Cogent input

seph seph at directionless.org
Thu Jun 11 15:48:36 UTC 2009


Here as well. We're a small content provider, and we have cogent as one
of our ISPs. Though I wouldn't feel comfortable using only them, my
experience has been pretty good. Their NOC is competent, and service has
been reliable.

seph

Bret Clark <bclark at spectraaccess.com> writes:

> I hate when these questions get asked, because as the saying goes..."a
> person happy with a service will only tell one other person, but a
> person unhappy with a service with tell ten other people".  So I think a
> lot of times you'll get skewed responses...but with that said, we've
> been using Cogent now for a year and no complaints at all. Had some
> minor downtime back in April due to a hardware failure, but Cogent
> responded extremely quickly, scheduled an emergency maintainance and had
> us  running rather quickly. Face it, hardware problems happen so I can't
> blame Cogent on the failure. The few times I've dealt with their tech
> support group I found 99% of them very knowledgeable and I know that
> when we initially turned on the link they went the extra mile to resolve
> some initial problems during the weekend time frame. 
>
> My 2 cents and with any provider mileage will vary,
> Bret
>
>
>
> On Thu, 2009-06-11 at 15:01 +0100, Andrew Mulholland wrote:
>
>> At $JOB-1 we used Cogent.
>> 
>> Lots of horror stories had been heard about them.
>> 
>> We didn't have such problems.
>> 
>> Had nx1Gig from them.
>> 
>> On the few occasions where we had some slight issues, I was happy to
>> be able to get through to some one useful on the phone quickly, and
>> not play pass the parcel with call centre operatives.
>> 
>> 
>> and at least in the quantities we were buying they were significantly
>> better value than others, which was the primary reason we went with
>> them.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> andrew
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 2:55 PM, Paul Stewart<pstewart at nexicomgroup.net> wrote:
>> > Our experience with them was at least one major (longer than an hour)
>> > outages PER MONTH and many of those times they were black holing our
>> > routes in their network which was the most damaging aspect.  The outages
>> > were one thing but when our routes still somehow managed to get
>> > advertised in their network (even though our BGP session was down) that
>> > really created issues.  I have heard from some nearby folks who still
>> > have service that it's gotten better, but we are also in the "regional
>> > offering" when it comes to IP Transit and have sold connections to many
>> > former Cogent customers who were fed up and left.
>> >
>> > I have found with Cogent that you will get a LOT of varying opinions on
>> > them - there are several other players (at least in our market) that are
>> > priced very similar now and have a better history behind them.....
>> >
>> > The specific de-peering issues never effected us much due to enough
>> > diversity in our upstreams and a fair amount of direct/public peering...
>> >
>> > Thanks,
>> >
>> > Paul
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > From: Justin Shore [mailto:justin at justinshore.com]
>> > Sent: Thursday, June 11, 2009 9:47 AM
>> > To: NANOG
>> > Subject: Cogent input
>> >
>> > I'm in search of some information about Cogent, it's past, present and
>> > future.  I've heard bits and pieces about Cogent's past over the years
>> > but by no means have I actively been keeping up.
>> >
>> > I'm aware of some (regular?) depeering issues.  The NANOG archives have
>> > given me some additional insight into that (recurring?) problem.  The
>> > reasoning behind the depeering events is a bit fuzzy though.  I would be
>> >
>> > interested in people's opinion on whether or not they should be consider
>> >
>> > for upstream service based on this particular issue.  Are there any
>> > reasonable mitigation measures available to Cogent downstreams if
>> > (when?) Cogent were to be depeered again?  My understanding is that at
>> > least on previous depeering occasion, the depeering partner simply
>> > null-routed all prefixes being received via Cogent, creating a blackhole
>> >
>> > essentially.  I also recall reading that this meant that prefixes being
>> > advertised and received by the depeering partner from other peers would
>> > still end up in the blackhole.  The only solution I would see to this
>> > problem would be to shut down the BGP session with Cogent and rely on a
>> > 2nd upstream.  Are there any other possible steps for mitigation in a
>> > depeering event?
>> >
>> > I also know that their bandwidth is extremely cheap.  This of course
>> > creates an issue for technical folks when trying to justify other
>> > upstream options that cost significantly more but also don't have a
>> > damaging history of getting depeered.
>> >
>> > Does Cogent still have an issue with depeering?  Are there any
>> > reasonable mitigation measures or should a downstream customer do any
>> > thing in particular to ready themselves for a depeering event?  Does
>> > their low cost outweigh the risks?  What are the specific risks?
>> >
>> > Thanks
>> >  Justin
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >
>> > "The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and contains confidential and/or privileged material. If you received this in error, please contact the sender immediately and then destroy this transmission, including all attachments, without copying, distributing or disclosing same. Thank you."
>> >
>> >
>> 




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