While I agree no solution can be considered equal in any given location, there are trends or a general barometer to help place one carrier over another. This is the reality that typically puts Cogent towards the back of the bus in most people's minds.
The biggest proponents of Cogent are those that are largely dependent on Cogent due to any number of reasons. Budget constraints, lack of alternate higher quality peer availability etc, etc. Cogent makes no excuse promoting themselves as the low end, budget driven bottom dollar provider. They are good for what they offer, but again not what a network administrator looking for high availability is going to pick as a first choice. "You might even get away with saying Cogent has a few more short duration (less than 15 minutes?) outages than other carriers." This is exactly my point (being made by Tom, a Cogent customer!) why Cogent should not be depended on as a sole or primary Internet feed. If Cogent's all you got then you're SOL! Bottom line is any carrier can break. If you can only have one then find one that breaks the least. If you can have more than one, Cogent is a good low cost second or third to have in a pinch for relatively little cost. Best, Brad -----Original Message----- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Tom DeReggi Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 4:28 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] choice of upstreams It should be noted that an Upstreams performance can be directly proportional to the location where they have more peering. In the DC and NY markets, Cogent has excellent performance and peering, and has shown to outperform EVERY provider we have tried, period. (And yes, some of the carriers we tried were Level3, XO, and Abovenet.) I recognize that Cogent's performance "may" not be as good for ALL markets where they potentially could have a weaker presence. But saying Cogent is only worthy of the 3rd or 4th transit connection is simply untrue. Cogent's weak point now is internal processes and communication. They've lost touch with the value of having personal Account Reps, and render the reps powerless to manage the accounts, in favor of the customer relationship managed by the clueless billing/collections department. Its a shame. You might even get away with saying Cogent has a few more short duration (less than 15 minutes?) outages than other carriers. But their tech support has been the best by far in the industry, and oversubscription has never been a problem from what I see. In picking a Transit provider its really a decision about where your traffic typically flows, and where you need good performance to. NOT anyone has best performance everywhere. For example, Hurricane has excellent performance AND they are inexpensive. They have a really good peering presensence in CA. I'm not confident that they have nearly as good a presence on the East coast though, but those that have used them on teh east coast that I know have been happy. We were considering using them. Abovenet has great Gig-E Transport. But their transit is expensive, and its because its more expensive for them to provide it, because they are not as well positioned to do it cost effectively, not because its necessarilly better. Level3 as well, has many strength. They have a lot of web host clients. It can really help performance to reach certain sites. Level3 also tends to blocks smaller BGP block announcements, more so than someone like Cogent. Level3 is good for a secondaryu because they usually have diverse routes. Some providers have good performance to France, Amsterdam, India, others dont. Savvis tends to have real peering to NY finacnial markets. I often see Blended bandwdith combining Global Cross and Level3, not sure why these two are chosen as a pair. Maybe its simply becaue they tend to be colocated at the same carrier hotels? But selecting a transit provider is not as simple as saying one is better. My personaly opinion is, find the two lowest cost providers, and then you can afford to buy more bandwidth, and have two options to route customers. You also need to consider the path to where you take it. For example, Cogent remote tenant buildings likely have routers with less ram that cant handle full BGP tables, so they require creating session to two seperate BGP servers (with the second one having full routes.). But of you connect to them inb a major colo center that doesn;t exist. Similar things exist with other providers depending on where you pick up the circuit. What I like about Abovenet, is they'll map out their network for you, so you know exactly what you are buying, so true redunancy can be built into the network design. Cogent is a bit more secrative about the traffic path. XO has had some really good account reps, and I liked that. But for me, they didn't really give me anything exciting as far as price or performance, more than anyone else. It should also be noted that it could make a big difference which local colo you pick the circuit up in also. So when you are evaluating a provider you are also evaluating the venue where the circuit is in. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brad Belton" <b...@belwave.com> To: <bcl...@spectraaccess.com>; "'WISPA General List'" <wireless@wispa.org> Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 3:47 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] choice of upstreams > Cogent can be ok, but they are not equal to AboveNET, XO, AT&T, Level3 > etc... We have multiple upstream GigE feeds and Cogent is one of them. > > It took us months to get Cogent to resolve a flapping switch or router > within their network. After a couple dozen screenshots and trace routes > from various looking glass sites they finally conceded. Granted the > outages > were only between 5 and 60 seconds long when they occurred and rarely were > long enough to break BGP sessions, but they were hell on VoIP! > > It took us less than a day to find the specific Cogent IP or device where > the problem was occurring, but months before Cogent acted on the > information > we provided them. Cogent Support honestly wasn't that bad, but said their > hands were tied until management further up the chain completed their > investigation. During that time we had to route voice traffic around > Cogent > as best we could. > > Cogent is great as a cheap third or fourth GigE upstream, but never a sole > or primary Internet feed, IMO. While Cogent goes about their BGP peering > a > little different than most, I do agree their BGP Support is equal to > anyone > else's we've worked with. > > Best, > > > Brad > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On > Behalf Of Bret Clark > Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 1:15 PM > To: WISPA General List > Subject: Re: [WISPA] choice of upstreams > > I always hear about Cogent having a bad rap, but where does that come > from? I can't say that one bit! They've worked great for us and during > the initial install clearly went above and beyond the call of duty when > we encountered a problem even waking a VP up at 1AM on a Sunday morning > because we need to have the circuit up and running by first thing > Monday! > > When I have add to call their tech support up about questions that > actually understand what BGP is and how it works! > Bret > > > > On Wed, 2009-10-21 at 11:58 -0500, Jon Auer wrote: > >> Cogent has a bad rap but they have been solid for us for the past >> year. Prior to that they had a few hickups. Their peering is pretty >> good. Low latency to all major content sites. >> >> Level3 seems to have more outages than a provider of their reputation > should. >> >> Savvis is has poor peering from what I hear. >> >> I'd like to add Abovenet or Global crossing to my mix. >> >> On 10/21/09, Marco Coelho <coelh...@gmail.com> wrote: >> > I'm a GigE circuit to the mix, and I've got a choice of: >> > >> > Abovenet >> > Cogent >> > Global Crossing >> > Level3 >> > Savvis >> > >> > I'm looking for recommendations of who the better upstream is. >> > >> > Marco >> > >> > >> > -- >> > Marco C. Coelho >> > Argon Technologies Inc. >> > POB 875 >> > Greenville, TX 75403-0875 >> > 903-455-5036 >> > >> > >> > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > ---- >> > WISPA Wants You! 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