We have had Cogent over Verizon's Fiber for more than a few years now.
Cogent goes down once at year at minimum. They had 2 outages in a single
day a couple days ago in Northern NJ. One in the AM "..caused by a
power outage in a vendor data center where Cogent is collocated." They
went on to have another outage at around 9:30 PM on the same day for
which I'm still waiting for an RFO. During this outage, they still were
advertising our BGP routes so we didn't fail over to our 2nd provider. I
notice that happens alot with them. When they go down, they still
advertise your routes.
As far as price goes, for us Cogent is cheap but Lightpath is cheaper.
Our college is kind of far from things so we don't have a lot of outside
fiber coming. The last mile fiber for both of our connections are
different from our Internet providers. I've never had a big issue with
the two working with each other. The only issue we had is I suspected we
weren't getting as much bandwidth as we paid for. They had to work out
where the policer and/or bottle neck was. This is the only issue we had
in 5 years with this set up and it got resolved. IME, when there is a
full outage, it's always been clear who the responsible party is.
On 2/6/2014 10:17 AM, Adam Greene wrote:
Hi,
We're a small ISP / datacenter with a Time Warner fiber-based DIA contract
that is coming up for renewal.
We're getting much better pricing offers from Cogent, and are finding out
what Level 3 can do for us as well. Both providers will use Time Warner
fiber for last mile.
My questions are:
- Will we be sacrificing quality if we spring for Cogent?
(yesterday's Cogent/Verizon thread provided some cold chills for my spine)
- Is there a risk with contracting a carrier that utilizes another
carrier (such as Time Warner) for the last mile? (i.e. if there is a
downtime situation, are we going to be caught in a web of confusion and
finger-pointing that delays problem resolution)?
- How are peoples' experiences with L3 vs TWC?
Although I assume everyone on the list would be interested in what others
have to say about these questions, out of respect for the carriers in
question, I encourage you to email frank opinions off list.
Or if there are third party tools or resources you know that I could consult
to deduce the answers to these questions myself, they are most welcome.
Thanks,
Adam
