Hi,

I am looking for a dedicated server for the purpose of running game servers. Of course I could look at GSP's and etc, but they are too expensive for the most part besides sales. A bunch of companies which I would like to look at, use Cogent as a main backbone. I have heard bad things when it comes to using Cogent for gaming. While I do not mind if it is a server worthy of professional gaming, I still need it playable. Anyone know if Cogent is usable? And can anyone recommend a good dedicated host. Much thanks.

Location ? Specs ? Budget ?

Hi,

I am looking for a dedicated server for the purpose of running game servers. Of course I could look at GSP's and etc, but they are too expensive for the most part besides sales. A bunch of companies which I would like to look at, use Cogent as a main backbone. I have heard bad things when it comes to using Cogent for gaming. While I do not mind if it is a server worthy of professional gaming, I still need it playable. Anyone know if Cogent is usable? And can anyone recommend a good dedicated host. Much thanks.

What location? Also I agree with you that renting from a GSP is expensive, but its because they are resellers most of the time. You can purchase the equivalent hardware in the same location for less most of the time.

Location is the most important factor. Where are most of your users located?

I would take anywhere in the US but preferably Central.

Check out the Offers forum, there's quite a few dedis there on capable connections.

What's your budget and what kind of server specs and bandwidth are you looking for?

What's your budget and what kind of specs you need ? As without that people are just going to suggest looking in the offer section.

Hi,

I am looking for a dedicated server for the purpose of running game servers. Of course I could look at GSP's and etc, but they are too expensive for the most part besides sales. A bunch of companies which I would like to look at, use Cogent as a main backbone. I have heard bad things when it comes to using Cogent for gaming. While I do not mind if it is a server worthy of professional gaming, I still need it playable. Anyone know if Cogent is usable? And can anyone recommend a good dedicated host. Much thanks.

Dedicated servers from game server providers such as GameServers or MyIS is usually expensive (well, MyIS tends to be more flexible with your options, whereas GameServers offers only one configuration, AFAIK). You'll want to find a server at a location that will work well for your target player-base. Do you have a budget for the server?

Moved > Game Servers.

We've used Colo Crossing for our dedicated gaming server for about a year now without any complaints.

I've also used FDC denver for our stats and VoIP server for several months, they've been great.

As a provider and a consumer of carrier products:

(1) Cogent has saved me boat loads of money over the years. I still have some connections to other providers such as AT&T, VZ, SAVVIS and Qwest But those connections are for a different class of customers who don't mind paying mid-$$$ to $,$$$ for their products and services. But for other products and services I use them exclusively.

(2) There are a lot of people floating around the Internet that have a very poor and misinformed view of Cogent as a Carrier and what makes it worse, is that people go around spewing such nonsense without any concrete information to backup the assertions.

(3) Let me be clear, Cogents business model and downward pressure on bandwidth prices did not make them any friends in the industry. In fact, you will find no shortage of competitors willing to bad mouth them at the tip of a hat. There are a few people who can recite this issue or that issue from yesteryear regarding Cogent's services (I am talking about providers not consumers) but the bulk of those opinions fail to incorporate the shifting landscape of the Internet. If my memory serves me correctly when I first took full Internet routes for BGP there were only about 16K routes. Today there are well over 300K routes. In other words, every month there are more ways to get just about anywhere on the Internet than the day, month or year before. What that means for the end user is better point-to-point connectivity.

(4) The remaining opinions regarding Cogent's performance for this application vs that applications is not based on any hard numbers but rather, on peoples subjective and wrong-headed experiences. Case-in-point:

When Cogent made bandwidth prices cheaper, they effectively lowered the barrier to entry to all kinds of yahoos some of which were big on ambition but short on network management skills. This naturally led to a lot of oversold and poorly managed networks. Rightly or wrongly, these things became synonymous with Cogent as the provider. Furthermore, there is a sizable portion of consumers that can't seem to get their heads around the fact that Cogent can be used for more than (bulk bandwidth applications, i.e. backup, uncapped Bit torrent clients and other @*&%&!! traffic.) You could run those same applications on [insert your premium provider here] it just going to cost you more to do it.

Therefore, to ask if Cogent is usable is ridiculous as asking if a network switch be used as a networking device but I understand your point and the bottom line is you need to define what is usable for you and the people you plan to play with. Therefore, the most important factors will be:

(1) Round Trip Time between you / your players and the Game server (You need to determine what is acceptable) You can research this without making any purchases.

(2) How much you are willing to spend for acceptable performance.

Hope this helps.

what is this i dont even

Softlayer's network is pretty fast and would run a game server perfectly.

what is this i dont even

I believe leeware was answering the OPs question about Cogent, and trying to clear up any doubts he had about it.

@OP: There are plenty of GSPs with prices that are very reasonable and very competitive with a non-GSP dedicated provider. Also consider that when / if you need support, that GSP is going to be able to troubleshoot your issue a lot more efficiently because game servers are a second nature to them.

The main problem with Cogent over the years has been its lack of good (distributed) peering with eyeball networks. Scenic routing led to higher latencies, also frequent peering capacity problems led to issues with packet loss during peak hours. Cogent has also had several well-publicized spats with tier 1's over bandwidth ratios, leading to large chunks of the internet being unreachable to single-homed ISP customers of either side.

Cogent has improved its overall latencies recently, and that is mainly because more eyeball networks have been peering with it, in more locations, and many have even using started using it for transit. However, I would still strongly recommend that you make sure any provider you consider is multihomed, with other providers than Cogent in the mix.

An established, good-quality GSP would be an excellent place to go for a dedicated server or VPS to run your game servers, because you will know the network will be good for gaming applications, their hardware can handle what you want to run, they can help you with other game server-related questions that may arise, and so on. You're right that many GSPs simply resell dedicated servers from other companies (that they also use themselves) -- however, some also have their own cabinet space and run their own hardware.

Thank you for all of your answers! Basically, I am not looking for the perfect quality server. I just need a couple of public ones so really having perfect ping is not a super requirement which is why Cogent has grabbed my interest. I am trying to stay away from buying from a GSP as I have found, because most customers are interested in extreme quality, they are forced to have expensive prices in order to maintain a profit.

Unfortunately I did have a chance to test a game server running on Cogent bandwidth and it was entirely unplayable. I don't want to judge solely based on one experience which could have easily been the fault of the actual GSP, so does anyone know of any providers who run on Cogent that I could test my PING to? Thanks.

LeeWare is not a GSP but rather a IaaS provider the service does host clusters of game servers with live players - I also have performance metric information on distances to servers by users. You are welcome to ping the domain name or trace route to the IP address of the domain. While the servers are housed in different facilities using different subnets etc, they are all unified by a metro area network.

I also have systems that are located on AT&T, Verizon and Quest networks. So if you have an IP address and ISP info I can give you comparative information.

For gaming services here are my recommendations:

*ColoCrossing
*UbiquityServers

They offer locations around the US for the typical gamers network.

Other great providers:
GigeNET
ThePlanet
SoftLayer
SteadFast
PacificRack
DedicatedNOW
WebNX
HiVelocity

All these companies should be great for gaming.

Using NGT-Patrick List here is the relevant metric information which underscores my earlier point. The number of routes on the Internet are increasing daily there are now over 300,000 routes which means there are many ways to get just about every where on the Internet. As with any application, the closer you are geographically to a location the better the performance. I know people like toss around words like "Quality" and "Premium" when it comes to network connectivity but for years I have always seen this as marketing code words that appeal to peoples irrational and subconscious fears to get them to pony up extra cash for something that (might not) be of any practical value. Emotional value yes, but practical value no. Therefore, as a engineer and a consultant, I try to look at the real differences between things such as, when its appropriate to use A vs B and when the differences between the two is negated by application.

LeeWareOS> #show metric source VZ midwest to provider-list organize by region

Midwest Region
==============================================
GigeNET (Level3) RTT=3ms Hops=11
LeeWare (Cogent) RTT=2ms Hops=11
ServerCentral (nlayer,Level3) RTT=11ms Hops=12
SoftLayer (Level3) RTT=27ms Hops=11 *
Steadfast (NTT) RTT=2ms Hops=11
ThePlanet (AT&T) RTT=24ms Hops=14 *
UbiquityServers (XO) RTT=2ms Hops=12

West Coast Region
===============================================================
PacificRack (WBSConnect/SecuredPrivateNetwork) RTT=57ms Hops=13
WebNX (MZIMA) RTT=58ms Hops=18

East Coast Region
==================================
DedicatedNow (Sprint/Fortressitx) RTT=29ms Hops=13

South East Region
===================
HiVelocity (Level3/Global Crossing) RTT=38ms Hops=15


LeeWareOS> show metric source VZ east coast to provider-list organize by region

Midwest Region
==============================================
GigeNET (Level3) RTT=57ms Hops=12
LeeWare (Cogent) RTT=55ms Hops=12
ServerCentral (nlayer,Level3) RTT=45ms Hops=10
SoftLayer (Level3) RTT=63ms Hops=12 *
Steadfast (NTT) RTT=45ms Hops=11
ThePlanet (Level3) RTT=64ms Hops=15 *
UbiquityServers (XO) RTT=45ms Hops=10

WestCoast Region
===============================================================
PacificRack (WBSConnect/SecuredPrivateNetwork) RTT=95ms Hops=13
WebNX (MZIMA) RTT=98ms Hops=14

EastCoast Region
==================================
DedicatedNow (Sprint/Fortressitx) RTT=34ms Hops=12

SouthEast Region
===================
HiVelocity (Level3/Global Crossing) RTT=62ms Hops=13

LeeWareOS> show metric source qwest westcost to provider-list organize by region


Midwest Region
==============================================
GigeNET (Level3) RTT=67ms Hops=11
LeeWare (Cogent) RTT=67ms Hops=14
ServerCentral (nlayer,Level3) RTT=64ms Hops=11
SoftLayer (Level3) RTT=41ms Hops=13 *
Steadfast (NTT) RTT=67ms Hops=14
ThePlanet (Level3) RTT=41ms Hops=13 *
UbiquityServers (XO) RTT=65ms Hops=12

West Coast Region
===============================================================
PacificRack (WBSConnect/SecuredPrivateNetwork) RTT=6ms Hops=10
WebNX (MZIMA) RTT=7ms Hops=10

East Coast Region
==================================
DedicatedNow (Sprint/Fortressitx) RTT=80ms Hops=16

South East Region
===================
HiVelocity (Level3/Global Crossing) RTT=88ms Hops=13

So leeware, you would recommend not worrying about "premier" bandwidth and cogent would do fine?

Sorry to double post but does anyone have any experience with Burst.net's network?

So leeware, you would recommend not worrying about "premier" bandwidth and cogent would do fine?

You would be nuts to use pure cogent or even cogent for that matter.

(snip), so does anyone know of any providers who run on Cogent that I could test my PING to? Thanks.


Our company has had a 100 MB circuit through Cogent for the past 4 months, with light utilization (it's a backup for our MZima uplink.

We're in Miami, FL.

38.100.196.153 [Cogent side of circuit]
38.126.200.50 [ Open Source Mirror (http://mirrors.igsobe.com) on our network]


[root@mirrors ~]# traceroute www.leeware.com
traceroute to www.leeware.com (38.102.48.75), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 38.126.200.1 (38.126.200.1) 1.054 ms 1.086 ms 1.090 ms
2 gi0-12.na31.b002802-4.mia01.atlas.cogentco.com (38.100.196.153) 2.206 ms 3.170 ms 3.172 ms
3 gi1-41.3808.ccr01.mia01.atlas.cogentco.com (38.20.42.153) 2.135 ms 2.149 ms 2.149 ms
4 te2-1.ccr02.atl01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.3.25) 15.886 ms 15.882 ms 15.890 ms
5 te7-7.ccr02.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.28.73) 33.044 ms te4-2.ccr02.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.29.114) 32.994 ms 33.063 ms
6 te3-1.ccr01.ord04.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.24.178) 33.033 ms 33.783 ms 31.931 ms
7 vl3501.na31.b002326-3.ord04.atlas.cogentco.com (38.20.40.86) 34.067 ms 34.777 ms 34.989 ms
8 38.104.106.118 (38.104.106.118) 34.093 ms 34.792 ms 35.935 ms
9 morpheus.leeware.com (38.102.48.75) 34.882 ms 34.887 ms 35.162 ms


--- www.leeware.com ping statistics ---
98 packets transmitted, 97 received, 1% packet loss, time 97051ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 32.031/33.627/57.024/3.185 ms

Spartanfrog:

(1) My only point is that Cogent is a valid option for running "Internet Applications" This idea that carrier X can only be used to backup traffic, hosting torrents, streaming media and crap traffic like P2P irc etc. Is some kind of new school foolishness that has no basis in reality.

(2) Does Cogent has a marketing problem yes, This is caused by past problems, poor network management by the operators and the fact that the Internet was less connected many years ago than it is today. For example many years ago, it didn't matter which provider you had if you were trying to reach eyeballs your traffic was probably routed through MAE-east or MAE-west to get to its final destination. The Internet has grown by leaps and bounds since that time.

(3) Ask yourself this question for all of the providers with multiple connections to the Internet with various different carriers including Cogent. And for all of the Universities that use Cogent exclusively for their Internet Connectivity. Do you really think that there are no gamers and no game servers on those networks.

(4) I am not saying that you should go out of your way to get a game server on a Cogent only network. Not because Cogent would any worse than any of the other providers. What really matters is how the network is managed and where the people are playing are and this would be true with your "premium" network providers.
As for you could get servers in multiple cities from another provider. Well you didn't indicate that you were trying to start a gaming business therefore, you could put your server anywhere you want with a provider of your choosing considering that you are looking for a single server application.

(5) While other that are posting here are yelling "Cogent bad" which implies that the networks they are using are superior they have no provided any valid technical and up to date technical information as to why it is so. It's just the usual knee-jerk response that results in a virtual holy war every time the carriers name is mentioned. Therefore, one of the factors you should consider is how many of your potential customers or users are part of that never ending parade of stupidity which will judge your services on propaganda rather than the technical merits of it to deliver. This is what makes Cogent not worth it from the providers I know. And as far as I am concerned is the only valid reason to avoid it. But let me be clear, none of these poor perceptions are Cogent's fault.


So leeware, you would recommend not worrying about "premier" bandwidth and cogent would do fine?

From me to you on that same path:

Ping statistics for 38.100.196.153:
Packets: Sent = 500, Received = 500, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 32ms, Maximum = 144ms, Average = 33ms

Our company has had a 100 MB circuit through Cogent for the past 4 months, with light utilization (it's a backup for our MZima uplink.

We're in Miami, FL.

38.100.196.153 [Cogent side of circuit]
38.126.200.50 [ Open Source Mirror (http://mirrors.igsobe.com) on our network]


[root@mirrors ~]# traceroute www.leeware.com
traceroute to www.leeware.com (38.102.48.75), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 38.126.200.1 (38.126.200.1) 1.054 ms 1.086 ms 1.090 ms
2 gi0-12.na31.b002802-4.mia01.atlas.cogentco.com (38.100.196.153) 2.206 ms 3.170 ms 3.172 ms
3 gi1-41.3808.ccr01.mia01.atlas.cogentco.com (38.20.42.153) 2.135 ms 2.149 ms 2.149 ms
4 te2-1.ccr02.atl01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.3.25) 15.886 ms 15.882 ms 15.890 ms
5 te7-7.ccr02.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.28.73) 33.044 ms te4-2.ccr02.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.29.114) 32.994 ms 33.063 ms
6 te3-1.ccr01.ord04.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.24.178) 33.033 ms 33.783 ms 31.931 ms
7 vl3501.na31.b002326-3.ord04.atlas.cogentco.com (38.20.40.86) 34.067 ms 34.777 ms 34.989 ms
8 38.104.106.118 (38.104.106.118) 34.093 ms 34.792 ms 35.935 ms
9 morpheus.leeware.com (38.102.48.75) 34.882 ms 34.887 ms 35.162 ms


--- www.leeware.com ping statistics ---
98 packets transmitted, 97 received, 1% packet loss, time 97051ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 32.031/33.627/57.024/3.185 ms

Many hosts utilize cogent in the mix but almost always exclusively for dirty transit..

Per your comment, You also use cogent as a "backup" source..

go for softlayer or planet servers and get the support from a good team :)

You might take a look at colocrossing before some of the aforementioned.

We had equipment at Colo4dallas a few years ago and the network was awesome for gaming. Check with someone like TMS to see how they are doing nowadays but I would highly recommend someone in the colo4dallas DC.

West coast, Webnx is very good.

Yes thank you everyone for your suggestions. I was not looking for "pure" Cogent but since I am on a budge and not entirely worried about quality, hosts with servers utilizing a mix of cogent and other bandwidth just tend to be on the cheaper side.

Yes thank you everyone for your suggestions. I was not looking for "pure" Cogent but since I am on a budge and not entirely worried about quality, hosts with servers utilizing a mix of cogent and other bandwidth just tend to be on the cheaper side.

Hosts you use cogent tend to be on the cheaper side is a reflection of the overall quality and thought put into the product. Most hosts who use cogent and even some bigger hosts here put very little care into the quality of their hardware. Most use low end asus/abit desktop motherboard thrown cheap desktop chassis or sub-par rackmounts with little to no airflow. On the outside the specs of the server look on par with someone using higher quality gear like supermicro or dell servers but in reality what you are buying is well a server whose parts I wouldn't even put in my moms desktop and be prone to failure and problems.

Those providers who take care in one part of their business usually take care in others.

Yes thank you everyone for your suggestions. I was not looking for "pure" Cogent but since I am on a budge and not entirely worried about quality, hosts with servers utilizing a mix of cogent and other bandwidth just tend to be on the cheaper side.

If it's in a well-run mix, it may not be all bad, but definitely shop around. It conflicts with common perception here, but I've actually heard complaints from more than one larger provider about how expensive Cogent is as well - the thing that's been unique about them I think in the long-term hasn't necessarily been so much low prices, but low prices at low commits. At high enough commit levels, I expect you could see quite a lot of carriers match or even beat Cogent's advertised rates, and that's what's probably really is getting passed down to you with a dedicated server.

Cogent definitely started the push for cheaper bandwidth, but the days of every high bandwidth server provider being all Cogent (as it seemed a few years back) are I think are pretty well done with; personally I believe this is exactly why.

Sorry for stealing the topic, but I'm looking for the same as the OP, only in a different location.

What I need is a low latency server, preferably with a quad xeon 2,5ghz and 8gigs of ram, 250gb storage or more, and 10TB of bandwidth or more (unmetered would be great though), full duplex 100mbit down and up.

Location, somewhere in northeren europe. London, Germany, or Scandinavia.

I have a budget of £100 a month, though the cheaper the better. ;)

Thanks in advanced.

Sorry for stealing the topic, but I'm looking for the same as the OP, only in a different location.

What I need is a low latency server, preferably with a quad xeon 2,5ghz and 8gigs of ram, 250gb storage or more, and 10TB of bandwidth or more (unmetered would be great though), full duplex 100mbit down and up.

Location, somewhere in northeren europe. London, Germany, or Scandinavia.

I have a budget of £100 a month, though the cheaper the better. ;)

Thanks in advanced.

I can't speak for N. Europe, London, Germany, and Scandinavia, but 10+TB of bandwidth + a quad xeon with 8gb of ram and a solid network is not going to happen with £100/mo or cheaper (which I think is about $145 USD). Maybe I'm wrong though, surprise me :)

FastHost has this and even better.
fasthosts.co.uk/dedicatedservers/

However I've heard they're horrible.
Example: reviewcentre.com/reviews80572.html

Hetzner is capable of doing something similiar due to it's huge huge setup fee, however I doubt I'll be able to run it all on just 2TB of bandwidth, and paying another €15 per terabyte is just out of the question.

Oh yeah, kimsufi offers the same for about £60 a month, but again, bad reviews.

however I doubt I'll be able to run it all on just 2TB of bandwidth, and paying another €15 per terabyte is just out of the question.
May I ask you, what is wrong with 15€/TByte? Which pricing per TByte would you expect?

May I ask you, what is wrong with 15€/TByte? Which pricing per TByte would you expect?

Seeing as your services are known of being great, and your prices are outstanding, I wouldn't expect much else than a heavy price for bandwidth, though I'd rather have an option to trade hardware/internet connection for bandwidth than paying 30% more for the server for just 50% more bandwidth. :(

An option for prebuying bandwidth at a lower price would also be great.

Have a look at the offers section, or i can recommend you check out hostdime

com;6581851']Softlayer's network is pretty fast and would run a game server perfectly.

I second that!

i preffer cognet. it just still is the best in my opinion. good luck finding a dedicated server that fits you the best.

Voxel Communications :)