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Cogent will die.
Cisco does NOT own it at all. They simply invested a massive amount of money into, so I guess in that sense they do.
Post-Enron (I hate that phrase), I think the whole "hey, we'll give you VC in exchange for buying a ton of gear so we can show good sales numbers" stuff will be looked down upon, so I'm hoping (fingers crossed) cisco will just cut their losses and get the hell outa dodge.
If you don't understand why cogent is not able to get new peering arrangements setup, just use the search function for some of my posts under the subject. To sum it up, the players that they are attempting to put out of business by undercutting (selling far below cost), don't take kindly to making their business strategy viable. I think the shit will hit the fan a lot more in regards to this.
I think the hosting world will be a much better place w/o cogent. It will get rid of a lot of worthless hosts that don't know shit, and then true price competition can begin again. Right now when you use cogent bandwidth, it's being subsidised by the VC backing of cogent. ;) So.. you are burning cisco's money up! Go submit more galleries! ;)
Notice the whole pro-cogent is entirely price-based, they have absolutely no other argument at all. Just rah-rah, cogent rocks because I had it X months and it rules and it rocks and I only pay $3k for 100mbit!
Don't get me wrong, I advise my own customers w/o a clue to use cogent when it's applicable. I tell them to put their main site on my stuff, and host images/etc. on the cheapass cogent provider-of-the-day while they can. They save a ton of money.
Oh well, been up over 24 hours now. In short, ride the horse while it lasts, because it shall soon be dead. Just make sure you have a backup plan for when cogent goes under and you can no longer get sub $1.00/gig bandwidth unless you're absolutely huge.
So in short, no and yes. Bandwidth will go up when cogent dies, then slowly go back down to near cogent levels within a few years when it's financially viable to do so.
I think cogent has done far more harm to the ISP industry than help. Although I do admit it has fostered a bit of price-cutting and such, it also introduced a bucket of worms that will be damned hard to shut.
peace,
-Phil
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