Hiya.

I see alot of people on the boards who don't seem to like cogent bandwidth or look down on hosting providers who use it but no one seems to say why.

I've looked at there site and it seems to be a good deal although I haven't talked to anone who actually has it.

I was just hoping some of you could share your opinions to help me with a buying decision.

Thanks

Aaron :eek:

Not sure if you did a search, but there is a lot of conversations about Cogent here. Here is the latest http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=50205

Yes. I did a search and even read that thread.

The problem is no one is posting any hard, technical facts... i.e. "I use them and I've been down 50% of the time." or "My vendor provided equipment keeps going down and no one from Cogent has even returned my calls." or even "Everyone's full of crap. They're the best around." <-- not really a hard fact. :)

I'd like to know other people's experiences with them.

Thanks,

Aaron

There seems to be two main concerns with Cogent:

- Quality Problems
- Financial Problems

To me, I think Cogent is getting better in their routing, which results in better latencies. Last year (and even earlier this year), I saw Cogent routing all over the US before it hit the destination 200 miles from the source. The routes today still bounce a bit, but in my tests they have gotten better. I don't have any experience with Cogent uptime -- several providers here use Cogent as a one-and-only bandwidth provider so they can answer that a little better. The others that use Cogent are using BGP (hopefully) which routes traffic using another pipe if Cogent is down for whatever reason, but I'm sure they can offer some data.

Financially, Cogent is in a pretty deep hole. Their 10-K was just released for Q1 2002 located here:

http://sec.freeedgar.com/displayHTML.asp?ID=1872089

If you don't know how to read a 10-K, go grab some advil and an accountant.

From what I've read, Cogent is burning a whole lot more money than they are making. As an example, they reported paying twice on debt interest than they made in revenues. They paid something on the order of $7 million in debt interest _alone_ and made revenues of $3.5 million, a portion ($1.4 million I think) of which was revenue from Netrail. That means Cogent itself made $2.1 million in revenue, or $700k a month average.

As people have said before, only time will tell what happens. No one can predict what is going to happen. Look at the numbers and draw your own conclusions.

Of course, if I'm incorrect in my statements above, someone please correct me. This is how I understand the present situation to be.

The only problem with cogent is that you have to colocate to a facility they have already wired as they are not a last mile provider...

I called them and asked them where I had to be. Acording to them I can rent office space in about 6 buildings down town and they can run cable to me. I can still run my own NOC.

From everything I've read. Cogent won't go into a building unless they can get at least 41 clients, but more to the point, for you to get cogent as a web host your cost are

$ 3,000.00 = web host
$ 1,000.00 = business owners ( non web related )
something else inbetween for ISP's

also you have to go to one of the building they are already in. IN nj that's not a problem becasue they have a ton of buildings in my area ( Newark).

but everyone looks at there numbers and worries, What is the big deal, run a bgp4 with a local telco( t-3) and cogent, if cogent fails the t-3 will take up the slack or at worst you'll be flooded for a few weeks. but with the cost savings you were getting every month you should have investing in redundant t-3's or t-1's on your bgp4

mike

Cogent still does have some routing problems to sort out. From Europe, I always end up going to San Jose before going anywhere else, even if it's on the East Coast - frustrating to say the least.

Yes you do get your own NOC, but you basically have to colocate somewhere else or buy rack space somewhere else.

Rather then starting a new thread I just thought I could update this one. I've been talking quite a bit with a few people from Cogent. There are rumors that they would go out of business which in my opinion is completly false after the facts I got. Cogent currently has $80 million in their bank. At a rate of $3.5 million spent per month that would last them 23 months IF they not absolutly no revenue whatsoever. Lately they bought a company where they are losing money on but they're getting back. They are getting between 8 and 10 orders per week which is brining their revenue up quite nicely. Here is the e-mail recieved

Our current burn rate is 3.5million and we currently have 80 million in the
bank. That alone gives us 22.9 months, more so that is saying that we don't
install any new clients and we don't get any of the revenue stream coming
from the PSInet acquistion. PSINet had approximately 5million in monthly
revenue, we will lose some of that in the process of integration, so lets
say we only get 3 million a month from that. Also we are currently lighting
approximately 8-10 new clients per week, that is a mix of both retail and
wholesale pricing.

Bottom line is I think we will have enough cash to make it to profitability.
We will always have doubter though.


As my final opinion their networks seem to have improved a lot over time. A cogent server ping in my area went from 130ms to 29ms in a few months. Some of the websites that I visit often are on cogent and i haven't seen them down for a long time (i don't beleive they have redundancy). For those that still believe cogent will go out of business don't you think that they would at least attempt to raise the prices considering their 100mbps is equivalent to a 5mbps on a different network that has somewhat of a better uptime and a ping of 5 less then cogent.

Until today the traceroute to my server in Chicago from the Netherlands always took me pretty much straight there via Washington. Just did another traceroute now and it's bouncing me from Washington (after coming from Europe) to Atlanta, back to Washington and then to Chicago via New York. Very strange, that stopover in Atlanta :D

I must say the ping is still excellent at the moment (about 150 ms from the Netherlands), so that's not a problem, just never seen it jump to Atlanta from Washington before...

Originally posted by MrLister
There are rumors that they would go out of business which in my opinion is completly false after the facts I got. Cogent currently has $80 million in their bank. At a rate of $3.5 million spent per month that would last them 23 months IF they not absolutly no revenue whatsoever.
You aren't getting all the facts. You aren't getting the debt side of things. Cogent is in very deep debt. They NEED to generate revenue and lots of it. They cannot operate on that $80 million alone. What are they up to with Cisco alone, $200 million? Over $200 million? I think they have a cap at $400 million.

This is an interesting quote I found in the Yahoo financial message boards:


Ok...lets do the math.

qtr revenue was $3.5mil, of which $1.4 came from Netrail/ARCC. That leaves COI revenue for the qtr at $2.1mil...$700k/month.

$700k/month is all that this operation has been able to generate to date as a stand alone. Thats a drop in the proverbial bucket.

Then we look at the financial (cisco) covenants.
They claim to have met all to date...but have you looked at the train a headed their way.

now remembr, they have been able to generate $700k/month here people...now look at these numbers (and i know that they do not include psinet, but psinet will never deliver the growth thy need to hit these targets).

MINIMUM TOTAL REVENUES. On a consolidated basis, Holdings and its Subsidiaries shall not fail to maintain total monthly or total annualized quarterly revenues of Holdings and its Subsidiaries, for each monthly or quarterly period, as applicable, set forth below, of not less than the correlative amount indicated (it being understood that with respect to any quarterly period, annualized revenues shall be equal to revenues for such quarterly period, multiplied by four):


MONTHLY PERIOD ENDING REQUIRED AMOUNT
January 31, 2002 $ 755,000
February 28, 2002 $ 985,000
March 31, 2002 $ 1,215,000
April 30, 2002 $ 1,510,000
May 31, 2002 $ 1,855,000

QUARTERLY PERIOD ENDING REQUIRED ANNUALIZED AMOUNT
June 30, 2002 $ 26,700,000
September 30, 2002 $ 42,500,000
December 31, 2002 $ 66,100,000

So what these numbers tell me is that they have to go from $3.5mil/qtr (current), to $16=mil/qtr by the end of the year to be at the $66mil. So, excluding the PSI revenue (and i have no idea how much it is)they have to ramp from $700k/month to $5.5mil/month by the end of the year in the current market conditions.

think they will? think they won't?
His $5.5mil/month number is off (it's too low), but the point is there. His numbers also seem to match with what others are saying and reporting (I can't read a 10-Q to save my life). Pull your own conclusions.

All I know is that Cogent is far from being cozy for the next 23 months as that guy (sales rep?) led to believe. His statement makes me think "hey, we've got $80 million in the bank! we can effectively operate at a heavy loss for 23 months and still be ok!" Yea right. That $80 million came from somewhere, and that somewhere is expecting it back, with interest. I doubt that the $80 million is from past Cogent revenue (of course, correct me if I'm wrong). If I were Cogent, I wouldn't want to dip into that $80 million. The more I dip into it, the more I have to pay back, in addition to the Cisco debt I have (over $200 million).