We have a network that is single homed with Level3 at this time in Dallas.
They already have BGP and their own ASN and IP setup. Who would you
recommend for a second provider in Dallas to blend with Level3? Assuming
Level3 and this other provider would be the only two in the blend for a
long time to come? Client was talking to TWT, but now that they are being
bought by Level3 that doesn't make much sense.
With how many people cogent connects with, it is almost never a bad
idea to have them in your mix.
We approach this in the following empirical manner.
1) Who is available to you easily and within the budget.
2) Where is the other side of the network connectivity consumers ?
i.e. do you need good connectivity to Cable Network ? ATT Broadband ? Europe ? Mexico ? Latin America ?
3) What is the bulk of the traffic type ? Consumer (Video / You Tube ? Netflix ? ) Business ? etc
based on the answers to above, I would look at the bgp.he.net to see each options upstream connectivity, and check with peeringdb to see what could be their peering relationships.... finding one that does not have a directly Level3 relationship would be preferred.
Also, don't forget to do traffic engineering to nullify the Level3 traffic engineering, (They prefer to keep traffic on-net even if there are better paths available out of their network).
Faisal Imtiaz
Snappy Internet & Telecom
7266 SW 48 Street
Miami, FL 33155
Tel: 305 663 5518 x 232
Help-desk: (305)663-5518 Option 2 or Email: Support@Snappytelecom.net
I don't know how accurate it is, but here's a site that more plainly spells out upstream\peer\customer:
Hi,
You can check with CenturyLink
Regards
Another good choice would be Cogent, AS174. We use Cogent along with Level 3. I'd say 2/3 of our traffic is on Level 3 and 1/3 on Cogent. It's been a great blend for us. Justin Wilson recently made some great comments about Cogent on Feb 6, reference subject: Re: Input Regarding Cogent and NTT.
At this point, I would fully rely on Cogent for maintenance or outages on Level 3. A year and a half ago, they had some problems between providers such as Comcast. With Netflix getting direct connections, this is now resolved.