I appreciate the reference to bgp.he.net, I had not used that tool before.
We've worked with Sprint for years, and they have always been excellent
for reliability and support. We recently picked up Level3, and so far
they have been very good as well. It's a small thing, maybe, but I like
that both Sprint and Level3 have nice online tools for change requests,
trouble tickets, etc... We've been a Lightcore/CenturyLink customer for
years as well, also very reliable. They don't have the slick online
tools, but I can usually get a live person in their NOC.
Cogent is being very aggressive with their pricing, and if it weren't
for the fact that we are geographically challenged and have to pay for
transport to get to them, we might have already taken them up on it.
Thanks for all the input from everyone.
Jason
5/15/2012 8:00 AM, Faisal Imtiaz wrote:
Let me say it differently.
Take a look at thier AS174 peering relationship, (e.g using
bgp.he.net), you can see that they (Cogent) are very well connected
(directly) with all of the major networks. (this is what I meant by,
they deal with all of the major carriers).
Your experience with traffic is very different from what we have seen,
while I can understand that, it can be due to many factors.
Based on AS Peering relationships, it would appear that Major / Most
of the end user ISP's have them in their mix. I my opinion the Hosting
providers use Cogent as a way to off load incoming traffic from the
more expensive carriers. Cogent performance is very decent if the
traffic is all on-net ... they typically have issues when traffic is
crossing their network, i.e. coming in and going out via their peers
to other networks.
While the Kia and Ferrari example is cute, but when put into the
context of 'Traffic' or 'Speed limit', then neither has the advantage.
One might look good driving in a Ferrari.. but I digress.... packets
are agnostic of what brand of router they are traveling thru or whose
network they are transiting.
We are in agreement, that Cogent makes a good backup secondary or
tertiary in a mix of Ip transit. However having said that it is
valuable to check the bgp peering relationships of the different
providers that you have, to make sure that you are choosing providers
based on actual diversity rather than a perceived one.
Regards.
Faisal Imtiaz
Snappy Internet& Telecom
On 5/15/2012 12:32 AM, Ameen Pishdadi wrote:
Has nothing to do with whether or not they deal with all the major
carriers , they are a budget provider , always have , always will be.
Aside from that what matters the most is eye ball user connectivity
and level3 , AT&T, Verizon significantly have more eye balls
connected directly to there network then cogent , we have cogent and
level3 and 5 other providers on our Chicago network , with out any
traffic engineering almost every thing will come in or go out level3,
we use traffic optimizing equipment to automate our commit levels and
also do performance based routing adjustments , I literally have to
put a gun to its head to get a descent amount of traffic out to
cogent , you may say it's a matter of opinion but statistics don't
lie, even Telia out performs cogent according to stats , not just
cause they have a massive eye ball network in Europe.
Ask yourself , who are the majority customers of cogent? Not end user
ISPs , hosting companies aka content providers, and when there
selling bandwidth cheaper then it costs to peer then there going to
keep there costs to the minimum ... Cheaper is cheaper , the saying
is true , you get what you pay for.
A Kia and Ferrari can both get me from point a to point b, but the
Ferrari is capable of getting me there way quicker, and yes I'm going
to pay a premium for it but if I'm going from NYC to San Fran I'd
definitely feel safer in the Ferrari reliability wise and get there a
hell of a lot quicker...
But like I said and the other 10 replies nothing wrong with cogent in
a nice blend of 3 or more other providers ...
Thanks,
Ameen Pishdadi
On May 14, 2012, at 10:49 PM, Faisal Imtiaz<fai...@snappydsl.net>
wrote:
I often tell folks, Cogent is the 'Heidi Fleiss' of the industry
...... pretty much everyone of the major carriers / providers deal
with them.. but no one wants to admit it.
I don't think there is any carrier out there that could be
considered 'Premium' in terms of quality of service (yeah their are
a lot of folks who are Premium based on what they charge)...
One can only hedge one's bet for a quality connection by having
multiple providers (you can mix and match) or go with some one like
Internap or Tinet (folks who are taking traffic across multiple
providers at their POP).
Of course your mileage may vary.... as long as you have alternate
connectivity, it makes dealing with issues more palatable, whether
it is Cogent or Level3...
Regards.
Faisal Imtiaz
Snappy Internet& Telecom
On 5/14/2012 10:38 PM, Ameen Pishdadi wrote:
No way they stack up against level3 or any of the other 4 big tier
1s but if you throw them in a blend with level3 there shouldn't be
any issue and I wouldn't pay more the .75 cents a meg for a gig
Thanks,
Ameen Pishdadi
On May 14, 2012, at 5:03 PM, Jason Baugher<ja...@thebaughers.com>
wrote:
The emails on the Outages list reminded me to ask this question...
I've done some searching and haven't been able to find much in the
last 3 years as to their reliability and suitability as an
upstream provider. For a regional ISP looking for GigE ports in
the Chicago/St. Louis area, is Cogent a reasonable solution? Our
gut feeling is that they don't stack up against a Level3 or
Sprint, but they are being very aggressive with pricing to try and
get our business.
Thanks,
Jason
