Wikipedia unavailable for several hours.

crazyjeremy writes: On Friday, August 19 an abuse report of some kind was sent to Cogent. In following up Cogent noticed an unpaid IP related balance immediately internally nulled all IP addresses assigned to the 207.142.*.* block. This caused all traffic which routes through Cogent to not resolve for any of these ip addresses. Wikipedia/Wikimedia and hundreds of other sites went became unreachable. Sources say Cogent refused to enable the ip's until their billing department opens next monday and can take a payment. Cogent reenabled Wikipedia's ip's but hosts and their customers which do not have the same clout must wait or find another alternative.

How much damage can one bad site do? If a host misses one bill, should Cogent shut their customers down entirely without possibility of an immediate solution?