Hi,

I read on this forum about Cogent bandwidth and other bandwidth. Which is the best bandwidth to get, and is it a matter of price of speed?

Jacco

I would say Verio is the best. Why? Well because I have always heard nothing but good things about them.. Also price is basically everything in this game.. What you pay 5k a month from Cogent wont even get you a fraction of what you will get over at Verio

But what is the difference?

The difference is that Cogent oversells their bandwidth, which is a shaky business practice. Do a search on these froums for "cogent" to find out more.

Originally posted by Avail
The difference is that Cogent oversells their bandwidth, which is a shaky business practice. Do a search on these froums for "cogent" to find out more.

And you (Availhosting.com) are selling 28 GIGS of bandwidth for $29.95/mo. So, aren't you also overselling and/or using Cogent? :eek:

HAHAHA.. Thank you.. I really needed that one.

Anywho..

"So, aren't you also overselling..."

It does seem that way indeed.

"...and/or using Cogent?"

Nope, they are with VO, which as far as I know, do not have cogent. VO aren't cheap on bandwidth either.

Originally posted by Avail
The difference is that Cogent oversells their bandwidth, which is a shaky business practice. Do a search on these froums for "cogent" to find out more.

I thought that you have a dedicated server with eservers.biz, which is in the DV2 data center, which definitely does utilize Cogent as one of their providers. You state that overselling is a shaky business practice and that you do not oversell your bandwidth. You need to double-check your math, because you definitely are overselling your bandwidth.

Sorry, I meant to answer the original question, but I got carried away. The best bandwidth to get is bandwidth from several different providers, for speed and reliability. In my opinion, Net Access Corporation and Ardent Communications have data centers with the best network connectivity that I could find. Since they utilize bandwidth from many different providers, they are very fast from most locations.

Cogent is the cheapest, but I don't really know how they managed to pull that off. Some people say it's because they oversell their bandwidth, but I'm pretty sure most bandwidth providers oversubscribe their bandwidth. What some people have noticed with Cogent is that data might travel all across the country before reaching its destination, which is very inefficient.

Anyway, what I have noticed is that providers that utilize mostly one provider, not necessarily Cogent, tend to be slower, so the best bandwidth to get is bandwidth from many different providers.

Cogent also has issues with "peering" with other providers like Sprint, MCI, Qwest, etc.

They have a OC-48 going to several states, this is fine and great as long as you stay on thier network. If you need to hop off and onto another providers line (i.e. - anyone using cable or DSL) then thier peer arrangements with those providers might only be at a DS-3 (45Mbs) capability. This is a major shortfall of Cogent and that is where alot of thier problems are held. I know just recently, for some reason or another, they were not allowed to see the Sprint network, and Sprint would not pass traffic to them because of a issue with the peering (unpaid bill, descrepencies in thoughts, whatever, we will never know).

This is the major reason that I decided not to use Cogent in our facilities. Plus the overselling thing really is a major turnoff. Yes, most providers oversell thier bandwidth, but most know when it is time to upgrade. For example, here in my city in one of thier hotels, they have one Gig-E pipe coming in. On that pipe they got 34 clients approx. Well, math will tell you that they are oversold by 3.4 times. This is where the previous post states that they grossly oversell thier pipe.

I reckon a good bandwdth provider always give you less ping, lower network utilization, so when you need the bandwidth it can burst higher and better.