Cogent for ISP bandwidth

Mon May 14 23:00:27 UTC 2012

I use Cogent as one of our upstreams at work, and I'll basically 
reiterate what others have said -- overall, I'd have no problems 
recommending them.   Their routing can sometimes be a little weird 
(though this is MUCH better now than it was a couple of years ago), so I 
wouldn't necessarily use them as my main provider for latency-sensitive 
applications, but this isn't normally a problem with 'general' 
traffic.    The A peer/B peer stuff they used to do was definitely 
weird, but they migrated us away from that configuration a few months 
ago (peering with them out of TorIX).   Presumably they're doing that 
across the rest of their network.   Their support has been fantastic in 
my experience..

I'd have to say they're probably the least painful provider I've dealt 
with overall (unlike some providers *cough*Telus*cough* who I've been 
waiting 7 weeks for to set up a freaking BGP session...).   I'd have no 
problems picking Cogent as a provider, though of course as one of many 
providers for redundancy (which would be no different than any other 
single provider).

- Pete

On 5/14/2012 6:33 PM, Michael J McCafferty wrote:
> Jason,
>
> I agree with John. You can't use them as your only provider, but you
> wouldn't do that with *any* provider. I will add that they answer the
> phone quickly, and the person who answers usually has a clue, has access
> to the routers, and can be helpful. It's one of the benefits that they
> really only sell one product. Honestly, I think their support is better
> than most and the deliver what they say or better.
>
> In the past the had a A peer / B peer setup that was a little funky, but
> I think they are getting rid of that as they upgrade hardware throughout
> their network.
>
> We do also use Level3 (and others). As long as they come in to your
> facility on different fiber or otherwise meet you physical diversity
> requirements, you should be pretty happy. Add low commits to other
> providers for more diversity as needed.
>
> Good luck,
> Mike
>
> On Mon, 2012-05-14 at 15:12 -0700, John T. Yocum wrote:
>> In my experience Cogent is fine when used in a BGP mix. When we used
>> them, our service was quite reliable. Routing was funky at times, but we
>> never had packet loss.
>>
>> --John
>>
>> On 5/14/2012 3:03 PM, Jason Baugher wrote:
>>> The emails on the Outages list reminded me to ask this question...
>>>
>>> I've done some searching and haven't been able to find much in the last
>>> 3 years as to their reliability and suitability as an upstream provider.
>>> For a regional ISP looking for GigE ports in the Chicago/St. Louis area,
>>> is Cogent a reasonable solution? Our gut feeling is that they don't
>>> stack up against a Level3 or Sprint, but they are being very aggressive
>>> with pricing to try and get our business.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Jason
>>>

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