I have searched around wht for a bit, couldnt find an answer that I thought sounded good, so.....

Why does everyone hate Cogent so much? I could find no one actually providing factual data as to why this is. Everyone simply said "oh they use Cogent...."

Is there something I missed where Cogent screwed a million people? No mention in the news (searched there too, in fact everything there was good!).

Please provide actual incidents where Cogent proved to be a crappy provider. thanks in advance.

snikle:

The only thing I've ever really found as a basis for the negative attitude toward Cogent, other than the odd complaint, was the perception that Cogent is selling their bandwidth too cheap and placing too much burden on their peering points and partner carriers -- thus many expect that the entire model is destined to collapse.

I don't have anything against Cogent, I just wouldn't choose to use them. We prefer paying the premium for bandwidth, so that data is sent from user > server and vice versa in the quickest way possible.

Cogent bounces data around from coast to coast, thus taking longer and slowing things down.

With the current financial state of the telecomms industry, I don't think Cogent are out on a limb in their current financial situation.

Cogent bandwidth is probably just fine, i just heard they did alot of overselling. I could be wrong.

The issue is one of history. In 231AD, Cornealius Cogentus invaded Penguinatania, fscking file systems and ransacking villages, and pillaging blocks upon blocks of storage leaving the kingdom quite bare.

Generations of Penguinarians have despised the house of Cogentus since.

Its hard to fight history.

When people can't compete they have to defend by bashing. I just heard of a company in my area called ***********.com I gave them for a call and got a quote for 100Mbit Ethernet and they said over 100K. So if your trying to sell your product for so much more, how else can you compete besides trying to find every flaw they have to bash them?

Originally posted by ClusterMania
So if your trying to sell your product for so much more, how else can you compete besides trying to find every flaw they have to bash them?

Yep, yep and yep! :agree:

Originally posted by mwatkins
The issue is one of history. In 231AD, Cornealius Cogentus invaded Penguinatania, fscking file systems and ransacking villages, and pillaging blocks upon blocks of storage leaving the kingdom quite bare.

Hehe, good I am obviously not the only one with a sense of humor here on WHT :D

So if your trying to sell your product for so much more, how else can you compete besides trying to find every flaw they have to bash them?Not really, but we just like to point out that they have a flawed business model which will correct itself in about 12 months. No reason to enjoy it now if network quality is an issue for your site.

I did a search on various 'real' news sites (ie NOT wht - the Inquirer of the hosting world) for Cogent and guess what......

not one single story saying anything bad about them, actually almost all were very very postivie about this company. How they bought two failing comapnies and turned them around, how C-Span has now hired them to carry thier broadcasts over the net, added more coverage to Kansas City.....etc etc

Not one said anything bad about how crappy their uptimes are, how bad their connections are, how we shoudl all steer clear of this failing company.

I find it interesting how everyone (well nearly everyone) thinks this company is so damn bad. look at the lemmings!

Originally posted by RackMy.com
Not really, but we just like to point out that they have a flawed business model which will correct itself in about 12 months. No reason to enjoy it now if network quality is an issue for your site.

Who , cogent? Care to elaborate ? Thanks in advance

Mr rackmy, I wonder how it is that you, a member of a LLC can consider yourself worthy of evaluating a multimillion (if not billion) dollar company's business model?

Hell, the company is traded on the stock market, last I checked, I didnt see Rackmy.com on there.
Please give some FACTS backing up your talk.

snikle, what are you talking about? There have been many times that it's been shown that they have a poorly routed network. They also have been rated by Keynote as having one of the worst networks.

And what does us being an LLC have to do with anything, LOL

Cogent has a limited number of peering agreements, which allows them to provide service at a much cheaper price. They are slowly buying up interconnects and making peering arrangements though. Personally I think it is a great product for the price, though I don't use it because I like to keep the pings as low as possible. To see the difference, just traceroute a site that is hosted on cogent as opposed to one in the same location that is hosted on a different backbone. Usually routes going through cogent will have more hops and geographically jump to out of the way peering points.

I have no issue with Cogent, simply because I've not looked into the issue in any depth.

But the comment by snikle suggesting that Cogent is somehow good and pure simply because its big and on the stock market, well... have you heard of

Worldcom
360 Systems
Adelphia
not to mention
Enron
etc.

Or how about QCOM... those that bought it at presplit close to 1000$ must be hurting now.

I make good money finding businesses with flawed business models and shorting their stock. Most of them are medium to very large businesses. A surprising number of medium to large biz fails outright, over time. And little ol' me is able to size them up just fine.

So don't assume that Cogent is bad, or good, do the homework and come up with an unbiased opinion.

A tip: Size, isn't everything.

Cogent will be the next worldcom, going down with cogent will be all those 600GB $99.00/month providers :)

Cogent = Cheap Bandwidth!

This is a great question. I love these stimulating thinkers. Anyone have a reason other than the overselling issue? I havent really heard the issue of outage or uptime.

Yesterday, some nocster customers had some problems with cogent, high pings, approx 1500ms.. Check the dedicated forum. :bawling:

Cogent has bad routing atleast with some backbones, or some backbones have bad routing to cogent. I can get better pings to a boston, ma non cogent server than to an atlanta, ga cogent server ( I'm in north georgia ) because cogent bounces my traffic all the way to the west coast before getting on the backbone I use (ATT) and coming back to me.

The fact that a company is traded on the stock market means squat, just noting =)

Originally posted by Samuel
The fact that a company is traded on the stock market means squat, just noting =)

No, that doesn't mean anything. However, in the context in which it was mentioned, I believe it was meant to question the qualifications of RackNine to examine the Cogent business model.

Why attack him though, that's what I am asking myself.

In starting a thread about a particular subject, obvious for market research reasons, the thread starter attacked the qualifications of racknine based on an outside force

Personal Attack, Business Thread.

Who's to say RackNine doesnt hold a degree in Financial Statistical Analysis?

Of course I would not be suprised at how many of the members here do not hold a degree, but who is this guy attacking someone personally based on their business level?

It's simple. Cogent claims that their bandwidth is not oversold. This is true if you look at their network alone. Once outside their network you go through peering points, their peering points are overloaded and causes slow routing, high pings, etc. Now, this is not true all the time, but during peek hours it can get ugly. But, you get what you pay for, what else would you expect for $3,000 for 100 megabit /month? Cogent is not a tier 1 provider, and people using cogent as their primary provider makes all their offers look allot less attractive. This is why people always sigh and reply with "oh... it’s cogent." Like I said you get what you pay for and this is true in this situation. If cogent could improve their peering points, it would be a very attractive offer, until then it remains on the back-burner. Realistically I do not see this happening in the near future, as bandwidth peering to other providers is no where near the 30/megabit pricing, and obviously for cogent to be profitable they would need to be much further below this figure. Hope this clarifies some things.

Its racknines opinion, i mean everyone has their right to state their own opinions :confused:

We have used Cogent bandiwdth for years without any problems. Can anyone give me a example of this "so called" high ping? We also use Level 3 as purely backup bandiwdth and there ms is NO better than our Cogent..

But then again maybe we are in a good data center, who knows!

Can anyone give me a example of this "so called" high ping? We also use Level 3 as purely backup bandiwdth and there ms is NO better than our CogentJust do a search on this forum and you will see the routing problems on Cogent. Level 3 has a MUCH better/faster network that Cogent!

I did a search and wasn't able to find anything. But coming from a network perspective there are way to many reasons that would cause a high ping rate. You have to look at distance traveled, hops, load on certain hops.

I just don't like to generalize and say Cogent is bad. Honestly I don't see it.

For example give 209.68.6.50 a traceroute it's located in PA

Note I am coming from SF, long way to go.

Cogent - 12 hops - 65ms
Home Cable Provider - 13 hops (UUNET) - 96ms
Sprint - 11 hops - 73ms
Level 3 - 12 hops - 73ms

Maybe we really are a special case.

http://www.americasnetwork.com/americasnetwork/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=21161

I hope it works now! :)

Motley, 404..

thanks edude for pointing out

Very interesting, heres a worry for all you cogent users ;)

I dont want cogent to go under .. wish them well..

I only wish they will level the playing field

Cogent is in a financial pickle. I'm waiting for the Q2 reports to come out to see how they are doing.

A post I made a little while ago:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=363362#post363362

I'm not as concerned with Cogent's peering and pings as I am with their financials. Of course, there are few, if any, backbone providers that are not having financial problems (WCOME, geez...). However, Cogent's model of "everyone needs 100mbit connections" seems to be a little off. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they went into this assuming business offices (their biggest target in my understanding) would be willing to spend the $3k/mo for their 100mbit feed when in actuality they don't want it (and I don't blame them) because they don't need it. 100mbit is _a lot_! With these business offices keeping their more-than-enough T1 and/or dsl/cable connection(s), Cogent is finding it harder to push the 100mbit connection onto their intended target. ISPs are buying the bandwidth because they can make money off of it and can afford the costs.

Doesn't Cogent only feed GigEs into a building? Thus, doesn't it need $30k from the building tenants in order to light a building? That was my understanding from all these news releases floating around. I could be mistaken, of course.

Sure, their prices are good, their peering and pings aren't *that* bad in the regular webhosting world, but is their business model sound? I personally think they overshot their target audience by quite a bit. You can't expect to sell most of your bandwidth to ISPs knowing full-well they will use most, if not all, of it up, thus stressing your points considerably (at those prices). You need to focus your sights on the smaller fries -- the ones that will use a very small percentage of the bandwidth.

These are the views from a non-Financial-Degree-Holding member of the WHT community. It's just what I collect from all the news I read. I tend to filter out the PR junk about Cogent being a Tier1 and how CSpan has chosen them and all and "try" to look more at their models and thoughts.

Originally posted by Samuel
Why attack him though, that's what I am asking myself.

In starting a thread about a particular subject, obvious for market research reasons, the thread starter attacked the qualifications of racknine based on an outside force

Personal Attack, Business Thread.

Who's to say RackNine doesnt hold a degree in Financial Statistical Analysis?

Of course I would not be suprised at how many of the members here do not hold a degree, but who is this guy attacking someone personally based on their business level?

I dunno, man, I don't have anything against racknine myself or cogent either for that matter. What bothers me is people that argue like 11yr old school girls and pick the most irrelevant part of an arguement and keep repeating it. :eek3:

Who is this racknine person :)

Got me, I think they are referring to you ctually, someone made the name error, and the rest (reitterating my lemmings comment from earlier) just carried it on. :)

I wasnt attacking you Rackmy, I was just asking for factual reported (ie NOT wht) cases where Cogent was said to be bad, And when you said they had a bad business model, I was curious to know where you got your info from.

Actually ,at the moment Cogents financial numbers really aren't that bad compared to others in the industry. Also read in some article that they have enough money in thei accounts to stay above water for the next 2 years, even if they keep loosing money, but their numbers suggested they would be moving into profit withing the next 9 months or something like that...

To clarify on my earlier post, I agree with Tazzman. Yes, we can all say that Cogent financials aren't promising by compared to other providers, but how do we know if other providers are telling the truth?

My opinion is, if Cogent go down, they won't be the first or last to do so. Others will precede or follow.

Originally posted by Tazzman
Actually ,at the moment Cogents financial numbers really aren't that bad compared to others in the industry. Also read in some article that they have enough money in thei accounts to stay above water for the next 2 years, even if they keep loosing money, but their numbers suggested they would be moving into profit withing the next 9 months or something like that...

According to http://www.americasnetwork.com/americasnetwork/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=21161&&pageID=2

Schaeffer said that they'll profitable some time in 2004.

What will be first? profit or bankrupt? :)

For what it worth my opinion, I hope that they go down as soon as possible, I think that they prices are hurting the industry

I find it interesting to note that the four informants were:

> a marketing manager with the firm who recently tendered his resignation
> a laid-off sales agent
> the head of another competitive carrier that entered into negotiations with Cogent

and the third informant (he sure had alot of negative things to say), I couldn't find where they said who he was.

Why are you defending them so much snickle, do you work for them? Or do you sell hosting using them?

Dave Schaeffer its Cogent Co. CEO.

No I don't work for them! I wish. Just curious as to how they got such a bad name when I could find no references to why they 'sucked' so bad.
I find it amazing that people blindly follow and believe something when the facts are not there to support it. So I decided I wanted to root this one out and find out why there is such a hatred of Cogent on wht. Nothing more, nothing less. Don't you want to know the truth vs. some bs people spread simply because they don't like something? I am not defending them, simply pointing out when something looks...odd/interesting/fishy. You mean you didn't find it interesting that of the four informants, two were former employees, one had nothing to do WITH Cogent (actually a competitor!), and the last was...forgotten? Funny how they all are negative towards Cogent, eh? I bet you think Oswald killed Kennedy by himself, don't you?

I have made it my personal mission to fight blind (lemming) ignorance on wht! (where's the super snikle icon when I need it?)

Actually ,at the moment Cogents financial numbers really aren't that bad compared to others in the industry. Well, the big thing is that most of the bigger BW players (Sprint, AT&T, etc) keep themselves a float because of one thing; Long Distance. Yes, most all BW providers are really in the red but the larger players have the revenue from LD to help.

So the question is, what does Cogent have? We are seeing more and more of the BW/transit only companies going belly up and with Cogents flawed business model, I predict it will only be a matter of time.

Too much competition hey? :eek:

Originally posted by Jedito


According to http://www.americasnetwork.com/americasnetwork/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=21161&&pageID=2

Schaeffer said that they'll profitable some time in 2004.

What will be first? profit or bankrupt? :)

For what it worth my opinion, I hope that they go down as soon as possible, I think that they prices are hurting the industry

Originally posted by edude
Too much competition hey? :eek:



HUH?:confused: :eek:

Originally posted by RackMy.com
Well, the big thing is that most of the bigger BW players (Sprint, AT&T, etc) keep themselves a float because of one thing; Long Distance. Yes, most all BW providers are really in the red but the larger players have the revenue from LD to help.

So the question is, what does Cogent have? We are seeing more and more of the BW/transit only companies going belly up and with Cogents flawed business model, I predict it will only be a matter of time.

Speaking of long distance, how do people offer phone cards? What kind of equipment do these phonecard companys us? Voice over IP a expensive technology and hard to setup?

Originally posted by ClusterMania

Voice over IP a expensive technology and hard to setup?

No it isn't.

Why even mention about Cogent being in financial trouble when every other provider has trouble. Look at Worldcom who is most likely going to file for bankruptcy. 75% of all internet e-mail is routed through Worldcom, do you think people should worry?

Bankruptcy is almost a good thing for all these publically traded companies, they only people that suffer are the stock holders. The worst can happen is they will be bought out and the name will change.

I thought Cogent was doing $1k for 100mbit now?

Anyways,


Do you really think 100mbit of bandwidth should cost $50k?

Level3 uses WATER sprinklers in some of their NOCs (a friend who worked in their data center told me this, and i trust his word fully).


On to my point,

Even if Cogent died, someone else would certainly pick up their customers and I doubt they would choose to lose customers by raising the price steeply.

Technology is getting cheaper and Cogent is showing us (even if their network is under par) that bandwidth doesn't need to cost so much.

Companies will continue to charge an arm and a leg if they can.
Look at hosting for example, people started dropping prices and the only way to compete was to either drop your prices or offer extraordinary service. I don't think any of the bandwidth providers are offering any extraodinary services that justify the price they have.

Oh, and have you noticed Cogent is very up front with their prices, meanwhile you have to sign NDAs to even get a quote from other providers? lame.

Level3 uses WATER sprinklers in some of their NOCs Do you mean Datacenter? A lot of datacenters use dry pipe. Not sure what that has to do with anything.Even if Cogent died, someone else would certainly pick up their customers and I doubt they would choose to lose customers by raising the price steeply. I don't think you are correct there. If the price were to increase a whole lot, people would leave to other companies like Level3 or Verio who have better networks. If they went belly up, I don't think there is a company out there who would offer the same server/price.Technology is getting cheaper and Cogent is showing us (even if their network is under par) that bandwidth doesn't need to cost so much. Yes it is, but laying fiber and setting up the infrastucture is still very expensive.Oh, and have you noticed Cogent is very up front with their prices, meanwhile you have to sign NDAs to even get a quote from other providers? lame.I have dealt with many providers (Sprint, Verio, Level3, AT&T, UUnet, Global Crossing, DTI, Genuity, etc) and have never had to sign an NDA.Why even mention about Cogent being in financial trouble when every other provider has trouble. Look at Worldcom who is most likely going to file for bankruptcy. You really cannot compare WCOM's financial problems to Cogent. WCOM is a larger company who offers many different products while Cogent only offers BW.

RackMy:

Know the history about Sprint laying fiber?

SPRINT = Southern Pacific Railway (?) International.


They had the right of way to lay fiber above ground, but they dug up the ground and layed fiber - violating laws.

Now they make billions.

This really has nothing to do with Cogent, but I think it shows that bandwidth prices are a bit steep... even more so considering people have broken laws to make their money selling it.

Why does everyone hate cogent? For the same reason everyone hates rackshack...

I'd be willing to bet atleast 1/3rd of the people who visit WHT are hosting providers or are involved in a hosting company of some sort. Naturally, places like Cogent and Rackshack are viewed as competitors to these people. Unfortunately, rackshack and cogent's resources reach far beyond the resources of many of the hosts here at WHT (mostly young people looking to make a couple hundred bucks). So there is your answer... it's human nature to hate someone who is better than you. People can say "cause they offer crappy service" all they want, but the fact is, cogent is getting better... heck, even rackshack uses cogent and look! rackshack is the #1 dedicated server business in the world. What does that say?

Adam

Originally posted by RackMy.com
Who is this racknine person :)

My bad, I'm the head lemming on that one :)

Nothing is wrong with using Cogent or any other provider, but I believe no one should ever depend on one bandwidth provider no matter who the provider is: Cogent, Yipes!, UUNet, etc. Every provider will be slow to someone in the world.

As for the financial issue, some people claim you shouldn't use Cogent because they're losing money. Heck, who isn't losing money these days? Yipes! has filed for bankruptcy, but people still use them. WorldCom is involved in a financial scandal right now, but people still use UUNet. Nobody really talks about how you shouldn't use Yipes! or UUNet. At least Cogent hasn't filed for bankruptcy or is involved in an accounting scandal.

Cogent has done a good thing for this industry. Thanks to competition, bandwidth prices have dropped considerably in the last year. Just last year, people would have thought you were crazy if you offered $1 per GB of data transfer unless you were using nothing but Cogent. Today, people are offering that without even using Cogent. Consumers like cheap, but competitors don't.

I'd be willing to bet atleast 1/3rd of the people who visit WHT are hosting providers or are involved in a hosting company of some sort. Naturally, places like Cogent and Rackshack are viewed as competitors to these people. Unfortunately, rackshack and cogent's resources reach far beyond the resources of many of the hosts here at WHT (mostly young people looking to make a couple hundred bucks). So there is your answer... it's human nature to hate someone who is better than you. People can say "cause they offer crappy service" all they want, but the fact is, cogent is getting better... heck, even rackshack uses cogent and look! rackshack is the #1 dedicated server business in the world. What does that say? The problem is that with hosting, you cannot compare most companies to each other. Some excel for certain types of people and are horrid for others.

Take RackShack and RackSpace. You cannot compare them at all, they offer completely different services. If you were to compare them, you would see that RackSpace is a better provider in just about every aspect over RackShack.As for the financial issue, some people claim you shouldn't use Cogent because they're losing money. It really does not have anything to do with losing money, it's really about the viability of the business. Yes, if WCOM goes belly up someone will scoop them up and buisness will go on as usual. If Cogent goes up in flames, I don't think it will go on as usual.

Don't get me wrong, Cogent is a great solution for certain people (even for us, we use Cogent), but enjoy it while it lasts.

Originally posted by RackMy.com
If Cogent goes up in flames, I don't think it will go on as usual.

Don't get me wrong, Cogent is a great solution for certain people (even for us, we use Cogent), but enjoy it while it lasts.

Why do you think no one would be interested in buying Cogent, if they came to that dreadful day, and maintaining a similar pricing structure?

Originally posted by allera
Correct me if I'm wrong, but they went into this assuming business offices (their biggest target in my understanding) would be willing to spend the $3k/mo for their 100mbit feed when in actuality they don't want it (and I don't blame them) because they don't need it.

Nope. $1,000 per month for building tenants. The $3K per month is only for ISP's.

Originally posted by Jedito


According to http://www.americasnetwork.com/americasnetwork/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=21161&&pageID=2

Schaeffer said that they'll profitable some time in 2004.

What will be first? profit or bankrupt? :)

For what it worth my opinion, I hope that they go down as soon as possible, I think that they prices are hurting the industry

I agree, I also beleive its hurting the industry. This leaves so many people thinking its a fair comparison to compare a facility with many tier1 providers against one with just cogent and a nother provider or just cogent by itself... and those of us that know better, know they aren't even in the same ball park.

Originally posted by hostpath.com


Nope. $1,000 per month for building tenants. The $3K per month is only for ISP's.

But that doesn't much matter since there is a minimum GigE commitment needed to even get Cogent into a building and for ISP's that is a standard $30/k .

Jag:

Yes it DOES matter, because I was responding to Allera's comment regarding the cost to a building tenant for 100mbits.

Originally posted by Adam_DeJaray
even rackshack uses cogent and look! rackshack is the #1 dedicated server business in the world. What does that say?


Nothing.
***** its one of the biggest in the world. What does that say?

Millions of flies eat ****, what does that say?

hostpath you got me all wrong and probably becuase I didnt word my post right. I didnt mean to imply anything hostile and should not have said "it doesn't matter" , I was just stating another fact about Cogent in conjunction with what you posted.

I think Cogent is a good solution, and they are improving... They are in the process of acquiring PSINET, from the experiences I have had with PSINET they offer good services (they are the main internet connection at my work) Just one way Cogent will improve their network. Especially since I can finally order that 100Mbps line in my area!

Originally posted by hostpath.com
Nope. $1,000 per month for building tenants. The $3K per month is only for ISP's.
Yea, I caught my mistake a few posts ago (someone said something to make me say "whoops") and I kept reading to see if anyone corrected me. :)

$1k/month for 100mbit for tenants... now you're REALLY talking about basement operations :D

Originally posted by Jag
hostpath you got me all wrong and probably becuase I didnt word my post right. I didnt mean to imply anything hostile and should not have said "it doesn't matter" , I was just stating another fact about Cogent in conjunction with what you posted.

It's cool, no offense taken!

Originally posted by RackMy.com
Don't get me wrong, Cogent is a great solution for certain people (even for us, we use Cogent), but enjoy it while it lasts.

I thought you were in with the Inflow co. They don't have cogent in there do they? If so, by what name?

No, Inflow does not carry Cogent. Only Tier 1 providers (Sprint, UUNet, AT&T, etc).

Lost me there Mike. I guess you use Cogent someplace else is what I'm putting together. :)

Sorry, yes I should have been a little more clearer :)

A majority of our managed server & colocation are housed in Inflow datacenters, we also do some larger projects which span across multiple datacenters. Yes, we use Cogent on a couple of other projects (mostly streaming) where speed and reliability is not an issue but when a large aggregate of BW (which is bursty) is needed.

Gotcha Mike.