Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Colocation and Data Centers : Trying Additional Ethernet Circuits to your Cabinet

[atlarep]

I wanted to share my experience on this; be careful or you'll end up offline.

I asked my account manager who is already built-on-site; he gave me a list of upstreams and start calling people, sending emails, etc. This is what happened after a week of tries and re-tries.

ATT --> Impossible to get to the right person (as in "nobody there seems to know anything about that is".- embarrassing)
L3 --> Lines were busy, didn't bother re-trying
Zayo --> Nobody answers the phone.
Service Electric --> The sales person says 'The building owner has prohibited them from getting into the building', whatever that means.

And this is my favorite:
Verizon --> We signed the order in February, then two weeks later they made me send my sysadmin to the DC and didn't show up. I called the "Sales Agent" and the "Order Processing Official" the next day and all they could say was 'Engineering will get you all set'.
It's been 4 months and I still haven't hear from them (Verizon) regardless of the 75 e-mails, calls, voice messages, etc.

We ended up purchasing the second drop from the Colocation Company who told us to call those guys. LOL

[cheezus]

In our sales experience L3 and Cogent have been excellent.

Verizon failed to provide any quotes after months of following up with several reps. They don't reply to emails, answer phones or return calls.

ATT was slow but eventually came back with the wrong quotes, quoting services like DS3 when we wanted ethernet for their on-net presence. They were so old school and clueless it was insane.

Sprint took a month to get a call back and we were told literally web requests go into a database that is only checked every few weeks. Once checked the requests get sent to the reps hands.

[colosolutionz]

Purchasing bandwidth from a colo provider, should always be a far better experience then going to any of the Tier Is. . . . Should also be a much better / more redundant solution then any single Tier I as well. The key word here is **should**, Should provide more routes, uptime, better pricing, availability, **SHOULD**

[atlarep]

Originally Posted by colosolutionz

Purchasing bandwidth from a colo provider, should always be a far better experience then going to any of the Tier Is. . . . Should also be a much better / more redundant solution then any single Tier I as well. The key word here is **should**, Should provide more routes, uptime, better pricing, availability, **SHOULD**

You are right on that.
The only dilemma is when you want to diversify your peers.

[LoginTech]

Originally Posted by atlarep

You are right on that.
The only dilemma is when you want to diversify your peers.

You should ask folks on here for contacts at the carriers that didn't respond if you still want to diversify.

For instance, we have a couple Level3 account managers that are super responsive and get stuff done.

[cresci]

Get a bandwidth broker. Marcus at Giglinx.com does an excellent job.

[cheezus]

Originally Posted by cresci

Get a bandwidth broker. Marcus at Giglinx.com does an excellent job.

Meh. In the end we did better direct than we did with giglinx.

[mams482]

Originally Posted by cresci

Get a bandwidth broker. Marcus at Giglinx.com does an excellent job.

Thanks for the mention Rafael!

[FastServ]

+1 Marcus (and Phil) is the man.

[swiftnoc]

Originally Posted by cheezus

Meh. In the end we did better direct than we did with giglinx.

That does surprise me, usually buying trough a reseller will give you better response as well as better prices then going directly to the carrier.

[cheezus]

Maybe on the higher end, hundred's of megs or gig commits. But for ethernet 10's of megs we did better direct.

Giglinx was responsive. Borderline overly aggressive actually. If you're in a hurry that's likely a good thing.

[cheezus]

I should also note that we had high hopes for resellers. In fact we went right to resellers first. Especially as much as people on here her hype up bandcon (highwinds) and giglinx (as demonstrated in this thread) We nearly signed giglinx contracts but on a hail mary we contacted carriers like L3 direct. Good thing we did as we saved about 25% month.

[swiftnoc]

Originally Posted by cheezus

We nearly signed giglinx contracts but on a hail mary we contacted carriers like L3 direct. Good thing we did as we saved about 25% month.

Can you disclose what commitment you have and what you pay per month?

[cheezus]

Originally Posted by swiftnoc

Can you disclose what commitment you have and what you pay per month?

The final contracts we signed are marked confidential, so no pricing, sorry. But I can say the commitments are in the low range from 10-50 mbit over ethernet.

Why do you ask?

[swiftnoc]

Originally Posted by cheezus

Why do you ask?

Partly Curiosity and partly amazement that a reseller was unable to give you the better pricing on the deal. I guess that the price will be in the $6-$8 per megabit range.