carrier comparison

Thu Feb 6 22:25:53 UTC 2014

B)  We have our own AS and IP space. I advertise them to both Cogent and 
our other ISP. I use the local preference attribute to share the load 
for incoming traffic between both ISPs. In the last 5 outages over the 
last few years, this has happened twice. I'm waiting on the RFO so I can 
further investigate why this happened. I think someone mentioned this in 
a post a few months ago too.

It sucks for us, because we're a small school and don't have someone in 
a NOC to monitor our networks 24x7. I literally had to get out of bed 
and disable our BGP session with them for us to get through the outage. 
I was getting around 90% packet loss from my home to our router.

On 2/6/2014 4:57 PM, Eric Flanery (eric) wrote:
> Vlade,
>
> When you say that "they still advertise your routes", do you mean:
>
> A: That you were having them originate your routes, and they failed to 
> stop doing so when they had problems? Or...
>
> B: That routes you were originating continued to be propagated by 
> them, even though your session with them was down? Or...
>
> C: Something else.
>
> I ask, as we are considering some cheap Cogent bandwidth in the 
> not-too-distant future, to allow us to keep commit rates low on higher 
> quality connections. 'A' wouldn't be a real problem, since we run our 
> own AS and originate our own routes; 'B' could be potentially devastating.
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 8:04 AM, Vlade Ristevski <vristevs at ramapo.edu 
> <mailto: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
>
>
>

-- 
Vlad