP address administrators (including to ARIN's CEO himself), attempting to sell Cogent's solutions, something ARIN's terms of use specifically prohibit. Therefore, ARIN is laying down the banhammer and prohibiting Cogent themselves from accessing the WHOIS database that ARIN maintains. (ARIN has said they're only blocking Cogent's own computers from accessing the database, and that Cogent customers will still be able to access it.)
Alongside the email linked here, there's also a PDF of the letter ARIN sent to Cogent about this issue.
I have no personal experience with Cogent, but judging from posts on reddit, they're not exactly the most-liked ISP.