Cogent for ISP bandwidth

Tue May 15 14:16:06 UTC 2012

I'm most likely wrong, but doesn't Cogent basically just a lease dark fiber/wavelengths from Level3's for the majority of their POP connectivity?

I know they have purchased some assets in the past but I'm under the impression they're highly levered to L3.

Wont they eventually run into a squeeze (possibly man made and intentional) which will force their pricing to go up?

Although, I suppose folks have been saying that the pricing isn't sustainable since Cogent began.

This is likely off-topic for this particular thread but has anyone seen any evidence yet of issues resulting from the L3/Global Crossing merger as far as pricing?

-Drew

-----Original Message-----
From: Justin Krejci [mailto:jkrejci at usinternet.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2012 10:03 AM
To: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Re: Cogent for ISP bandwidth

+1 for cogent, problem free and good responsive support.

Not sure why "don't use only 1 upstream if you care about accessibility" has anything to do with cogent specifically. Are peering/de-peering disputes more likely to occur than all other network/routing issues combined? its just another possible cause for an outage.

------Original Message------
From: Mark Stevens
To: nanog at nanog.org
ReplyTo: manager at monmouth.com
Subject: Re: Cogent for ISP bandwidth
Sent: May 15, 2012 7:21 AM

We use Cogent as one our upstreams and have had nothing but stability and excellent support over the years. But as other said, you really need multiple upstreams and cannot rely just on one whether it is Cogent or any other provider.

Mark

On 5/14/2012 6:03 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
>
>
>
>