carrier comparison

Thu Feb 6 16:22:48 UTC 2014

Cogent always has the cheapest rates but they also have the most peering disputes of any operator. I've seen intra-data center hops between cogent and Verizon take over 150ms.

As with all things Internet, your mileage may vary. I would not put something with a 5 9'a uptime requirement on cogent without a failover circuit. For less sensitive applications it seems like a win.

The Internet is both incredibly robust and fragile simultaneously.

Cheers,
Joshua

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 6, 2014, at 8:06 AM, "Vlade Ristevski" <vristevs at ramapo.edu> wrote:

> We have had Cogent over Verizon's Fiber for more than a few years now. Cogent goes down once at year at minimum. They had 2 outages in a single day a couple days ago in Northern NJ.  One in the AM "..caused by a power outage in a vendor data center where Cogent is collocated." They went on to have another outage at around 9:30 PM on the same day for which I'm still waiting for an RFO. During this outage, they still were advertising our BGP routes so we didn't fail over to our 2nd provider. I notice that happens alot with them. When they go down, they still advertise your routes.
> 
> As far as price goes, for us Cogent is cheap but Lightpath is cheaper.
> 
> Our college is kind of far from things so we don't have a lot of outside fiber coming. The last mile fiber for both of our connections are different from our Internet providers. I've never had a big issue with the two working with each other. The only issue we had is I suspected we weren't getting as much bandwidth as we paid for. They had to work out where the policer and/or bottle neck was. This is the only issue we had in 5 years with this set up and it got resolved. IME, when there is a full outage, it's always been clear who the responsible party is.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 2/6/2014 10:17 AM, Adam Greene wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>>  
>> We're a small ISP / datacenter with a Time Warner fiber-based DIA contract
>> that is coming up for renewal.
>> 
>>  
>> We're getting much better pricing offers from Cogent, and are finding out
>> what Level 3 can do for us as well. Both providers will use Time Warner
>> fiber for last mile.
>> 
>>  
>> My questions are:
>> 
>> -          Will we be sacrificing quality if we spring for Cogent?
>> (yesterday's Cogent/Verizon thread provided some cold chills for my spine)
>> 
>> -          Is there a risk with contracting a carrier that utilizes another
>> carrier (such as Time Warner) for the last mile? (i.e. if there is a
>> downtime situation, are we going to be caught in a web of confusion and
>> finger-pointing that delays problem resolution)?
>> 
>> -          How are peoples' experiences with L3 vs TWC?
>> 
>>  
>> Although I assume everyone on the list would be interested in what others
>> have to say about these questions, out of respect for the carriers in
>> question, I encourage you to email frank opinions off list.
>> 
>>  
>> Or if there are third party tools or resources you know that I could consult
>> to deduce the answers to these questions myself, they are most welcome.
>> 
>>  
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> Adam
>> 
> 