Cogent = Bad choice
So it seems that I made the wrong decision for our uplink at Mochi Media. We have a gigabit line to Cogent at 365 Main. They've been mostly good so far (and cheap), but their recent spat with Telia has cut us off to parts of Europe (at least Sweden and Denmark). Not cool.
Anyone have any recommendations on other providers we should talk to? I don't want us to be dependent on Cogent for a minute longer than we have to be.
Heh, I have seen lots of web hosting services having “No Cogent” in their feature list. From one of those sites : “The outgoing bandwidth is a full BGP mix of Savvis, XO, PCCW Global, Telia, GameRail, and local peering (no Cogent)”. Hope that helps !
Comment by zimbatm — 2008-03-16 @ 1:16 am
This is not the first or 2nd time cogent has gotten itself in such a situation…
Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_carrier and http://as-rank.caida.org/ for some metrics you could use to estimate peering performance in a handwaving way. You could also parse your access logs for samples to trace and see if one carrier fits your users better.
About a year ago I talked to basically all of them, I found level 3 the most pleasant to deal with, and their rate was surprisingly competitive. Accel might have a relationship with a carrier that would get you a more favorable deal.
Comment by Jason Watkins — 2008-03-19 @ 2:13 am
We use XO communications for both telecom/VoIP and data. I have worked with them directly and have had good experiences with both their sales team and their support folks.
Comment by Jeffrey — 2008-03-20 @ 1:05 pm
We use XO for a dedicated line between our office and the data center. It took damn near forever to get it lit and cross-connected correctly but since then it’s been working great (and it’s actually a bit faster than the 10mbit we’re paying for).
When I asked XO for a quote for data their prices were high (relative to e.g. internap) and it took them two or three days to get back to me. Internap I had a good experience with, the sales guy emailed me a quote within an hour or two, I didn’t even have to talk to anyone on the phone.
Comment by bob — 2008-03-21 @ 5:22 pm