Cogent always has the cheapest rates but they also have the most peering disputes of any operator. I've seen intra-data center hops between cogent and Verizon take over 150ms.
As with all things Internet, your mileage may vary. I would not put something with a 5 9'a uptime requirement on cogent without a failover circuit. For less sensitive applications it seems like a win. The Internet is both incredibly robust and fragile simultaneously. Cheers, Joshua Sent from my iPhone On Feb 6, 2014, at 8:06 AM, "Vlade Ristevski" <vrist...@ramapo.edu> wrote: > 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 >> >