I currently have a couple of Helix servers each chewing through around 4Mbps of expensive Tier 1 bandwidth. I know Cogent bw is high latency. I know it's cheap and probably not the most reliable. I also know that there's some live broadcasts that I may be doing in the next couple of months that'll probably burst up above 50Mbps and that's going to cost me and my client some serious money. How are STR's on Cogent's network? Does anyone have any experiance with using Cogent for audio or video streaming?

I think StreamGuys.com currently only uses cogent (or used to only use cogent), and lots of places use them to stream audio. Many shoutcast servers are on cogent bandwidth, and I've never had a problem with 128k streaming audio from a cogent line.

Cogent is not that bad at all (I'm speaking based on experience, and others may have different opinion/experience). As long as it is not capped, it should be ok. Geographic matters as well. The closer you are to the POP, the better Cogent you will get. The download speed ranges from 300Kbps - 500Kbps, and sometime can go higher. So, if you want to save some money, Cogent is a viable solution. But of course, there is always better bandwidth. :)

Cogent / Aleron / Verio are all pretty similar in pricing and great for Video OR Audio streaming.

Originally posted by Ryan F
I currently have a couple of Helix servers each chewing through around 4Mbps of expensive Tier 1 bandwidth. I know Cogent bw is high latency. I know it's cheap and probably not the most reliable. I also know that there's some live broadcasts that I may be doing in the next couple of months that'll probably burst up above 50Mbps and that's going to cost me and my client some serious money. How are STR's on Cogent's network? Does anyone have any experiance with using Cogent for audio or video streaming?

It seems to really depend on the location. A lot of people whine about Cogent bandwidth, but while we were (and still are for another month) on pure cogent and bgp4 cogent/williams, it's been a fair experience, just look out for their unethical business practises, or more specifically unethical staff.

Hello Myles,

Could you share your experience regarding the 'unethical business practice' (if you don't mind). Anything we need to be careful about?

Originally posted by rey
Hello Myles,

Could you share your experience regarding the 'unethical business practice' (if you don't mind). Anything we need to be careful about?

Sure,

We had cogent direct for two months when we started up. Unfortunatly while in our infancy, we had a major investor bail, and could no longer support our Cogent link, especially not considering we were using < 3% of it. We called Cogent, explained this to them, and made terms for breaking off our contract early to go with a far more expensive reseller (who also had bgp4 bandwidth), but purchased far less.

One of Cogents billing personell (Donna Pastell) had agreed to let us off the hook for 5 payments of $600 and 1 payment of $350 (an additional months fee basically spread out over 6 months as we were strapped for cash). We agreed and began to pay this, on the 4th payment, i noted that the invoice was incorrect not by a huge amount, but still a fair amount, so i phoned up Donna and couldn't get in touch with her so i left voicemail stating that i had the remaining 3 payments, but would not submit them until I was sent a correct invoice as i wasn't comfortable with the information on the invoice [fair enough, right?].

All was well i figured, until a week later, i had a bill delivered to myself by courier, from cogent, for the years payment, and then some, totaling around $30,000 usd. I phoned up Cogent to find out Donna Pastell still worked there, the other gentleman who witnessed the agreement (teleconference, email, etc.) had been let go since. I left numerous voicemails with Donna, and with the superiors of the gentleman who had been let go. I go through to the head of some BS department (cant remember frankly, i got transfered half a dozen times) who claimed to be Donna Pastell's supervisor or something of that nature, i explained the situation to him, and he stated he would meet with Donna, talk about it, call me back later the next day, or the day after at the latest. Thus far it's been about 3 weeks, i have not received anything from them, no phone calls, voicemails, email, nada.

Naturally i still have the log of emails with full headers outlining this agreement, it was not officially faxed and signed as i didn't think it was necessary, and was not asked to do so, why bother, i had the emails. They quite happily cashed the 2 cheques, and accepted the 1 wire transfer for the funds (first payment was wire transfer out of my personal account because they put so much pressure on me to pay it same day, "or else"). The cheques also had the note along the lines of "contract termination agreement payment 2/6" etc.

In short, verbal and writen contract (i'd consider email correspondences with multiple people of the company making a deal written), paperwork to back it up (the cheques, bank statements, etc.), and they turned around and bit us in the arse. Thats just my experience, im sure it has no reflect on Cogent, but merely the idiots who broke the deal (whomever decided to do this i never got official word), personally i'm not persue'ing the matter anymore as i've dealt with it by another road, but I found it very offensive to have it slapped back in my face, and then have Cogents representatives act in the way they did (when you say you're gonna call someone back, you call them back, even if its the next day, week, etc. esp on an important matter).

Hi Myles,

I'm very sorry to hear your story. It's really not a pleasant one :(

Thank you for sharing with us.

NP, Maybe Donna will someday cruise WHT and kick herself :D, we can only hope.