Can one of you server/hosting people please explain to me

[FATPad]

why Cogent bandwidth is supposedly so bad?

I hear it all the time. Cogent bandwidth blows. But I haven't seen anyone give an actual reason why other than the price.

Does anyone know? Or do people just say it because it's cheap?

yeah, I'd like to know that as well.

[Moose]

It doesnt blow

I have no desire to get into specifics. Ask some of our customers using it.

Usually when you see people saying it sucks...99% of the time it is a hosting company, or some one affiliated with one who does A. not have access to cogent
B. never used it

Now
We use LEvel3, Verio and Cogent and as far as speed goes Level3 is number one and Cogent is number 2 and verio slowly behind that.Now this is just from our area, it could be different elswhere. And the speed difference in the 3 are barely noticeable.

As i seen someone say here once....Your surfers dont care wether they are beating thier meat on Cogent bandwidth or Level3 bandwidth.

Originally posted by Moose


As i seen someone say here once....Your surfers dont care wether they are beating thier meat on Cogent bandwidth or Level3 bandwidth.

since there's a speed difference, don't people beat meat faster on level3 than on verio ?

[bash]

See my and Phil21's post.

http://gofuckyourself.com/showthread...ight=bandwidth

Here's a guy bitching about slow cogent traceroutes from today...

http://bbs.adultwebmasterinfo.com/sh...threadid=30392

Here's an all Cogent host that was down today...

http://gofuckyourself.com/showthread.php?threadid=59209

Hope that helps you, FatPad

[FATPad]

Originally posted by bash
See my and Phil21's post.

http://gofuckyourself.com/showthread...ight=bandwidth

Here's a guy bitching about slow cogent traceroutes from today...

http://bbs.adultwebmasterinfo.com/sh...threadid=30392

Here's an all Cogent host that was down today...

http://gofuckyourself.com/showthread.php?threadid=59209

Hope that helps you, FatPad

Thanks.

But I read that stuff already.

The hosting is the company doing upgrades. Nothing to do with the bandwidth.

The 500ms tracert could be any number of things. I haven't gotten a 500ms tracert on anyone so I think that's an isolated incident of some whacked out kind.

The first one is a lot of info, but nothing that explains why Cogent bandwidth blows. just a lot of people saying it does because it's cheap.

[Fletch XXX]

Originally posted by Moose
It doesnt blow

Usually when you see people saying it sucks...99% of the time it is a hosting company, or some one affiliated with one who does A. not have access to cogent
B. never used it

[ausboy]

What fletch and all the other pro-cogent posters have said.

[FATPad]

Originally posted by ausboy
What fletch and all the other pro-cogent posters have said.

LOL Yea, but I'm not asking IF it sucks.

I'm asking someone who says it sucks to tell me WHY it sucks.

Do they have crappy fiber lines? Do they have a switch somewhere that intentionally bogs their lines down? Does god just hate Cogent?

And if no one answers out of all the people on ths board who continually say Cogent sucks, I'll just have to assume it doesn't suck and they don't know what they're talking about.

[Pipecrew]

vortechhosting.com must have goldplated bandwidth since they charged me 4 dollars a gig

[Fletch XXX]

I think its kinda like when I used to kick Wranglers (Cogent) back in the day, high school fuckers always picked on me, cuz they had Girbaud (Level 3)

With Cogent Im able to run more sites than ever at a truly affordable price, domination is only a matter of time.

[ausboy]

Different questions along the same lines FATPad, perhaps those experts could answer these with less hassles:

If I buy 1 mbps from cogent, or 1 mbps from any other provider, who infact gives me more transfer?

If there is a difference, percentage wise, does it justify the percentage price difference?

Please do explain answers with detail.

[ADIDAS]

Originally posted by Moose
It doesnt blow

I have no desire to get into specifics. Ask some of our customers using it.

Usually when you see people saying it sucks...99% of the time it is a hosting company, or some one affiliated with one who does A. not have access to cogent
B. never used it

Now
We use LEvel3, Verio and Cogent and as far as speed goes Level3 is number one and Cogent is number 2 and verio slowly behind that.Now this is just from our area, it could be different elswhere. And the speed difference in the 3 are barely noticeable.

As i seen someone say here once....Your surfers dont care wether they are beating thier meat on Cogent bandwidth or Level3 bandwidth.

Moose I agree 100%!!

[AdultWire]

Cogent bandwidth is as good on average as any other bandwidth. Bandwidth has two qualities that are used to measure its effectiveness. One of them is LATENCY, and the other one is THROUGHPUT.

LOW LATENCY is desirable, because it provides the impression of speed to you users assuming that they have good THROUGHPUT. LATENCY is the amount of time it takes the smallest possible message to get from one place to another. Latency is usually measure in milliseconds, and can be roughly gauged using the "ping" command.

HIGH THROUGHPUT is desirable, because it allows your server to transfer large amounts of data in a short period of time. THROUGHPUT is usually measure in Mbps (mega bits per second).

Cogent offers THROUGHPUT levels of 100Mbps and 1000Mbps. Most service providers offer 145Mbps and 1000Mbps, *BUT* their 145Mbps offering are about the same cost as Cogent's 1000Mbps offerings.

100Mbps is far beyond the THROUGHPUT of any of your surfers, so that is only a concern if the total combined throughput of all your simultaneous surfers exceeds 100Mbps, which is extremely unlikely. I would hazard a guess that only the biggest adult companies exceed this THROUGHPUT. Cogent does not have enforcable SLA's (Service Level Agreements) with most of their peers, so as a result, there is no guarantee that the 100Mbps throughput will carry all the way to your surfer, but for all intensive purposes, the thruput to the surfer's ISP is greater than the thruput of the individual surfer, so this becomes irrelevant in most cases. If it were relevant, what the naysayers fail to mention is that even WITH an SLA, service levers are only guaranteed with the peer, and not with the peer's peers. All ISP's, therefore, inherently suffer from the same problem. Q9 net in Toronto has a solution, which works well, but still does not solve the problem 100% of the time.

Latency within Cogents network is excellent, however, they also are limited by the latency of their peers, and they have few SLA's. Despite this, the latency is *usually* not perceptibly different from more expensive ISP's.

I believe that cogent bandwidth should be a part of any well rounded service provider's arsenal.

My 2c.

[Smegma]

First.. Some may not believe I can be objective because I own and operate a dedicated hosting and co-location company. But I have been in the networking business a while, and I have no problem calling a spade a spade.

Cogent fucked their IP transport peers.

I?ll try and explain.

If you?re a big bandwidth suck on the Internet like AT&T @ Home was, and like Cogentco is, you can buy your bandwidth two ways.

1: EXCHANGE - You sign an exchange agreement with other carriers saying that they can pass their packets across your network, autonomously, so long as you can do the same. Usually it's a 50 / 50 split. In some cases, if ratios are kept in check, the exchange costs both parties nearly nothing! That's what AT&T and UUNet do. The quality of whole increases.

2: PAID TRANSIT: You can outright buy your IP transport. It?s expensive.. but if you know your a big bandwidth suck, then it's best to purchase your bandwidth outright and fuck the peering agreement because the second your ratios fall out of wack, your peer will kill your feed (and your business). So.. Just pay for what you use. That's what AT&T @ Home did. They knew they were going to suck down some major bandwidth.. and that the percentage of inbound traffic was going to be disproportional high to the outbound, like 90/10.

Now.. what cogent did was dastardly.. They signed EXCHANGE agreements with the major carriers for next to nothing. Just the basic Layer 1 stuff, but for the most part companies like UUNet, Sprint, Qwest were providing bandwidth to cogent for nothing. All the peers saw cogent as another company willing to take some of the heat off the net.. provider an alternativ path to and from other providers, blah blah blah.. .. but cogent saw it differently.. they saw cheap bandwidth.. not just cheap.. but nearly free!

So Cogentco lights the fire, starts bringing in tons of customers, and charging great fucking prices for bandwidth. Massive amounts of customers migrated and installed, and started pushing a ton of traffic.. but cogent had a problem.. within a year.. the ratios went to SHIT and the major service providers started lowering the prioritization of IP packets originating or destined to cogent's netblocks. Some outright terminated the connections.

When your packets get ?Low-Pro?ed?, things make look fine during non-congested periods and start to look like shit during busy times. People like UUNet, Sprint, Qwest, AOL, started to flag cogent?s netblock in the BGP table as low priority network traffic.

Well now here sits cogent.. losing peering with the major boys.. and having cogent traffic outside of cogent's network be prioritized right next to ICMP and NTP packets, and they can't do a thing about it but convert to "paid IP transit".. but paid transit is fucking expensive as hell.. and now way can cogent keep charging the rates they do for bandwidth without taking a huge loss (note the recent rate hikes).

So this is what they did (are doing).. they were able to talk some big-boy providers like AT&T into keeping the links up between them and cogent.. so long as data packets for cogent's network can be prioritized lower than any other traffic. Cogent?s happy with that.. at least they didn?t get killed. Now cogent is out BUYING transit as best they can to compensate for the degradation of transit. Trying to find a happy medium between the low prioritized peers and the paid peers.

Well.. the peers are looking for any reason to terminate transport with cogent. Service providers outside of cogent are starting to give a low prioritization to cogent?s packets as instructed by their upstream providers. Cogent is on thin ice, and financially, they aren?t making money. They owe a ton in fees for the fuckup, for every mbit they sell for $20 they are paying $75. You don?t need to be a mathematician to realize what?s going to happen.

So. Cogent may not be oversubscribed? but cogent traffic is certainly not given prioritization when it flows through other providers. This causes degradation in performance, and a loss of daily transit continuity of quality. Jump on an AOL account and try and access your website located at cogentco at 9:00 AM PDT (the high peak of the day) then ask yourself... is it worth it?

[AdultWire]

Oh, I did neglect to mention one other factor -- AVAILABILITY -- how often does the network fail. I am not personally aware of any cogent failures, but it goes without saying that all networks fail from time to time. In my random sampling, they have been more reliable than Verio, UUNET, and Time Warner, but admittedly, my sampling has been small.

The real point, however, is that a good ISP is not subject to the failures of one of their upstream providers. They should be multi-homed and BGP4 routed. This ensures minimal failure times, which can usually be measured in seconds.

[FATPad]

Originally posted by Smegma
First.. Some may not believe I can be objective because I own and operate a dedicated hosting and co-location company. But I have been in the networking business a while, and I have no problem calling a spade a spade.

Cogent fucked their IP transport peers.

I?ll try and explain.

If you?re a big bandwidth suck on the Internet like AT&T @ Home was, and like Cogentco is, you can buy your bandwidth two ways.

1: EXCHANGE - You sign an exchange agreement with other carriers saying that they can pass their packets across your network, autonomously, so long as you can do the same. Usually it's a 50 / 50 split. In some cases, if ratios are kept in check, the exchange costs both parties nearly nothing! That's what AT&T and UUNet do. The quality of whole increases.

2: PAID TRANSIT: You can outright buy your IP transport. It?s expensive.. but if you know your a big bandwidth suck, then it's best to purchase your bandwidth outright and fuck the peering agreement because the second your ratios fall out of wack, your peer will kill your feed (and your business). So.. Just pay for what you use. That's what AT&T @ Home did. They knew they were going to suck down some major bandwidth.. and that the percentage of inbound traffic was going to be disproportional high to the outbound, like 90/10.

Now.. what cogent did was dastardly.. They signed EXCHANGE agreements with the major carriers for next to nothing. Just the basic Layer 1 stuff, but for the most part companies like UUNet, Sprint, Qwest were providing bandwidth to cogent for nothing. All the peers saw cogent as another company willing to take some of the heat off the net.. provider a faste, o just an alternative, path to and from other providers, blah blah blah.. .. but cogent saw it differently.. they saw cheap bandwidth.. not just cheap.. but nearly free!

So Cogentco lights the fire, starts bringing in tons of customers, and charging great fucking prices for bandwidth. Massive amounts of customers migrated and installed, and started pushing a ton of traffic.. but cogent had a problem.. within a year.. the ratios went to SHIT and the major service providers started lowering the prioritization of IP packets originating or destined to cogent's netblocks. Some outright terminated the connections.

When your packets get ?Low-Pro?ed?, things make look fine during non-congested periods and start to look like shit during busy times. People like UUNet, Sprint, Qwest, AOL, started to flag cogent?s netblock in the BGP table as low priority network traffic.

Well now here sits cogent.. losing peering with the major boys.. and having cogent traffic outside of cogent's network be prioritized right next to ICMP and NTP packets, and they can't do a thing about it but convert to "paid IP transit".. but paid transit is fucking expensive as hell.. and now way can cogent keep charging the rates they do for bandwidth without taking a huge loss (note the recent rate hikes).

So this is what they did (are doing).. they were able to talk some big-boy providers like AT&T into keeping the links up between them and cogent.. so long as data packets for cogent's network can be prioritized lower than any other traffic. Cogent?s happy with thay.. at least they didn?t get killed is what they?re thinking. Now cogent is out BUYING transit as best they can to compensate for the degradation of transit. Trying to find a happy medium between the low prioritized peers and the paid peers.

Well.. the peers are looking for any reason to terminate transport with cogent. Service providers outside of cogent are starting to give a low prioritization to cogent?s packets as instructed by their upstream providers. Cogent is on thin ice, and financially, they aren?t making money. They owe a ton in fees for the fuckup, for every mbit they sell for $20 they are paying $75. You don?t need to be a mathematician to realize what?s going to happen.

So. Cogent may not be oversubscribed? but cogent traffic is certainly not given prioritization when it flows through other providers. This causes degradation in performance, and a loss of daily transit continuity of quality. Jump on an AOL account and try and access your website located at cogentco at 9:00 AM PDT (the high peak of the day) then ask yourself... is it worth it?

Now that makes sense. Thank you.

[FATPad]

Although I don't know if it's true or not.

At least the explanation would explain why cogent bandwidth is lower than others and it's better than just hearing "Cogent sucks".

[Smegma]

Originally posted by FATPad


Now that makes sense. Thank you.

NP -

[ausboy]

Originally posted by FATPad
Although I don't know if it's true or not.

At least the explanation would explain why cogent bandwidth is lower than others and it's better than just hearing "Cogent sucks".

Yup, thanks for an explanation other than they suck.

[Smegma]

well.. some will say it's bullshit.. and I feel sorry for them.

I too, bought into the cogentco thing at one point before I did my homework. But I did a little digging.. even talked to the tech's at cogent who freely admit what I just posted.. and it became really clear.

I guess if you're on cogent.. and happy.. then good for you.

Just my unsolicited advice to those hosted on cogent.. look at your site from your customers point of view.. if 70% come from AOL.. get an AOL account and take a look!

Your customers are NOT not on cogent.. you need to see the world through their computers.. not yours. once you do.. watch your sales go up.

[Jamie]

The bottomline is how much money are you making on Cogent? If I'm making $40,000 a month and my bandwidth costs me $3,000 then Cogent works for me.

Cogent rocks and I'm going to use them for as long as they are around. Until then I'm saving a shitload of money and life is good.

[Tipsy]

My is I'll use Cogent BUT.... use them for stuff that sucks BW and converts badly. TGP galleries are a great example especially movie posts. If a site's got a good traffic/sales ratio there's no real need to risk cogent just in case, as the site's making a healthy profit anyway. However, for stuff like TGP posts there's no real reason not to. The useful life of a gallery is fairly small so if Cogent did go under it wouldn't hit too hard.

There again - if you're with a host that offers more than just Cogent it matters even less. Worse case scenario is you'll find prices jump if Cogent went under but your sites are still active.

I've not an AOL account to check the details but if it's no more than a couple of seconds delay at peak times this would make little difference on a gallery. However, as above the sites where it may matter I wouldn't put on cogent.

[pimpshost]

OK, see for yourself, go to www.cologroup.com and tell me how fast it loads, then go to www.candidhosting.com and tell me how fast that loads.

Cologroup.com is using Cogent and Candid is using Level3 and UUnet.

If you do this test, and they both load quick, I guess I don't really need to say much besides that.

[Amputate Your Head]

Originally posted by pimpshost
OK, see for yourself, go to www.cologroup.com and tell me how fast it loads, then go to www.candidhosting.com and tell me how fast that loads.

cologroup loads much faster than candid.

[Theo]

nice post Smegma, finally something i learned from this board

[dipshit moron retard]

another thing, cogents overseas routes are insane. generally its around 25-28 hops. if you look at cologroup its about 300ms from EU sites using visual traceroute, whereas level3 hosts will be 14 hops and 100ms. Regardless, cogent still rules!

[boneprone]

yeah right.
You get what you pay for.

Unlees you have a hook up as the family does.

Idiots

[boneprone]

if you want some unbiased info, and a hook up, hit me up.

I dont work for a hosting company, and i burn bandwith like i use whores.