cogent vs layer3
 

these two gians of the internet have been in dispute over peering issues this has and maby will further affect us all whats peopels oppinion on this

Re: cognet vs layer3
 

Cognet or Cogent?

There are plenty of threads discussing Cogent issues

Re: cogent vs layer3
 

Ok this happened yesterday level3 had issued a month's notice to a few teir 2 isp's of depeering and cogent was the only one that came out with a problem. This occured seemingly because cogent didnt arrange alternative routing before the depeer occured.

Their are various points of view on why this happened, the view I am going with is that cogent has made an attempt to bully level3 into reestablishing the peering session as both isp's are cutoff from each other thus damaging level3 as well as cogent. Cogent was succesful in this tactic against france telecom and teleglobe but unsuccesful against AOL.

The reason for the depeering is I believe the traffic ratio's were unbalanced and cogent was slamming a lot of traffic down level3's line's whilst less was going the other way, this is understandable since cogent is selling very cheap transit mainlt to us unmetered dedicated server providers who wants lots of high volume cheap bandwidth, the price cogent selling at roughly 1/5th of the normal rate, so effectively level3 was subsidising their competitor. Also note XO who was also depeered didnt have any issue since it is assumed they paid to keep their transit going.

After some clever press releases by cogent the peering is now back on, but if this is temporary or permanent I don't know yet, but if the peering isnt permanent and cogent end up paying for the transit then the cogent transit's will most likely rise damaging many budget provider's this was probably the aim of level3. It would also probably trigger more tier1's to depeer cogent. But as of right now it is looking like cogent has bluffed level3 and level3 have come out of this with a damaged reputation.

My stand on this is level3 gave sufficient notice to cogent, they was in their legal right to depeer cogent and wanted to balance out market prices by making cogent pay for their level3 transit, but cogent now has such volume of customers they are looking like they might win this battle.

Re: cogent vs layer3
 

more information here:

http://news.com.com/Net+backbone+out...1274&subj=news

Re: cogent vs layer3
 

as I expected temporary, level3 have the size to fight of cogent and I hope they succeed as cogent are dropping the market to unsustainable level's.

Re: cogent vs layer3
 

Cogent are cheap and nasty... any host using them should be shot.. poor performance and users crammed on.. its a logistical nightmare

Re: cogent vs layer3
 

The ironic thing is many us providers love them, it allows them to sell dirt cheap unmetered server's.

Re: cogent vs layer3
 

My host appears to use a transit provider called "SCnet" anyone know who they are?

Re: cogent vs layer3
 

never heard of scnet.

Re: cogent vs layer3
 

Tracing route to zeph.co.uk [205.234.235.179]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 9 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.2.1
2 8 ms 15 ms 12 ms 10.115.64.1
3 25 ms 8 ms 7 ms pool-t2cam1-a-ge93.inet.ntl.com [80.5.168.5]
4 26 ms 8 ms 9 ms sot3-t2core-a-pos71.inet.ntl.com [80.4.225.9]
5 11 ms 10 ms 16 ms win-bb-a-so-020-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.49]
6 22 ms 14 ms 18 ms win-bb-b-ae0-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.172.162]
7 13 ms 15 ms 14 ms pop-bb-a-so-000-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.201]

8 67 ms 54 ms 34 ms pop-bb-b-ae0-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.172.77]
9 22 ms 27 ms 18 ms amst-ic-1-so-100-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.254]

10 25 ms 28 ms 23 ms j1.ams.scnet.net [195.69.145.42]
11 121 ms 120 ms 128 ms unknown.ord.scnet.net [205.234.205.241]
12 122 ms 120 ms 119 ms tagged.b2.ord.scnet.net [64.202.111.114]
13 120 ms 119 ms 125 ms vps1.servershost.net [66.225.213.226]
14 141 ms 121 ms 122 ms unknown.ord.hostforweb.net [205.234.235.179]

Re: cogent vs layer3
 

neither www.servershost.net or www.scnet.net work so hard to get info on that transit.

http://www.hostforweb.net/ claims the transit is verizon.

Re: cogent vs layer3
 

So how exactly are Cogent still in business if they are charging unsustainable prices?

That or a company is actually making use of the fact the vast majority of the fibre in the ground is unlit, and is charging appropriate prices rather than trying to make transit a cash cow.

Cogent is the bargain basement, performance has been fine 99.9% of the time that I've seen (sadly I don't have the perspective of having a hosting box, merely working for an ISP that uses them for multi-gigabits of transit).

If Cogent are able to make money supplying as they do the fault tends to appear to lie with the companies that are still operating as telcos rather than ISPs, overweight.

I've no sympathy for Level 3 and really don't care about the transit market. Level 3's financial issues are their problem and if they and others can't compete that's also their problem.

Cheaper transit means cheaper internet for all, the resiliency of IP networks makes maintaining 100% quality 24x7 less of an issue, and I've not seen congestion on Cogent's network, only on interconnects which can't be described as Cogent's fault as it takes 2 to interconnect!

Re: cogent vs layer3
 

they can do it various means.

volume is one since they are growing fast but there are more dodgy things going on like limiting per thread transfer speed's, I often see slow xfer rates and strange routing going on with cogent. The stunt they pulled with level3 ignition is where they sent too much traffic down their lines violating the peering agreement another thing that lowers their cost. Cogent from usa to europe is pretty close to abysmal at times since their transatlantic links are saturated, ntl to usa over cogent goes uk -> germany -> france -> usa as one example of bad routing. I dont know about cogent's financial situation but I think they have some big companies backing them which could suggest their pricing is somewhat of a loss leader tactic aimed at purely gaining market share.

Re: cogent vs layer3
 

I generally find them pretty good, apart from the NTL peering problem a few weeks back, since then they have been rock solid, I can pull my full 3 meg from them in one thread from my own servers and others quite easily again.

I can't say I've seen my routing go via mainland europe, but even if it does its still fast here currently...now I've said it !

They are cheap, and to a certain degree you get what you pay for, but by and large they seem ok.

Re: cogent vs layer3
 

Their transatlantic links are not saturated.

Can I politely suggest that you check at which point your traffic leaves the ntl network and goes over to Cogent - I would bet that your last hop is fkft-ic-1.inet.ntl.com aka ntl's peering router in Frankfurt.

How exactly is it Cogent's fault how ntl choose to import the routes that Cogent give them.

If you remember you were very vocal in complaining about the link in London between Cogent and ntl being saturated. The relief link is the permanent solution I referred to that may take time, which is in Germany. This is not Cogent's issue, perhaps this was the only place where a link could be placed quickly.

If Cogent's links were connected everyone including my employer that uses Cogent would see huge latency spikes inside Cogent's network. We don't.