cogentco.com technical analysis?

Wed Jun 13 00:21:21 UTC 2001

* Matt Levine <matt at deliver3.com> [20010612 17:02]:
>  
> Is anyone on-list a cogent customer?  Has anyone done or heard about
> any peering with cogent?  If so what type of pipe? 

They are at PAIX.  The last I contacted them they had a "very open policy
about public peering".  Try contacting <peering at cogentco.com>....they 
respond in my experience.

> Could they do a lot of damage if some customers start to really push
> traffic? (ie: 30 "big" customers pushing 500 megs each and throwing
> an extra 15gigs/sec onto mae-east).

My impression is that their connectivity is primarily provided by one or 
more transit providers (I know only of above.net) plus a bit of peering.  
I'd imagine their links to their transit providers would feel the pain 
first.  I'd expect that they'd notice and upgrade the links just as 
everybody else does.  It would move on up the chain.  Of course, if most of 
the traffic were sourced/destined for a particular spot either Cogent or 
one of their transit providers would increase peering.  If it was just a
popular bit of content (Web site, RealMedia stream, whatever) that one of
their clients was hosting and that amount of traffic was being pushed
I'd imagine a lot of people would want to turn up (or upgrade existing) 
private peering links with them.  Problem resolved.  I doubt anybody would
feel much pain other than perhaps Cogent and their end-user for a finite 
period where the upgrading would be going on.  

Perhaps I'm optimistic.  YMMV.

-jr

----
Josh Richards <jrichard@{ geekresearch.com, cubicle.net }> [JTR38/JR539-ARIN]
Geek Research, LLC - San Luis Obispo, CA - <URL:http://www.geekresearch.com/>
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