Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Colocation and Data Centers : How are these providers?

[StoneHalo]

I've been offered co-lo that is made up of the following providers:

MCI/UUnet, AboveNet/MFN and XO Communications

How are these? Does anyone have anything bad to say about them?

Thanks

[Noam]

you cant go wrong with UUNet bandwidth thats all i can tell you.
AFAIK they are the biggest internet services providor in the world when it comes to actual physical network.
Abovenet is very good too IMO, they arnt in the same class as UUNet but certainly a very honored providor.
XO is decent, some people may define it as somewhat cheaper tho... it can be considered "less" than Abovenet.

[snickn]

AboveNet/MFN is not nearly as strong as they were in the past, they are now above.net again, after going MFN after their chapter 13 time. At some places, they are still fairly strong, but they seem to be suffering a bit of congestion at others (southern cali LA<>SJ)

UUnet, well, aren't quite as large as Noam seems to make them out to be, they are quite stable, but they have suffered their hardships due to the MCI/Worldcom scandal as well.

XO's primary business is selling transport, they aren't tier1, and I still consider them blended, I think they are a decent addition to a BGP'd network though.

[Mfjp]

Above.net have a pretty good network, it peers with alot of provider, but latency is not the best on the network.

UUnet, needless to say, it's probably the best network of the 3, consider it's size and amount of physical presence/peers. One bad thing: These guys don't return calls even for sales.

XO sell all kind of stuff ranging from wireless access, fixed telephone lines, dark fibers and long distance. They are probably a step behind Above.net, but lactency on XO network is better than Above.net, only problem is they dont' have enough peers directly. Interestingly, they use alot UUNET transit

You're forgetting Level3.

[Papa Smurff]

UUnet/MCI is the largest provider on the internet, period. They peer with the most networks in the world.

Abovenet is second place, XO is third.

The below link ranks the top 10 Networks in the world.
http://www.caida.org/analysis/topology/rank_as/

As you can see AS#701 (MCI/UUnet) peers with 2,500 networks, followed second by AS#1239 (Sprint) who peers with 1,700 networks.
Abovenet/MFN (AS#6461) is number 10 in the world peering with 555 networks.
The below link lists these numbers. You can search by AS#
http://www.fixedorbit.com/AS/0/AS701.htm

Here are the top 10 in the world in order of size:
Company AS Peers
MCI 701 2440
Sprint 1239 1792
ATT 7018 1666
Qwest 209 868
Level3 3356 851
C&W 3561 680
GBLX 3549 630
Verio 2914 568
Abovenet6461 523
Genuity 1 329

[Mfjp]

Interesting Qwest surpasses Level3 now.

[Noam]

there is some site that makes alot of Internet research and sells its results, i forgot its name.
When I wrote what I wrote it was after reminding what that site said, that UUNet owns and operates the largest Internet network on earth.
Not sure exactly what they meant but I remember reading it.

edit: spelling

[ericabiz]

Originally posted by nickn
AboveNet/MFN is not nearly as strong as they were in the past, they are now above.net again, after going MFN after their chapter 13 time. At some places, they are still fairly strong, but they seem to be suffering a bit of congestion at others (southern cali LA<>SJ)

Yes, that's true. However, from what I understand by talking to AboveNet staff, this is mostly on Comcast's side.

Apparently Comcast raised all their cable modem subscribers to 1.8Mbps down (and soon 3Mbps down) without buying more outbound bandwidth. They've overloaded their lines to AboveNet and have had severe problems coping with the increased demand from their subscribers.

From the looks of the traceroutes we're getting from our customers, all problems have been isolated to the Comcast network. They've maxed out an OC-12 in NYC and another large pipe in LA. Problems are particularly bad during peak usage hours. This is affecting anything on the AboveNet network as well as specific other providers (I don't have names of the other providers, but our customers are saying AboveNet servers aren't the only ones they are having trouble reaching.)

I haven't seen any new traceroutes lately, so it looks like Comcast is taking steps on their end to resolve the problem. They've already added some new bandwidth in NYC, and the problems there have lessened (they were terrible for a couple weeks and Comcast actually postponed the 3Mbps rollout there due to outbound issues.)

Any customer not using Comcast should be fine.

[Dragoon]

Originally posted by Noam
there is some site that makes alot of Internet research and sells its results, i forgot its name.
When I wrote what I wrote it was after reminding what that site said, that UUNet owns and operates the largest Internet network on earth.
Not sure exactly what they meant but I remember reading it.

You're probably thinking of telegeography. I hope you aren't thinking of the cook report.

MCI/UUnet arguably owns the largest network as in market share. They aren't the largest as in physical network since they lease the majority of their fiber around the globe. MCI/UUnet/Worldcom bought everything in sight. They did not build.

UUnet isn't the company that it once was. Once upon a time UUnet was all you needed. Those days are gone. In today's market you'd be a fool to go with ANY single provider.

As far as number of peers goes this is also misleading. It does not take into account quality just quantity. Not all networks are created equal.

It is generally considered that the Internet's traffic is now more or less evenly distributed among the major carriers throughout the world. At this time there is no clear "largest" provider.

A blend of UUnet, MFN/Abovenet, and XO should be very good.

[Papa Smurff]

Originally posted by Dragoon
You're probably thinking of telegeography. I hope you aren't thinking of the cook report.

MCI/UUnet arguably owns the largest network as in market share. They aren't the largest as in physical network since they lease the majority of their fiber around the globe. MCI/UUnet/Worldcom bought everything in sight. They did not build.

UUnet isn't the company that it once was. Once upon a time UUnet was all you needed. Those days are gone. In today's market you'd be a fool to go with ANY single provider.

As far as number of peers goes this is also misleading. It does not take into account quality just quantity. Not all networks are created equal.

It is generally considered that the Internet's traffic is now more or less evenly distributed among the major carriers throughout the world. At this time there is no clear "largest" provider.

A blend of UUnet, MFN/Abovenet, and XO should be very good.

I agree. However;
Number of networks you peer with does make a difference. Yes, it does not mean that the one who peers with the most is fastest. Nor does it mean the one who peers with the most takes the least amount of hops.
But it does mean that the one who peers with the most traverses the least amount of networks (AS#'s) to reach a destination. The less networks your traffic traverses the lower the risk of another network impacting your traffic. Basically most of the Internet becomes your next door neighbor rather than the neighbor across the street and 2 blocks down.

As you said the difference is negligible UNLESS your upstream providers have REALLY bad peering and horrible BGP metrics.

[StoneHalo]

Thanks for the replies Carry on discussing if you wish, i'm learning from it

[Brad @ Xiolink]

The largest number of peers does not necessarily mean the best network. We use an Intelligent Routing solution (netVmg) which manipulates BGP4 to the best route. This means even if UUNet/MCI is 7 hops and Level (3) is 9 hops, if Level (3) is faster, the traffic will be routed Level (3). You would be surprised the number of routes which are moved from MCI/UUNet to other providers. Given they have the largest network it should be the other way around.

This all points to the quality of the network in addition to the number of peers. Granted, it is usually best to be on the same network as the end point, but not always!

It is important to look at more than just the number of peers when determining the quality of a network.

MCI/UUNet is a very strong provider and we value them as one of our carriers. I am only making the point... most # of peers doesn't always mean the fastest.