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  1. #1
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    Is Level3 the old Cogent and Cogent the new Level3?

    Does anyone know what's going on with Level3 in Europe?

    Since weeks all Traffic from their Zurich (Switzerland) POP is routed over Paris (France).

    And near all traffic goes trough Level3 as is't mostly the only ASN between...

    This result in 30ms+ (Cogent 8ms) to Germany...
    and from Zurich to Netherlands is going trough Paris, London and yeah resulting in 36ms+ (Cogent 18ms)...

    http://lookingglass.level3.net/trace..._tr_output.php

    A ticket opened by a colleague from a large carrier, don't get updates since weeks.

  2. #2
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    Don't know about routing inside Europe, but in North America and between Europe and North America Level3 is Level3 and Cogent is Cogent.

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by DMDM View Post
    Don't know about routing inside Europe, but in North America and between Europe and North America Level3 is Level3 and Cogent is Cogent.
    This.

    Level3 was never really a international tier1 network. Only within the states they were considered a tier1 network with the most connectivity they use to blow out side of the states.. probably as what you are seeing here.
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  4. #4
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    For me it looks as a bad configured routing, they have a POP in Frankfurt (Germany) and I assume there is a fiber connection between Zurich and Frankfurt means there is no reason to drive 1000mls over Paris instead 400mls.
    Tickets get not answered for weeks. For Europe it looks that Level3 is a really No Go.

  5. #5
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    Level3's sales team/process is beyond a joke. I prefer going to the dentist.

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  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by DMDM View Post
    Don't know about routing inside Europe, but in North America and between Europe and North America Level3 is Level3 and Cogent is Cogent.
    LOL.

    We have Cogent in a few of our locations, and we actually like working with them a lot.
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  7. #7
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    Cogent is fine as long as you don't have clients on Time Warner or Verizon, i.e. everything east of the Mississippi.

    I was getting a very jittery 400Kb - 1Mb last night at home on 20Mb TWC to an office w/ Cogent 100Mb. Sprinkle a good 2 - 3% packet loss on top. This peering spat has been going on for ages with no end in sight. While the network has been solid, peering issues with TWC and VZ have us looking to move to anyone else.

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by MetroAce View Post
    Cogent is fine as long as you don't have clients on Time Warner or Verizon, i.e. everything east of the Mississippi.

    I was getting a very jittery 400Kb - 1Mb last night at home on 20Mb TWC to an office w/ Cogent 100Mb. Sprinkle a good 2 - 3% packet loss on top. This peering spat has been going on for ages with no end in sight. While the network has been solid, peering issues with TWC and VZ have us looking to move to anyone else.
    Add AT&T and Comcast to the list. Cogent is pretty bad for most US eyeball networks.
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  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by FastServ View Post
    Add AT&T and Comcast to the list.
    I second this, especially Comcast - egregiously horrendous.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Microlinux View Post
    I second this, especially Comcast - egregiously horrendous.
    Third this. I have Comcast and it's awful. The only good time is between 4am and 8:30am. We route out via Level 3 for Comcast folks.

    Quote Originally Posted by Jmax View Post
    We have Cogent in a few of our locations, and we actually like working with them a lot.
    I must say, they are a great team to work with!
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  11. #11
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    Cogent is better than a lot of the low cost providers in my opinion. Iin the Midwest, Cogent has some of the best routes. Almost all providers backhaul through Chicago, Cogent actually has real routes in the midwest.

    For example: South Bend <-> Indianapolis, South Bend <-> Toledo, Toledo <-> Detroit. Those simple connections save routes up to 10ms in the midwest because when you're going from Detroit, for example, a route will go Detroit -> Toledo -> Pittsburgh or Detroit -> South Bend -> Indianapolis rather than Detroit -> Chicago -> Pittsburgh/Indianapolis like so many other providers route.
    Last edited by devonblzx; 01-30-2014 at 11:23 PM.

  12. #12
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    Every provider has crap routes at one place or another, we notice in New York with Cogent guys 20 miles away using Verizon age getting 80ms there, on the west coast myself I however get 88ms.

    This is why it's a good idea to have multiple providers in a network.
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  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by Purevoltage View Post
    ...
    This is why it's a good idea to have multiple providers in a network.
    Correctly, but it don't help any as actually the biggest part goes trough Level3 - the router looks on the shortest path where Level3 Win and don't care about Latency.
    And it's a hard job, to manually set custom routes for various destinations.

    Hopefully they will notice this bad routing in near time.

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by devonblzx View Post
    Cogent is better than a lot of the low cost providers in my opinion. Iin the Midwest, Cogent has some of the best routes. Almost all providers backhaul through Chicago, Cogent actually has real routes in the midwest.

    For example: South Bend <-> Indianapolis, South Bend <-> Toledo, Toledo <-> Detroit. Those simple connections save routes up to 10ms in the midwest because when you're going from Detroit, for example, a route will go Detroit -> Toledo -> Pittsburgh or Detroit -> South Bend -> Indianapolis rather than Detroit -> Chicago -> Pittsburgh/Indianapolis like so many other providers route.
    This is very true. If you're riding on Cogent's network, you do take shorter paths. They use a router at each POP instead of backhauling out of town.
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  15. #15
    Cogent = service, support guys with knowledge always reachable
    Level3 = what is service?

  16. #16
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    Sales / Billing / Support: Cogent has been amazing. Quick installs, accurate billing, support reps can be reached and actually log into routers and do things. Level3 is the exact opposite. Slow installs and constant mistakes. Overbilling constantly. Tickets take days to be resolved. Everyone passes the buck to someone else.

    Routes: Using Noction, Level3 shows a slight edge of a few milliseconds, for the most part, over Cogent. Cogent still get's routes from Level 3 though.

    Our experience with Level3 was not always bad. It became bad at the same time they bought Global Crossing. Everything seemed to fall apart for us around that time.

    We also have Verizon in our blend as well and it's not uncommon to see large amounts of it's own routes get routed all around away from themselves during peak times.

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by nekrogoblikon View Post
    Sales / Billing / Support: Cogent has been amazing. Quick installs, accurate billing, support reps can be reached and actually log into routers and do things. Level3 is the exact opposite. Slow installs and constant mistakes. Overbilling constantly. Tickets take days to be resolved. Everyone passes the buck to someone else.

    Routes: Using Noction, Level3 shows a slight edge of a few milliseconds, for the most part, over Cogent. Cogent still get's routes from Level 3 though.

    Our experience with Level3 was not always bad. It became bad at the same time they bought Global Crossing. Everything seemed to fall apart for us around that time.

    We also have Verizon in our blend as well and it's not uncommon to see large amounts of it's own routes get routed all around away from themselves during peak times.
    We also use Noction's IRP product and we see different results. Almost all of the routes moved away from the provider are Cogent to NTT, GTT/Inteliquent, or Level3. Level3 has the most reach and the best performing routes, but GTT/Inteliquent was a close second (and a much better deal for the price).

    The performance difference between Cogent and Level3 (for us) was pretty large. Level3 almost never had any complete blackout re-routes (Cogent has more than a handful).

    Also, forget Cogent if you want to reach AWS on the west coast during "backup time windows" where everyone is trying to reach S3.

  18. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by ipclear View Post
    Cogent = service, support guys with knowledge always reachable
    Level3 = what is service?
    hmmm... why someone should pay any longer for Level3 3-4x the Cogent price...

    we got all few weeks this survey Invitation Mails from them, it surely cost them money to analyze their customer feedback instead to answer tickets

    Good to see that in North America Level3 work better, in Europe since they acquird Global crossing it's better to avoid them.

  19. #19
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    Cogent is generally pretty good at moving bits on their own network. We preference their backbone routes on our network, since we generally get good performance that way. Trying to use them for transit, though, is not quite such a great experience in most cases. Their peering, especially with most eyeball networks, ranges from mediocre to downright bad.
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  20. #20
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    In the US I've had absolutely no issues with Level3, a great well-run network, easily the best and most consistent performer for us. I've had no issues with support/service, we just go through our main rep (or CC him on things) and it gets handled promptly.

    Cogent is good until they aren't. Yes, they'll be great 99%+ of the time, but we've just seen a higher number of issues/incidents with them than any other carrier. For awhile they made us have two BGP sessions because the router we were directly off of couldn't handle full routes and that caused issues as once in awhile they'd somehow create routing loops between them it seemed, Then from what I've heard, service still depends highly on the POP you're at as well, as some POPs seem fairly over-subscribed still. Their network doesn't have nearly the latency issues it had ~4 years ago though, there has been steady improvement on that front. have still seen enough to not consider them a premier network, but they now have such reach and a lot of eyeballs, so they're good to have as one of a handful of carriers. Would never single home with them.
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  21. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jmax View Post
    LOL.

    We have Cogent in a few of our locations, and we actually like working with them a lot.
    You guys must be easy to please?

  22. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rob T View Post
    Cogent is generally pretty good at moving bits on their own network. We preference their backbone routes on our network, since we generally get good performance that way. Trying to use them for transit, though, is not quite such a great experience in most cases. Their peering, especially with most eyeball networks, ranges from mediocre to downright bad.
    Agreed... as long as you avoid using them for certain US eyeball networks it is generally very good and compliments a diverse BGP mix well. Noction would take care of it automatically, but even doing it manually it's not much work since the choke points are well known..

    I've seen issues lately with Level3/VZ in LAX and other major markets, so it would seem even more 'premium' carriers are starting to feel the squeeze. We've moved some of our VZ traffic from level3 to TWT due to this.
    Last edited by FastServ; 02-07-2014 at 11:07 AM.
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  23. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by FastServ View Post
    I've seen issues lately with Level3/VZ in LAX and other major markets, so it would seem even more 'premium' carriers are starting to feel the squeeze. We've moved some of our VZ traffic from level3 to TWT due to this.
    I must admit, this is a growing concern. If even Level 3 starts to have issues, who do we turn to for quality service to the end user without breaking the bank?
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  24. #24
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    We have Level3 at our Santa Clara and Ashburn facilities. I don't have any real complaints, there are much worse carriers

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