We are aware of an upstream network incident involving two separate fiber cuts affecting portions of the U.S. West Coast and Southwestern United States. Customers may experience intermittent packet loss, increased latency, or connectivity issues when communicating with certain external networks and third-party services. Transpacific routes may also be affected.
To clarify, there is no outage or underlying issue within RackNerd’s infrastructure.
Our network remains online, and we have rerouted traffic through alternate Tier 1 upstream providers where possible to minimize the impact.
However, because Internet connectivity depends upon multiple interconnected transit providers and peering partners, some customer ISPs, third-party services, or remote endpoints may still traverse Cogent directly or indirectly elsewhere along the end-to-end route. This essentially creates a large ripple effect for the entire Internet (either directly or indirectly), as many major services either rely or traverse via the West Coast, especially with LA being a major hub. As a result of this, you may also experience intermittent connectivity when accessing your favorite/commonly used websites or applications today, as well as other services hosted elsewhere.
This is not isolated to RackNerd. The fiber cuts are affecting the broader U.S. West Coast and Pacific network ecosystem, including major networks, cloud providers, enterprises, and their customers. Cogent and its fiber vendors are actively working to repair the damaged fiber, though no estimated time of repair is currently available. However, given the scale of the impact, which by the way, extends far beyond RackNerd and our customers, we reasonably expect that all appropriate resources are being mobilized by Cogent and that the parties involved are working with maximum urgency to restore the affected fiber paths as quickly as humanly possible.
Connectivity should progressively return to normal as the physical repairs are completed, network capacity is restored, and Internet routes reconverge. We will continue monitoring the situation and provide updates as additional information becomes available.
Upstream reference: Cogent master case NA306633403. Per Cogent’s network status page: https://ecogent.cogentco.com/network-status
"Customers in the Los Angeles and Southwestern United States areas may be experiencing increased latency and/or service disruptions due to two separate fiber cuts. Transoceanic traffic to certain Asia-Pacific regions may also be affected.
One of the cuts is a broken fiber in our Vendor's fiber tray in Modesto, CA that is going to require a specialist dispatch to resplice the connection that is hard spliced at the tray. Our fiber vendor is dispatching to make this repair.
The second cut is a major fiber break in Southern California between El Centro and Calipatria, CA. Our vendor has construction crews and fiber splicer on site, continuing to repair damaged fiber.
There is no ETR at this time. The master case is NA306633403."
UPDATE: Resolved – Upstream Network Conditions Stabilized
Based on the latest information provided to us and our network monitoring as of this morning, conditions related to the upstream fiber incident have stabilized. Cogent has been reintroduced into RackNerd’s BGP network blend, our network is operating normally, and this incident is now considered resolved from RackNerd’s perspective.
Because the original fiber cuts affected the broader Internet ecosystem, we recommend allowing up to the next 24 hours for routing conditions across all third-party networks to fully normalize. During this period, isolated instances of increased latency, intermittent packet loss, or suboptimal routing may still occur when communicating with certain customer ISPs, external networks, websites, applications, or third-party services.
Any such residual behavior would not indicate an ongoing issue within RackNerd’s infrastructure. End-to-end Internet connectivity depends upon numerous independent transit providers, peering partners, and destination networks. Some third parties may still be restoring capacity, reversing temporary reroutes, or allowing affected routes to reconverge -- factors that are outside RackNerd’s direct visibility and control. Customers may therefore notice similar intermittent behavior when accessing other websites or services not hosted by RackNerd.
No customer action is required. We will continue monitoring network conditions as the broader Internet routing environment completes its normalization.
