I'm in search of some information about Cogent, it's past, present and future. I've heard bits and pieces about Cogent's past over the years but by no means have I actively been keeping up.
I'm aware of some (regular?) depeering issues. The NANOG archives have given me some additional insight into that (recurring?) problem. The reasoning behind the depeering events is a bit fuzzy though. I would be interested in people's opinion on whether or not they should be consider for upstream service based on this particular issue. Are there any reasonable mitigation measures available to Cogent downstreams if (when?) Cogent were to be depeered again? My understanding is that at least on previous depeering occasion, the depeering partner simply null-routed all prefixes being received via Cogent, creating a blackhole essentially. I also recall reading that this meant that prefixes being advertised and received by the depeering partner from other peers would still end up in the blackhole. The only solution I would see to this problem would be to shut down the BGP session with Cogent and rely on a 2nd upstream. Are there any other possible steps for mitigation in a depeering event?
I also know that their bandwidth is extremely cheap. This of course creates an issue for technical folks when trying to justify other upstream options that cost significantly more but also don't have a damaging history of getting depeered.
Does Cogent still have an issue with depeering? Are there any reasonable mitigation measures or should a downstream customer do any thing in particular to ready themselves for a depeering event? Does their low cost outweigh the risks? What are the specific risks?
Thanks
Justin
Our experience with them was at least one major (longer than an hour)
outages PER MONTH and many of those times they were black holing our
routes in their network which was the most damaging aspect. The outages
were one thing but when our routes still somehow managed to get
advertised in their network (even though our BGP session was down) that
really created issues. I have heard from some nearby folks who still
have service that it's gotten better, but we are also in the "regional
offering" when it comes to IP Transit and have sold connections to many
former Cogent customers who were fed up and left.
I have found with Cogent that you will get a LOT of varying opinions on
them - there are several other players (at least in our market) that are
priced very similar now and have a better history behind them.....
The specific de-peering issues never effected us much due to enough
diversity in our upstreams and a fair amount of direct/public peering...
Thanks,
Paul
At $JOB-1 we used Cogent.
Lots of horror stories had been heard about them.
We didn't have such problems.
Had nx1Gig from them.
On the few occasions where we had some slight issues, I was happy to
be able to get through to some one useful on the phone quickly, and
not play pass the parcel with call centre operatives.
and at least in the quantities we were buying they were significantly
better value than others, which was the primary reason we went with
them.
andrew
This matches our experience as well. When there are issues, they are EASY to get a hold of and the people who answer the phone clueful and dedicated to dealing with IP issues, not "can I help you with your long distance bill".... Also, they are pretty good about keeping us informed about maintenance issues. I would not use them as a sole provider (why run your own AS if you only have one transit provider?) but certainly I am happy keeping them in the mix to date.
We havent seen the same level of issues as some people in YYZ have seen, but I think that seems to be more on their 100Mb connections for some reason. On the gig service we are on, they are fairly reliable. Not quite as good as TATA/Teleglobe has been for us however.
---Mike
I hate when these questions get asked, because as the saying goes..."a
person happy with a service will only tell one other person, but a
person unhappy with a service with tell ten other people". So I think a
lot of times you'll get skewed responses...but with that said, we've
been using Cogent now for a year and no complaints at all. Had some
minor downtime back in April due to a hardware failure, but Cogent
responded extremely quickly, scheduled an emergency maintainance and had
us running rather quickly. Face it, hardware problems happen so I can't
blame Cogent on the failure. The few times I've dealt with their tech
support group I found 99% of them very knowledgeable and I know that
when we initially turned on the link they went the extra mile to resolve
some initial problems during the weekend time frame.
My 2 cents and with any provider mileage will vary,
Bret
Overall I can't say cogent has been bad. They have been great with
support and getting things completed. As far as outages go, maintenance
here and there but they always give ample time via email on planned
outages. Their network has improved a lot over the years and most
customers can't tell if they are on cogent or Level3 for the most part.
But as with every network no one single carrier will get the job done
"the best". I can't think of the last.. unexpected outage we had in our
POP with cogent. Overall recommended carrier now a days.
Cost in terms of performance, you can get competitive rates from Level3
and a chunk of the tier2's out there that will go lower than cogents
standard pricing model. Most seem to be in the same ball park +-1/Mbps.
Zachary A. Thompson
Justin Shore wrote (on Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 08:46:45AM -0500):
I'm in search of some information about Cogent, it's past, present and
future. I've heard bits and pieces about Cogent's past over the years
but by no means have I actively been keeping up.
We've had Cogent for several years in NYC with no real problems. Their
tech support is clueless (more than a month so far to get new IP's,
for instance) but you can work around that.
We've only recently started using Cogent transit, but it's been stable since
its introduction 6 months ago. Turn-up was a bit rocky since we never
received engineering details, and engineering was atypical in that two eBGP
sessions were established, one just to advertise loopbacks, and another for
the actual feed. The biggest issue we have with them is that they don't allow
deaggregation. If you've been allocated a prefix of length yy, they'll accept
only x.x.x.x/yy, not x.x.x.x/yy le 24. Yes, sometimes deaggregation is
necessary or desirable even if only temporarily.
And, they have no plans to support IPv6.
"Cogent's official stance on IPv6 is that we will deploy IPv6 when it
becomes a commercial necessity. We have tested IPv6 and we have our plan
for rolling it out, but there are no commercial drivers to spend money
to upgrade a network to IPv6 for no real return on investment."
Stephen Kratzer
Network Engineer
CTI Networks, Inc.
Should have said "And, they have no plans to deploy IPv6 in the immediate
future."
Stephen Kratzer wrote:
And, they have no plans to support IPv6.
Ouch!
I hope this is a non-starter for a lot of folks.
Steve
Hi Justin,
I'm in search of some information about Cogent, it's past, present and
future. I've heard bits and pieces about Cogent's past over the years
but by no means have I actively been keeping up.
We recently got a 10-gig port in Oslo from them. Price-wise they were
competitive but absolutely not in a leauge of their own - a couple of
other large providers matched their offers. In the end the main
differencing factor for us was that their PoP happened to be in the same
building as our data centre, so no local access was required (unlike the
others).
The link hasn't been up for very long so I can't comment on long-term
reliability issues, but so far I've been _very_ happy with them,
everything was up and running just a couple of days after we ordered,
and the staff we've had contact with have been knowledgeable and
helpful. The service has performed as expected: latency has been low
and I haven't noticed any sub-optimal routing (trampolines) or packet loss.
We multihome, so we're not too concerned about potential de-peerings. I
would not single-home to any of the transit-free networks anyway, as any
of them could end up on the receiving end of a de-peering.
Best regards,
I'm skeptical as to where this info came from since this seems nothing
more then nay-say? if people are going to make grandiose statements then
they should justify them with reputable evidence. I would be extremely
surprised if Cogent engineering isn't working on a IPv6 plan or doesn't
have one already in place.
Bret
Stephen Kratzer wrote:
Should have said "And, they have no plans to deploy IPv6 in the immediate
future."
We've only recently started using Cogent transit, but it's been stable
since its introduction 6 months ago. Turn-up was a bit rocky since we never
received engineering details, and engineering was atypical in that two eBGP
sessions were established, one just to advertise loopbacks, and another for
the actual feed. The biggest issue we have with them is that they don't
allow deaggregation. If you've been allocated a prefix of length yy,
they'll accept only x.x.x.x/yy, not x.x.x.x/yy le 24. Yes, sometimes
deaggregation is necessary or desirable even if only temporarily.
And, they have no plans to support IPv6.
"Cogent's official stance on IPv6 is that we will deploy IPv6 when it
becomes a commercial necessity. We have tested IPv6 and we have our plan
for rolling it out, but there are no commercial drivers to spend money
to upgrade a network to IPv6 for no real return on investment."
Stephen Kratzer
Network Engineer
CTI Networks, Inc.
I'm in search of some information about Cogent, it's past, present and
future. I've heard bits and pieces about Cogent's past over the years
but by no means have I actively been keeping up.
I'm aware of some (regular?) depeering issues. The NANOG archives have
given me some additional insight into that (recurring?) problem. The
reasoning behind the depeering events is a bit fuzzy though. I would be
interested in people's opinion on whether or not they should be consider
for upstream service based on this particular issue. Are there any
reasonable mitigation measures available to Cogent downstreams if
(when?) Cogent were to be depeered again? My understanding is that at
least on previous depeering occasion, the depeering partner simply
null-routed all prefixes being received via Cogent, creating a blackhole
essentially. I also recall reading that this meant that prefixes being
advertised and received by the depeering partner from other peers would
still end up in the blackhole. The only solution I would see to this
problem would be to shut down the BGP session with Cogent and rely on a
2nd upstream. Are there any other possible steps for mitigation in a
depeering event?
I also know that their bandwidth is extremely cheap. This of course
creates an issue for technical folks when trying to justify other
upstream options that cost significantly more but also don't have a
damaging history of getting depeered.
Does Cogent still have an issue with depeering? Are there any
reasonable mitigation measures or should a downstream customer do any
thing in particular to ready themselves for a depeering event? Does
their low cost outweigh the risks? What are the specific risks?
Thanks
Justin
In Europe they have been good and stable most of the time. In the US
well, they are cogent and I have so many bad experiences with them here
I cannot in all honestly recommend them. But if your looking for cheap
bandwidth to complement another provider its not an unreasonable thing
to do as they price point is competitive.
Manolo
We've been using Cogent for 4 months now and I have no major
complaints.
Hello,
* Stephen Kratzer
We've only recently started using Cogent transit, but it's been
stable since its introduction 6 months ago. Turn-up was a bit rocky
since we never received engineering details, and engineering was
atypical in that two eBGP sessions were established, one just to
advertise loopbacks, and another for the actual feed. The biggest
issue we have with them is that they don't allow deaggregation. If
you've been allocated a prefix of length yy, they'll accept only
x.x.x.x/yy, not x.x.x.x/yy le 24. Yes, sometimes deaggregation is
necessary or desirable even if only temporarily.
Interesting. I requested exactly that when filling in their BGP
questionnaire, and they set it up - no questions asked.
Also, we have a perfectly normal single BGP session. The loopback
address of the router we're connected to is found within the 38.0.0.0/8
prefix, which they announce to us over that session like any other route.
And, they have no plans to support IPv6.
I have been promised, in writing, that they will provide us with native
IPv6 transit before the end of the year.
I'm based in Europe, though. Perhaps they're more flexible and
customer-friendly here than in the US?
Best regards,
In our peering session with Cogent, we requested several /16 le /24 prefixes configured and received no pushback or problems. We are using their 1Gbps service so I'm not sure if that buys us additional leeway with requests like this or not. We've been customers for nearly two full years and intend to continue for at least a third.
-brad fleming
Perhaps you missed my quote:
"Cogent's official stance on IPv6 is that we will deploy IPv6 when it
becomes a commercial necessity. We have tested IPv6 and we have our plan
for rolling it out, but there are no commercial drivers to spend money
to upgrade a network to IPv6 for no real return on investment."
This came rom a contact at Cogent (not sure of the role, probably sales rep).
Far different response then whoever quoted..."And, they have no plans to
support IPv6."
Perhaps you missed my amendment:
Should have said "And, they have no plans to deploy IPv6 in the immediate
future."
