When slow downloads hit an app developer, only Comcast customers suffered

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

App developer Panic Inc. knew it had a network problem when customers began complaining about trouble downloading and updating Panic apps.

"Geez, your downloads are really slow!" was the common complaint that started coming in a few months ago, Panic co-founder Cabel Sasser explained in a blog post titled, "The Mystery of the Slow Downloads."

But once the mystery cleared up, it all made sense. Panic and its users were the innocent victims of a longstanding network interconnection battle between cable ISP Comcast and Cogent, which operates a global network that carries traffic across the Internet.

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