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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical RE: Querstions about COGENT and their services...
Don't forget AOL in the list of companies they have de-peered (or have been de-peered from) in the past, as this was big at the time. I personally think that arguably the Level 3 spat had the biggest impact (at least in the US, I know that was a bad day here). This all comes back to Cogent's views of the size and traffic patterns on their own network. They often think of themselves as a Tier 1 network and are perceived to act that way, even though most of the companies they "peer" with are actually transit providers. As far as I know, all of their "spats" have been billing disputes where they were trying to force other carriers into settlement-free peering arrangements, even though the carriers saw the traffic patterns on the Cogent links as pretty heavily swayed to one side. It seems that there are lots of little T2/T3 ISPs that have Cogent as primary or balanced transit, but very little content takes its primary path over Cogent's network. This is why Cogent gets a bad name with many people in the industry. Some call it aggressive business tactics and some just call it wrong, you choose for yourself. I would not ever want them as my primary (and certainly not my choice for single-homed connections), but not because of performance but instead due to fear of being cut off or "segmented" the next time they try to make a stand. It is a good idea to have them included in a long list not only due to price, but also to ensure you can reach their customers if/when the next spat happens. Just my 2 cents, -Scott -----Original Message----- From: Greg VILLAIN [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 2:55 PM To: nanog list Subject: Re: Querstions about COGENT and their services... On Jun 3, 2008, at 6:06 PM, TS Glassey wrote: > So at one time Cogent was one of the lowest performing bandwidth > providers. Anyone have any responses to their current operations? > > regards, > Todd Glassey CISM CIFI > Chief Scientist/Founder - Certichron Inc [email protected] > 650-796-8178 > Couple remarks on their reputation in europe, I've never had Cogent transit, so this requires further investigation. They're the cheapest (cost-wise, I wouldn't venture to say technically- wise) in Europe, that's a fact. They often get into peering clashes against major actors, they've recently been in that situation with Telia, in the past with France's incumbent (Orange), Level 3 has also depeered them in the past, this is due to them being brokers and is inherent to their pricing policy - it certainly will keep happening to them in the future. The above point is from my perspective a show-stopper, but a good strategy I've very often heard from some of their customers is to use them to forward traffic towards exotic locations, where QoS is not an issue, or where revenue is not critical. Their IP core is supposedly a patch-work resulting from their numerous past acquisitions (PSINet, Lambdanet to name a few), which can explain the many outages they have. Still, the sales people in Europe are really kind, comprehensive and caring people, which makes it a little better, I suppose :) Hope this helped. Greg VILLAIN Independant internet architect No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG. Version: 8.0.100 / Virus Database: 269.24.6/1480 - Release Date: 6/3/2008 7:00 AM
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