> Isn't XO a Level3 reseller? I dont know, they could be in some markets.
But what I can tell you is that XO does own their own national fiber backbone that covers some US markets. But that brings up a new topic about why some can be more cost competitive in certain areas. It really boils down to what assets they have strong in that market. I like to use a specific real world example of mine. I'll leave out the exact locations, to respect vendor. The path is from point A (NOC) to Point B (Neutral Carrier Hotel.) Above.net owns the fiber to the PointA building. Cogent buy's Above.net's dark fiber to deliver our transit service. Prices below are per month. Above.net DarkFiber- $8k per month Above.net Gig-E transport from PointA to PointB- $2k Above.net 200mbps Transit at PointB -$2k Above.net 200mbps Transit delivered to PointA - $4k Cogent Gig-E transit at PointA- $4k Cogent 200mbps transit at PointA- $1600 Cogent Gig-E transport from Point A to Point B- $6k Cogent 100mbps PTP PointA to B- $1k XO transit 100mbps PointA - $3000k (because they have to pay more for transport to that site) Those above prices make absolutely no sense. Why is it? The most expensive service offers the less (dark fiber). Itsclear why, when abovenet sees Cogent's selling retail lower than the dark fiber owner, and a desire to prevent that situation from replicating to more competitors. Cogent's fiber costs are very minimal. The biggest cost to both the Tier1 carriers is peering cross connects. They are $300 per Cross connect. EVEN if the peer only passes 10mbps of traffic on average. Cogent does way higher volume in the region, therefore divides that cost of all peering connection by those higher number of connections, and develops a lower cost for peering per subscriber. Therefore Cogent can afford more peers at the site. As they get more peers, their transit cost go down. But Cogent's volume gets large enough that their transit becomes cheap enough, that they can charge me less for it, than selling me the transport without the transit. Its worth it to them, to own my Transit, even if not being compensated for it, because it discourages customers from peering with others. My point here is, the priciing in this example has nothing to do with quality, it has to do with volume at a particular venue or market. Whoever gained more momentum has the potential to offer lower price, quality of the network design never really enters into the equation. Cogents strategy has always been to low ball price to gain more momentum, and control more traffic, to negotiate lower peering costs. My second point is, these costs dont consider Colocation costs. It was determined that Colocation and peering really does not pay off until one is doing over 1GB of traffic, if reason for colo is to save cost by peering. So if doing under a gig, comparing carriers is about the cost comparison at PointA. ISPs get locked into an upstream Tier1 because of their position to remote facilities. If doing over 1GB, well, then its a different game, because all carriers are closer positioned at that Carrier Neutral hotel, and there are different metric for differentiation. But there are so many scenarios today, its near impossbile to predict who will offer better bandwdith, before trying it. Even Resellers now can offer better performance sometimes than the tier1. When a fiber line between NewYork and DC can be had with only a added 1-2ms of latency, its leaves room for games to reduce cost. One game is to peer at Carrier Hotels with low cost Cross Connects, where its $100/mon, and then Transport all the traffic back to a central source where one does it s primary high capacity peers. The performance degregation of the extra hop is often unnoticeable. Again, cost comes back to how much volume can be sold by that reseller from that venue. IF enough Tranffic can be offloaded to peering, only a small percentage of traffic needs to be split between a couple upstream transit providers. My recommendation is to always do a short term contract the first time you try a new provider at a specific venue, then after shown thats it performs well, upgrade to long term contract to reduce cost. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband ----- Original Message ----- From: "Josh Luthman" <j...@imaginenetworksllc.com> To: "WISPA General List" <wireless@wispa.org> Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 5:31 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] choice of upstreams > Isn't XO a Level3 reseller? > > Josh Luthman > Office: 937-552-2340 > Direct: 937-552-2343 > 1100 Wayne St > Suite 1337 > Troy, OH 45373 > > "When you have eliminated the impossible, that which remains, however > improbable, must be the truth." > --- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle > > > On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 5:28 PM, Tom DeReggi > <wirelessn...@rapiddsl.net>wrote: > >> 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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