nanog mailing list archives

Re: carrier comparison


From: Joshua Goldbard <j () 2600hz com>
Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2014 16:22:48 +0000

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" <vristevs () 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




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