Honest Cogent opinions without rhetoric.

Wed Mar 8 22:21:07 UTC 2006

On Mar 8, 2006, at 11:43 AM, Daniel Senie wrote:

> At 08:57 AM 3/8/2006, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

>> It's not just cities, it's entire countries.  Try being on a DSL line
>> in France and getting to a Cogent web server in France.
>
> How is this different from being a Comcast cable modem customer in  
> New England, trying to connect to a web server also located in New  
> England. Packets route through NYC if the user is lucky, but more  
> often Chicago or Washington DC. In terms of mileage and latency,  
> just how different is that from the DSL case in France you cite?

Over twice as far.  Does that matter to you?  I don't know.  But  
hopping an ocean twice to go down the street is not my idea of  
"optimal".

Also, while I agree that more New England providers trade bits  
through DC than NYC, I would submit that most bits are traded through  
NYC or DC, not Chicago.  Neither NYC or DC is really that far from  
Boston (he types sitting in Cambridge, MA).

And that doesn't even address the difference between user <-> user  
and user <-> server interaction.

> Reality is "broadband" providers in some areas have sucky, or non- 
> existant, peering. Do you blame that on the backhaul network, or on  
> the "broadband" provider?

Personally, I blame whomever I am paying. :)

But you can blame whomever you like.

> As others have said, cogent is OK as part of a transit mix, but not  
> necessarily as a single homed provider. That said, they're far from  
> the only network (including the biggest names/networks) that I  
> would say that about. Everyone's networks have meltdowns at  
> different times. Everybody seems to get into pissing matches.

There is a very large difference between a "meltdown" and a multi-day  
disconnection from major ASNs.

Can you name any other network which has been disconnected from large  
swaths of the Internet for _DAYS_ this century?  Can you name another  
network who has had such diconnectivity events and told their  
customers they would do _nothing_ for them, during or after?  And in  
fact pointed their customers at the _other_ network to complain?

Every network has problems.  Good networks take responsibility for  
those problems.

-- 
TTFN,
patrick