Hi guys,

We're looking for big bandwith providers, and Cogent is one option.

But their pricing is too low...then, anyone experienced with Cogent? Is it a good provider? bad?.

Anyone who works with Coget, to traceroute/ping his IP?

We're in Spain, but we want to put our servers in their Datacenter in USA, with a 100 Mbps connection, that costs 3000 $/month, with rack.

Any other similar option?

Regards,

Cogent is like the last person i would use expecially for overseas traffic. Cogent has horrible pings/messed up routing and horrible peering. Enough said i think

On Another Note please just reember the saying, You Get What You Pay For

webtech said it about right, you get what you pay for. They are pretty much the cheapest solution possible, and as such pretty bad quality. If you want to have a site that can have a few hours (maybe days) downtime a month and wants low cost you have found your match.

Originally posted by EO|webhost
If you want to have a site that can have a few hours (maybe days) downtime a month and wants low cost you have found your match.

I guess that explains why we have over a 1000mbps of connectivity from Cogent and have had about 30 minutes of downtime over the past 4-5 months ;)

Cogent isn't the best fiber... routing and ping wise - however, it really depends on your location. For example, I get 97ms cross country using Cogent and I get even higher pings using other "good" providers when going across the country.

Like PHPCode said, they aren't the best, but they are a damn good value. We use them to route internal traffic between two datacenters and two offices located in different states (office with 150+ people in each). It has worked much better than we thought.

We, however, do not have any of our hosting machines routed via that line.

Sirius

From the Cogent i have seen (Atlanta and Chicago) i would not put a hosting box on it but like phpcoder said for internal traffic, its a lot cheaper than running a OC-12 from say a office in NY or a office in LA which i just priced out at $22,000 MRC

And another cheap option?

Regards,

rg_pablo

I have some suggestions. Almost as cheap as Cogent but quality

Cogent has worked great for us an our customers in the UK, Russia, Cyprus, Germany, Latvia and Portugal perfer it over our other carriers.

One thing I have discovered is that it seems Cogent quality depends alot on where you are on their network. Not a single person in Kansas City (where I am) that I've talked to using Cogent has ever had a problem. I've heard Florida is a really good spot too. It seems most of the issues are on the west coast.

if you'd like an IP to ping and a down load test off our cogent feed, PM me.

Aaron

P.S. Also make sure the people you get advice from (on anything) have actually used the product themselves. I see alot of people saying, "Well, my brother's roomate's former ex-girlfried's uncle used Cogent and he said it sucks so it must be true!"

Hi webtech,

I'm waiting for your answer... :-)

Thanks and regards,

rg_pablo

Hi WII-Aaron,

If it depends on you're on their network...

I'm from Spain, and I supose they'll let me choose the datacenter I want, or not?

Regards,

rg-pablo,

Sure. If you want to colo in a Cogent datacenter they will let you pick. Their datacenter in my area is 2 floors below my offices and 11 floors above my Datacenter. :) I'm sure you can colo there. OR, there are countless carrier neutral colo facilities that can get Cogent bandwidth for you.

Aaron

Cogent is useful for massive cost-effective bandwidth. "You get what you pay for" is true when it comes to Cogent bandwidth. It all depends on your needs and the needs of your customers. I don't like Cogent; I don't hate Cogent.

Actually i know of atleast 2 providers that are Tier2 but use top Tier1 providers that can compete with Cogent on the 100Mbps level. Pm me for those names

Originally posted by phpcoder

Cogent isn't the best fiber... routing and ping wise - however, it really depends on your location. For example, I get 97ms cross country using Cogent and I get even higher pings using other "good" providers when going across the country.

You're in San Diego, right? Why does Cogent take traffic from East Coast peering and send it to you via this path?

Washington DC -> Atlanta GA -> Jacksonville FL -> Miami FL -> Tampa FL -> Houston TX -> San Diego CA.

That's the sort of suboptimal geographical routing people are worried about.

Kevin

I personally used cogent and had various routing issues and downtime. Maybe it was just my bad luck. When it worked was decent.

Originally posted by sigma
You're in San Diego, right? Why does Cogent take traffic from East Coast peering and send it to you via this path?

Washington DC -> Atlanta GA -> Jacksonville FL -> Miami FL -> Tampa FL -> Houston TX -> San Diego CA.

That's the sort of suboptimal geographical routing people are worried about.

Kevin

Yes, that is were the datacenter is... and like I said depending on YOUR location you will get mixed results.

Originally posted by phpcoder
Yes, that is were the datacenter is... and like I said depending on YOUR location you will get mixed results.

But those results affect both endpoints of any connection. So someone reaching you through your Cogent connection may get worse results than if you had, say, a Sprint connection. That's the overall disadvantage we're talking about. There may be plenty of cases where the route is fine and performance is good. But you can't pick and choose which cases "count".

Kevin

Cogent is dirt cheap. It might be an option. You may be better off blending it with other bandwidth providers.

You might also want to consider Yipes, HE, Global Crossing.

Originally posted by sigma
But those results affect both endpoints of any connection. So someone reaching you through your Cogent connection may get worse results than if you had, say, a Sprint connection. That's the overall disadvantage we're talking about. There may be plenty of cases where the route is fine and performance is good. But you can't pick and choose which cases "count".

Kevin

It's like this for any provider. It may be good for some, and bad for others. In Cogent's case it's not as good for the most % of people.

Originally posted by phpcoder
It's like this for any provider. It may be good for some, and bad for others. In Cogent's case it's not as good for the most % of people.

Fair enough :) I think we agree.

Kevin

Please, everyone.. Do not forget the two week outage they had with AOL / TimeWarner last year in early December.

Like 2 -3 second ping times. Totally unusable. We switched away from Cogent at that time. They where horrible.

They might seem great at first, but then it will hit you hard.. It is not worth the risk.. But hey go for it ;) (sarcastic) hehe

Originally posted by johnallen
You may be better off blending it with other bandwidth providers.

Hands John a cookie.

Why anyone would go for a single provider solution in this day and age is beyond me (aside from cutting corners). I've never had an issue with Cogent itself - though tend to agree with the bad press they get - but I'm more concerned about web hosts who use any single provider without having proper backup in case that provider goes down, or worse, goes out of business.

Thanks for the cookie. :D