Cogent B/w

[evilc]

HI,

I need to get some information about Cogent b/w. I have my current host on that b/w. I am quite satisfied with eth service but have heard/read bad things about cogent especially if i do a search on AWI.

Can someone pls specify, what exactly is bad with cogent.

I run TGP sites and use about 100GB/mo. Average runs about to 30k raw hits per day
Thx

[PeepNTom]

those that dont use it or havent used it will
always have negative things to say about it,
I hear it all the time...

I've been on it using it for past 7-8 months or so
and have only had 1hr of downtime in that period.
Is cheap, is fast for me so I'm all for it... ;)

[Ride]

Cogent is fine for me, but you are looking for something else just do a search. There are a lot of quality host that frequent this board.

[toker]

All your questions about Cogent are answered right here.

http://www.isp-planet.com/profiles/2002/cogentco.html

[Jollyperv]

Cogent's fine, don't believe the hype :)

[gmanea]

Cogent is good bandwidth if used properly.
You should expect your host to have a redundancy set up with serveral bandwidth providers. Often if the bandwidth is slow, it is a case of your host overloading their servers, and because cogent bandwidth is cheaper it is most likely coincidence this is what they are also doing. Ive seen many hosts use cogent well and it works fine.

[rowan]

Yep, nothing particularly wrong with cogent as part of a mix of bandwidth providers, but cogent ONLY is very risky.

Firstly, because there's no redundancy; if the cogent link goes down then your site does too.

Secondly, because hosts who have cogent only bandwidth will price their hosting based on cheap cogent bandwidth. If cogent dies, so do they...

Cheers.

[gmanea]

You are spot on

[cd34]

That article predates quite a few things that changed their financial picture quite a bit in March.

They acquired Allied Riser, and rather than doing an IPO, relisted under the ticker symbol COI, saved the underwriting fees which would have amounted to tens of millions of dollars, and raised close to $170 million if I recall the numbers.

They have since purchased PSI, which gave them quite a few peering agreements with the major carriers.

Since then, they've converted 3 of the PSI hosting centers, and if you buy 100mb service for $3000 (resale pricing), you get 1 free rack and 40 amps of service (enough to run 40 machines) (http://ir.thomsonfn.com/InvestorRelations/PubNewsStory.aspx?partner=Mzg0TkRnd05qST1QJFkEQUAL STO&product=MzgwU1ZJPVAkWQEQUALSTOEQUALSTO&storyId=31540)

Their IP network is run by one of the ex-Digex network architects, and since the addition of the PSI peering locations, things have been pretty solid.

Now, the bad thing that Cogent did is lower the prices to a point where anyone could become an ISP that had a few extra $$ in their pocket. As a result, resellers of Cogent Bandwidth with their poor network management skills, probably caused more damage to Cogent than any action by Cogent. The lower barrier to entry did not help things, however, as many of the ex-cogent resellers found, running a hosting service is a service business. Bandwidth is a commodity. This lower cost has cut into the margins of many of the larger players, and as such, the main selling principle employed by them to convince people not to use Cogent related bandwidth is FUD: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

When one speaks of financial stability, and the fact that certain entities are owned by phone companies and have multidrop service to handle multiple types of traffic on the same network, one needs only think of WorldCom. You have a company that through the 90s was on an acquisition rage. They built a network (incredible history behind this if you want to research it) and aggressively bought themselves into the marketplace. Later buying MFS, UUnet, MCI, and a few other companies. When MCI spun off its internet business, it went to Cable and Wireless. When Exodus filed for bankruptcy, C&W picked it up.

Making financial statements about a company's solvency really doesn't mean much. Those companies that appear large, and have the 'better' network, often have problems behind the scenes. C&W (which owns Exodus) just wrote down $2.2 billion pounds and released a ton of employees.

One could also contend that Japan that is having worse financial problems than the US, and NTT DoCoMo which owns Verio, could have the same problems. Japan's recession happened a tiny bit prior to ours, however, their central bank hasn't been nearly as aggressive as ours. As a result, growth there is quite stagnant, there is a LOT of real estate in the US for sale that used to be owned by foreign (Japanese) interests. They could recover as quickly as the US might -- however, I think that Japan will recover a little more slowly than the US.

Remember, when Amazon went public, Bezos was asked -- do you forsee a time in the near future when you'll be turning a profit? His reply, No, not in the forseeable future.

And yet Amazon enjoyed one of the greatest stock runups of a company that even said it would lose money for a long time. Irrational exuberance is what Greenspan called that. Irrational indeed.

So, with that said. Cogent is no less sound financially than any other company out there. They provide good connectivity (often times better connectivity to Australia than C&W)

Yes, they are losing money currently, however, with every sale (and they are damn aggressive in NYC and Dallas and DC) they keep moving that burn date further and further out. They are also moving into Toronto, which should shake that market up.

With their shrewd acquisitions, I would expect them to continue growing quickly and be very close on the road to profitability.

This isn't to say that Suzuki is any worse -- he is a very shrewd businessman, and I would expect Verio to continue to offer good service as well. However, there isn't much left for them to acquire.

As with everything, take this with a grain of salt. Take the time to educate yourself with regards to any offering.

We use Cogent in a carrier class facility at one of their POPs and have been very happy with the service we've had in the last 15 months. As far as Cogent related outages, we've logged 9 unplanned minutes, 41 planned minutes (of which 32 were prior to us turning live). We've had hardware issues which have caused problems on machines, but for the most part, its not been their network that has been at fault.

There's more to hosting than just bandwidth. Customer service response time, capabilities, offerings, pricing that matches your needs, etc. All of this needs to come into consideration and you need to make that decision by yourself.

NOTE: I'm not slamming any providers -- we consult and provide our clients with the best solution to meet their needs. We manage servers at Exodus, still have clients hosted under old Above.net contracts, Group Telecom, Digex/UU.Net, Verio and our own hosting. In fact, we recently placed a South African client of ours at the Sterling, VA Verio Facility as they had the right offerings for our client.

http://freeedgar.com/ is a good place to start to look at the SEC filings and get a good idea of the companies. Most telecom companies have links on their sites to their annual report in .pdf form. Think for yourself and make your own informed decisions based on the information you gather. It is a free service, requires an email address to register and they send out a spam every month or so, but its usually not too bad.

[PeepNTom]

cd34 is evidently more knowledgable with the
tech details than me, but from a simple users
standpoint.....its good stuff or has at least been
my experience the past months

[Jorge]

I used to be a bigger fan of cogentco.
Two main reasons - other providers have become more aggressive in dollar terms (thus lowering cogentco price advantage), and pain in my back I feel when connecting to cogentco only box from Europe. Packets travelling from the East to the West, and bouncing back. Timeouts, and expired sessions, congested lines at peering points - that's cogentco BW for me. Cogentco BW blended is ok, though.

[atlanta]

Cogent is fine for me. I've been on it for over a year and I've had Zero downtime.. Its great for galleries but i wouldn't put a paysite on it.... It all depends who's running the server though.

[StwoF]

Don't cogent BW because of what I heard. Don't know much about cogent but simply put, it's slower.

correct me if i'm wrong. ;)

[amatuerx]

its not that its slower its just a brand new technology. just like with dsl running over your phone line cogent multiplexes signals over fiber. the technology will catch up soon and everyopne will be doing things this way. mark my words

[gmanea]

yes, well some people listen too much to what other people have to say rather than taking experience for themselves.