For a little while now the connection to my server has gone to hell and has got really bad in the last 3 days. Most of the time 7mb cable line is running like a 56k modem whenever I'm doing anything on the server.

Everytime I do trace to see where the problem is it's always cogent routers in DFW with packet loss and 200+ms times. After doing some investigation today I've found something intresting.

If I trace from me to my server I get routed via cogent, and a trace from the server to me takes the same route back.

A trace from me to EV1's 207.218.233.103, which is the last hop before my server, goes nowhere near cogent, it seems to like Level3 or twtelecom.
A trace from my server to 24.95.228.10, which is the last hop before me, again goes no where near cogent, taking Level3.

So my question is why do I seem to be stuck going via. cogent and who is picking that routing ? Is it Road Runner or is it The Planet that are routing me though Cogent ?

I can't find a ticket on this. Please submit a ticket with the following information:

traceroute/pathping from your location to the server
traceroute/pathping from the server to your location
100 count ping from your location to the server
100 count ping from the server to your location

--or--

MTR from your location to the server
MTR from the server to your location

These will help us determine where the issue is. Unfortunately, if it's outside of our network there will be little that we can do in regards to an immediate resolution.

You didn't find a ticket because I didn't put one in. The problem is with the Cogent network not your network and as you said there is not a lot you can do about that.

I'm just trying to figure out why routing between me and my server seems to like going via. cogent all of sudden when it never has for the past 7 years. Untll a few weeks ago, when I started to notice I was having problems, the route always used to go something like.... RR to Orlando then Level3 over to Dallas then EV1 and the same on the return. Now it's going tbone.RR to DFW then Cogent then EV1. Years ago, in the old Rackshack days, had a 10mbps capped server and that was on Cogent bandwidth but even then traffic into the server would take any route it wanted to it was only the outbound that always went via. Cogent.

Yesterday when I was looking at the problem, when the connection was really bad, all the traces I did to the server and from the the server were taking the Cogent route, just now when I checked, from me to the server is taking the Cogent route but from the server to me is taking the Level3 route, which is probably why things are working a little better today.

As I said I don't think it's your problem, maybe I should have posted this in the Lounge not here, I was just wondering if anyone had any idea why the sudden liking for Cogent.

The internet is a wild beast. There's a million reasons as to why the route could've changed ranging from the routers assigning different metrics to their neighbors(usually due to outages) or a router was decommissioned. Your ISP, or one of the mid-route transit providers, could've quit using another transit provider. I haven't caught any news of any of the backbone and transit providers having any big outages or changes lately.