Im not sure if this thread belongs in this section, but I just wanted to know exactly what cogent bandwidth is. I hear a lot of host downplaying this type of bandwidth...What exactly is the different types of bandwidth and what makes one better than the other?

Thanks

Cogent is the company that supplies the bandwidth.

It's a brand of bandwidth.

Cogent bandwidth is good, so step off it :angry:

Originally posted by DeathNova
Cogent bandwidth is good, so step off it :angry:
There's nothing wrong with the bandwidth although for mission critical situation's I don't recommend it.

I dont know, 100 mbit lines for 3000 a month for service providers kicks bootay. They're perfect for putting a few boxes on and reselling the bandwidth.

My isp of choice is cogent.

I'm not sure if you mean, that. If you had a choice, and not a "restriction", which in this case is money, you wouldn't pick "cogent". As cogent is cheap for an reason. As no one in the right mind would pick cogent ;):);).

Originally posted by ChickenSteak
I'm not sure if you mean, that. If you had a choice, and not a "restriction", which in this case is money, you wouldn't pick "cogent". As cogent is cheap for an reason. As no one in the right mind would pick cogent ;):);).


so acc. to you , what should be the alternative ?

Internap, Verio, UUnet, Qwest, etc

aah .. thanx :)

The alternatives cost about 30 times as much for the same amount of bandwidth.

Originally posted by goodness0001
The alternatives cost about 30 times as much for the same amount of bandwidth. Yes they do, but quality is what count's, although don't get me wrong here I just think cogent bandwidth isn't the best for mission critical things.

Why arnt they as good? Not as realiable? Do they not provide as good uptime, or is it not a static 100Mbps and the speeds varry?

we provide fast, non-oversubscribed 100 Mbps Ethernet connections to the Internet for a flat $1,000 per month.

Cogent bandwidth may not be the best but the price tag sure can't be beat. Personally we use it as a second choice for customers that may not want to pay higher $$ for premium bandwidth like your UUnet's etc. We offer premium bandwidth as well as Cogent. For the average Joe that just wants to put pics of the baby up for mom and dad to see could care less how fast or reliable the site is. But for a company who is displaying their newest technology via a live video feed to prospective clients, I gurantee I wouldn't sell them Cogent bandwidth. Not so much that it is bad, but I know it can be slow at times. Offering both types of bandwidth gives the customer an option. I think ChickenSteak hit the nail on the head when he said "There's nothing wrong with the bandwidth although for mission critical situation's I don't recommend it" :)

oh...so your not gonna get a constant 100Mbps?

Oh you definitely get your 100Mbit/s. It's no shared lines we're talking about, really.

The problem is that Cogent's network doesn't exactly have brilliant peering.. so you get often high latency, sometimes you can't even reach the network (that's rare though), etc.

Being so cheap, they don't have any SLA (Service Level Agreement) which means you won't get any uptime guarantees and you won't be compensated. That's a high risk if you need a high uptime.. which is why Cogent isn't suited for mission critical applications/sites.

Hope that cleared a few things up. :D

But basically to sum the entire thread up

"You get what you pay for"

'Nuff said

:D

ok thank you beashnet

I dont think the phrase "you get what you pay for" applies to cogent.

I have seen their connections be very reliable and no worse than "quality bandwidth", and i have also seen and experienced first hand, UUnet, ATT, Qwest have the crappiest uptime and support. If i was going to get crappy support and uptime, i would have rather pay 3000 dollars for the line rather than 30000 for the line.

And i dont mean to get into a competition over this but i have seen a pattern lately that the "Quality" is no longer that good.

Bah your all wrong in one way or another ;)

If you set up everything right, and promote it just right it wouldnt matter... I have a business idea based around low cost and high cost bandwidth that maybe just maybe one day I will have the money to bring into life ;)

1. REAL customer service is all but gone these days. Its a real shame

2. The people that pay for cheap bandwidth tend to be the highest to support. Why? The people that are willing to spend the money, normally have at least some clue of what they are doing..

Example in point.. Rackshack.. 2 type of people buy these servers.. 1. The clueless that just see a cheap place to host ( and prob the main reason rackshack is so firm on there support policys, they got 1000+ idiots with servers )
2. The people that know what they are doing, and know the risks hosting at rackshack

3. People will pay for quality, service, and quality options. If you set your business up right, While you may have fewer customers, your overhead can be lower and your profit higher.

While your points are good, they dont reflect the topic of bandwidth providers really. My only point is that the past few months quality bandwidth as people call it is no longer that quality so why pay for it if you arent going to get the performance and uptime.

The points directly relate to the reasons you would or wouldnt pay for quality bandwidth.

Think of it as a "service".. Customers will "respect" a company more if they have what the general public thinks is "quality" bandwidth..

Its like name brand shoes... While alot of us realize that just because the shoes has the Nike brand, it does not make it the best shoe out there, The majority flock to "name brands"

The fact that on a person to person basis you are more likely to pay more to support the person only willing to pay for cogent bandwidth compared to the person willing to pay for "name brand" brand bandwidth directly reflects your bottom line..

How much time do your employees spend supporting customers that don't know what they are doing?

Sure cheap bandwidth is a great deal but is not the only deciding factor in your bottom line, and in fact may possible hurt your bottom line in the long run.

I do have to say this I have looked into Cogent and have read some stuff about them also, about how their bandwidth is second rate, I haven't been exposed to it as far as seeing any servers or sites running off of it to see how long they take to respond, so I can't say I could believe what I read. As to the "quality" of bandwidth these days, I say no matter where it is coming from it has taken a nose dive, because the companies providing it are running thread bare because they don't have the support staff that they once had in the good old days, before the bottom fell out of telco. And as for the pricing of that "quality" bandwidth it is likely being overpriced under the circumstances of the overload of global bandwidth availibility, after all folks look what Killed Global Crossing, it wasn't really all because of the bad management, some of it if not a lot of it had to do with between them and Tyco, they over built systems to provide global bandwidth, that now have so much extra capacity and nothing to do with it.

I've been told by a few colo companies in downtown Los Angeles (where a lot of fiber and Cogent bandwidth is aggregated) that Cogent does slow down during peak hours, so I would say the speeds do vary. Just doing the math on how much an OC-48 costs and how much their selling the 100Mbit piece will show you that they must be oversubscribing the line. This business technique only is worth it in the beginning, but then when a lot of people become members, the service will become degraded.

Originally posted by bandwidth
Why arnt they as good? Not as realiable? Do they not provide as good uptime, or is it not a static 100Mbps and the speeds varry?

of course it applies to Cogent, the "you get what you pay for" axiom is universal. Who pays the price for Cogent to be able to provide your cheap line? It's not that bandwidth prices have come down THAT much, someone is suffering -- right now it's them so that they can build a large enough customer base. Once they do, the customers will be suffering since they cannot possibly provide the level of service for the price you pay. That is precisely why they don't have a Service Level Agreement (as mentioned in another post). Personally, I wouldn't pay jack sh*t for a service that had no warranty.

Originally posted by goodness0001
I dont think the phrase "you get what you pay for" applies to cogent.

I have seen their connections be very reliable and no worse than "quality bandwidth", and i have also seen and experienced first hand, UUnet, ATT, Qwest have the crappiest uptime and support. If i was going to get crappy support and uptime, i would have rather pay 3000 dollars for the line rather than 30000 for the line.

And i dont mean to get into a competition over this but i have seen a pattern lately that the "Quality" is no longer that good.

Greetings:

Cogent bandwidth is cheap bandwith.

Most experts who've tested it find it to be ridden with high latency.

It is not the type of bandwidth you want to use for anything important. It is cheap, and it is a case of you get what you pay for.

I am also wondering, what's wrong wth Cogent? I know some providers who have Gigabit ethernet lines to Cogent and push a lot of bandwidth (Well over 100 Mbps).

If it works, use it.

For more info, go to http://www.cogentco.com

Cogents network is very simple. The idea is simple, its so simple it makes them money. They use Looking Glass Inc for dark fiber and this carries them into the various datacenters that they offer service in. Then they peer inside of these datacenters. They usually do whats called Multi-Lateral Peering which means they connect to a public switch and peer with other providers who have "Open" peering agreements. Cogent does indeed buy transit, from a couple providers in a couple of datacenters. If the packet you send down their glass can not reach a "peer" on their network it will go out the transit pipe that cogent pays big money for (like any of us would, UUnet, Qwest, etc etc)

Is this a good or bad way to provide bandwidth? Thats up to you to decide. If it was my packet I wouldnt want someone trying to pimp it out all over the country before deciding it needed to go out a costly loop. Some applications and some people do not care about latancy. If this is you than cogent will probably be fine for you. Sure they may drop a packet or two here or there now or then but hey who doesn't.

The ideal solution is to do some multi-lateral peering yourself in any datacenter you colocate. And buy some nice transit too. any bandwith that uses the peer switch is "free" any that goes out your UUnet connection costs money. Heck if you are peering you are running BGP so buy a peer with Cogent and have them send you their internal routes. That way you can take advantage of their nationwide multi lateral peering for $3k/mo.

-Scotty

Cogents network is very simple. The idea is simple, its so simple it makes them money. They use Looking Glass Inc for dark fiber and this carries them into the various datacenters that they offer service in. Then they peer inside of these datacenters. They usually do whats called Multi-Lateral Peering which means they connect to a public switch and peer with other providers who have "Open" peering agreements. Cogent does indeed buy transit, from a couple providers in a couple of datacenters. If the packet you send down their glass can not reach a "peer" on their network it will go out the transit pipe that cogent pays big money for (like any of us would, UUnet, Qwest, etc etc)

Is this a good or bad way to provide bandwidth? Thats up to you to decide. If it was my packet I wouldnt want someone trying to pimp it out all over the country before deciding it needed to go out a costly loop. Some applications and some people do not care about latancy. If this is you than cogent will probably be fine for you. Sure they may drop a packet or two here or there now or then but hey who doesn't.

The ideal solution is to do some multi-lateral peering yourself in any datacenter you colocate. And buy some nice transit too. any bandwith that uses the peer switch is "free" any that goes out your UUnet connection costs money. Heck if you are peering you are running BGP so buy a peer with Cogent and have them send you their internal routes. That way you can take advantage of their nationwide multi lateral peering for $3k/mo.

-Scotty

What would Cogent's model have to do with packet loss? Also some data centers charge you for the cross connect for the peering.

Sure I would not put all my egg's on Cogent (nor would I put them on anybody else) but it seems like quality bandwidth from our end.

We have not had any complaints about them yet..

I think Cogent is fine. Most people don't care if the page loads 1/2 second faster...

i have been designing sites for a long and know nothing about running a host, but many of my sites are high traffic sites and any that is any one knows the cogent just plain sucks....

many times the pages are slow to load, no uptime promises, and sometimes you cant even reach the network.

For high traffic, stay away from cogent.. its cheap for a reason...

Maybe best is to buy cogent, then back it up with a better supplier just in case.

Just thought I'd point something out. Their 100Mbit transit line (the one for point to point with no Internet connectivity) looks like it would be a great deal and probably performs quite well since it is a dedicated point to point 100Mbit ethernet connection.

I think where Cogent runs into the problems is with their Internet connectivity. Peering has always been a source of slowness on the Internet and Cogent selling big vastly oversubscribed Internet pipes has just exacerbated the problems at their peering points.

But, like someone else pointed out, this undoubtedly varies from datacenter to datacenter. For instance, a full datacenter in Seattle is more likely to have problems with Cogent than a less full data center elsewhere that uses different peering points.