I have noticed that prices for cogent BW is very cheap compare to multihomed BW. Does cogent has redundant connectivity?. Do they use cheap hardware?. Do they only have one connection?. Can you please share your experience.
Cogent runs a national network, and has redundant connections in the major metro areas, as well as redundant cross-country connections. They do not use cheap hardware. I have clients that are using several gig of Cogent and are happy with it. There have been a lot of discussions about their peering, however, it seems that the packets always get through.
It is safe to say that Cogent has a very different philosphy on bandwidth pricing.
For example- the retail offering of 100mb for $1k. Target market to them a few years back was small businesses. Lets say the business used 2 mb. That's $500/mb. Not so cheap now. Some obviously used a lot more than others, but the idea was they wanted more small potatoes, so the network could grow at a controlled rate (didn't quite happen that way though!). In retrospect, it was an interesting plan, just wasn't executed as flawlessly as they wanted.
Today, they have a very large network. Scale was achieved via acquisitions for the most part (PSINet, Aleron, Verio T-1 business, LambdaNet (Euro) and Allied Riser (building risers and Canadian ISP)). Integration has been interesting as well. Peering for them has been a challenge, as they rotated many peering coordinators, didn't make a lot of friends (see Sprint and AOL), and were always fiscally conscious.
Are they solid. Sure. As a secondary provider. Yep. Unfortunately, they are still paying for a bad rep with some verticals that they can't seem to shake.
I have a number of clients, those who do use Cogent, love em, those who do not, REALLY don't. Very hit and miss. For the price, it seems to do just fine. It will depend on the application.
Cogent has only 2 prices, $50 oer meg under 100 megs, and $20 per meg at 100 commit and over. The bandwidth is honestly hit or miss, some love it, some have nothing but packet loss and latency issues.
Cogent has only 2 prices, $50 oer meg under 100 megs, and $20 per meg at 100 commit and over. The bandwidth is honestly hit or miss, some love it, some have nothing but packet loss and latency issues.
I have to disagree with the remark about prices. They do commit to less than 100Mbit.
The problem with Cogent seems to be, that (as stated) some say the have no problems at all, and others have nothing but. It seems to be a problem to get logical routes, but for now that is just hearsay. I'll look into their lg-es.