| Full name | Cogent Communications |
| ASN | AS174 |
| Type | Tier-1 Transit Provider |
| Country | United States |
| Headquarters | Washington, D.C., US |
| Founded | 1999 |
| Website | cogentco.com |
| Registry | ARIN |
| Total IPs | ~20 million (IPv4) |
| Upstream | Tier-1 — no upstream transit |
| IPv6 | 2001:550::/32 |
| RIR | ARIN |
| Abuse email | abuse@cogentco.com |
| Abuse form | Report abuse → |
AS174 is Cogent Communications' Tier-1 internet backbone ASN. Cogent is known for operating one of the largest IP transit networks in the world at aggressive pricing, making it a popular upstream provider for ISPs and hosting companies. Cogent has been involved in several high-profile peering disputes, including a 2020 dispute with Sprint that briefly disrupted routing.
Every time you visit a website, your IP address — and therefore your ISP (Cogent Communications) — is visible to that site. Cogent Communications as your ISP can see all unencrypted traffic passing through their network, including the domains you visit. This is standard practice for all ISPs and is typically used for network management, legal compliance, and in some cases targeted advertising.
If your device is assigned an IP in Cogent Communications’s ranges, websites you visit will identify your connection as coming from Cogent Communications. To prevent this, a VPN replaces your ISP-assigned IP with the VPN server’s IP, making your traffic appear to come from a different provider entirely.
AS174 is registered with ARIN — the Regional Internet Registry responsible for IP allocations in North America. The ASN is used to announce IP prefixes to the global BGP routing table, allowing other networks to route traffic to Cogent Communications’s infrastructure.
Cogent Communications peers with major transit providers and internet exchanges to ensure global reachability. BGP peering relationships determine how traffic flows between Cogent Communications and the rest of the internet.
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