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Fake bandwidth?? Ive never heard it called that. Cogents real bandwidth, there are several pros and cons to cogent bandwidth:

Cons:
1. Cogent bandwidth is in fact oversold, technically on their own network its not oversold, but at peering points they have more commitment then available volume. This doesnt matter much because not everyones going to utilize 100% of their 100mbps all the time.

2. Number 1's point means that at certain times, certain parts of their network can be slow, and certain peering points can have higher then normal response times.

3. Cogents main objective to become profitable relys on them keeping as much data on their network at all times, this can create odd routing tendency, IE instead of a packet of data routing direct to its destination it may take several unnec. hops. this is so the packets stay on their internal network so they dont pay peering charges.

Pros:

1. Cogent is cheap.
2. No long term committments needed.
3. Most of the time you can obtain substantial burstability on their network. As all connections are either 100mbps or 1000mbps

TO say cogent is fake bandwidth is rediculous. Its great for some application but not for others. Its up to you to decide.

I don't think alot of people call it fake on here since alot of people use it. Some companies (From my experiance) say they don't use it, but do. And you cannot tell from a traceroute because the inbound is XXX, the outbound is cogent. (I actually use this for some of our streaming services because it's cheap.)

I wouldn't call cogent "Fake". But I wouldn't host websites and other mission critical applications on cogent-only. But that's just how I look at things.

Originally posted by jayjay
But I wouldn't host websites and other mission critical applications on cogent-only.

If it was mission critical I wouldn't only have one of any provider, you'd want redundancy no mater who your with...

Most people on this board (and in real life) want the cheapest service, they don't care about anything else. With more providors that adds cost.

Most of my boxes are connected to Internap (who connect us to 9 tier-one bandwidth providers including UUNET, Sprint, C&W, AT&T, Verio, Qwest, Digex, Genuity and Global Crossing.), another box with a few more going up are Qwest, at&t, exodus, internap (same as above), uunet, epik (level3, sprint). So I'm not worried about redundancy. But alot of the people do select cogent bandwidth because it's cheap and it fits into their business plan, and they have some money left over. They're thinking it's a win-win situation.

I do have to say that most of the providors out there are making a killing off cogent bandwidth though. (Unless they are buying it at a high cost)

Also, I would have to say that out of all the people offering cogent bandwidth on this list. The best cogent lines that I've been on come from the Equinix datacenters... Just from my experiance of course.