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Single-home Cogent AS174 - Page 2
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Single-home Cogent AS174

2

Comments

  • I haven't experienced so much as a hiccup with Cogent Toronto (Luna Node) for 110 days now. Can't say the same for the various crummy blends I've been exposed to in the past.

    Cogent is one of those companies people love to hate, in a sad attempt to sound like a grizzled industry vet. In reality, Cogent of 2017 is outstanding.

  • hostdarehostdare Member, Patron Provider

    Conclusion is : Cogent is not the issue , but single homed surely is !!

  • ClouviderClouvider Member, Patron Provider

    @AdrianF said:
    I haven't experienced so much as a hiccup with Cogent Toronto (Luna Node) for 110 days now. Can't say the same for the various crummy blends I've been exposed to in the past.

    Cogent is one of those companies people love to hate, in a sad attempt to sound like a grizzled industry vet. In reality, Cogent of 2017 is outstanding.

    Not as a single homed network, which I think the argument is about.

    No network should be single homed to a tier 1 carrier, especially Cogent that has multiple ongoing peering disputes at present.

    Thanked by 2hostdare ucxo
  • WilliamWilliam Member
    edited April 2017

    vmhaus said: Wow, this thread have turned into a Cogent provider bashing thread :)

    ITT: You have zero idea what you talk about.

    Cogent in MIX is fine, SINGLEHOMED Cogent - just like singlehomed HE - is absolutely horrible choice.

    It is also absolutely idiotic as any Cogent location except their own DCs also has HE in place.

    Then, if you use Cogent DCs you lock yourself into possibly massive problems if they cancel your CCs to other ISPs or just don't offer them at all.

    Cogent and HE is fine as mix, and works very well for eg. anything in Kansas City.

    Thanked by 1hostdare
  • TheLinuxBugTheLinuxBug Member
    edited April 2017

    Francisco said: Cogent has peering and capacity agreements with Comcast, AT&T, Charter, Verizon, and some other major eye balls. I have Comcast users that rip 10MB~15MB/sec from coast to coast without issue.

    Yeah but there is some HUGE caveats to this, being a Residential Comcast subscriber I am very aware that during off peak hours they tend to overload their Cogent peering to a point where speeds are pretty much crap and basically purposely prevent usage of other tier 1 providers unless the target doesn't supply Cogent peering at all. As such at night the only way to accomplish decent speeds on Comcast is to make sure the network you are downloading from provides no Cogent or you end up downloading at about 1-2M/sec per thread and that's about it (if you get that, I have often been limited to less than 500kb/sec a thread).

    During the daytime though they tend to provide more open routes so Cogent isn't so overloaded, during those times speeds can be pretty decent.

    TL;DR:
    Sure Cogent via Comcast is good during peak hours, but trying to utilize it off peak on Comcast hoping to get high transfer speeds is not realistic.

    my 2 cents.

    Cheers!

  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran
    edited April 2017

    Sure Cogent via Comcast is good during peak hours, but trying to utilize it off peak on Comcast hoping to get high transfer speeds is not realistic.

    Good to know. I can only work off what reports I get back from users and we did our best to reach out to lots of different people and ask them to do test runs.

    Even still, at no point did we say NY was going to stay single homed. This year we've had:

    • Slice deployment in NY & LU (done)
    • Hardware move from Choopa (done)
    • Router/Switch issues in LV forcing us to replace that all (pending final buy & deployment)
    • Shared03 driving itself into a brick wall and requiring a complete backup restore (done)

    Its been a hell of a year and been a lot more taxing on us than originally thought. 3 of those 4 things have been on me to do entirely with only the Choopa move having a helper.

    It's in the works and I'm sure everyone will be happy with what comes in place. For now, it's a lot more stable than we had at Choopa, even if IPv6 is higher latency.

    Just give me a bit of time to finish that up.

    Francisco

    Thanked by 1ThracianDog
  • Francisco said: Even still, at no point did we say NY was going to stay single homed

    Are you not in a Cogent DC? Your crossconnects might very well end up being cancelled in some years. Never said you stay singlehomed either, but that point is important as well.

  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    William said: Are you not in a Cogent DC? Your crossconnects might very well end up being cancelled in some years. Never said you stay singlehomed either, but that point is important as well.

    They've been in the space for a long time and have been selling the CX's the entire time. I don't see why they would be willing to endanger a decent sized contract just to stick it to that vendor. Infact, they went out of their way to find a list of all providers in the building and contacts that they work with.

    I'm not the only customer in the area with a CX to another provider and i'm sure if they suddenly said "nope", they would bleed it quick.

    Again, we said it would be addressed and it will be. Right now I have far more pressing matters that I need to finalize. I expect the Juniper to be in by around this time next month which will free up time to work this out.

    Francisco

    Thanked by 2AuroraZ gisadik
  • WilliamWilliam Member
    edited April 2017

    Francisco said: They've been in the space for a long time and have been selling the CX's the entire time

    Sure. And Telecom Italia was once not bankrupt while DTAG was a single country operation. Things change.

    All i say is you should have/want absolutely solid contracts, for 5 year or more terms. Never trust your datacenter, and especially not if they are also a carrier. The Cogent EU contracts have a bunch of loopholes for them, so i don't doubt the US do also.

    Thanked by 2hostdare vimalware
  • Oh the horrors of single homed connectivity on dirt cheap VPS from a provider who does a pretty damn good job otherwise.

    Should this continue, I fully expect the entire Internet to eventually implode on itself. I just saw a network engineer's head literally explode when he heard of this travesty. It's beginning.

  • Microlinux said: Oh the horrors of single homed connectivity on dirt cheap VPS from a provider who does a pretty damn good job otherwise.

    And another one that did not get the point. To slowly dissolve on your tongue: proven issues to US networks - no full IPv6 table - Tunnelbroker with no SLA for v6.... you get it now?

    Thanked by 1Rhys
  • RhysRhys Member, Host Rep

    @William said:

    Microlinux said: Oh the horrors of single homed connectivity on dirt cheap VPS from a provider who does a pretty damn good job otherwise.

    And another one that did not get the point. To slowly dissolve on your tongue: proven issues to US networks - no full IPv6 table - Tunnelbroker with no SLA for v6.... you get it now?

    Does that come with an 8GB VPS for $7/m?

  • @William said:
    Might be.

    But just let me name it again because it's so much fun: BuyVM NY is singlehomed Cogent. With a HE tunnel for IPv6. As "premium" provider. Shameful and...

    Edit: found another tunnel

    frantech-3-pt.tunnel.tserv16.mia1.ipv6.he.net

  • WilliamWilliam Member
    edited April 2017

    Rhys said: Does that come with an 8GB VPS for $7/m?

    Do i care about that? A Mbit HE costs EXACTLY the same as an Mbit cogent. It is trivial to get both and by usage it will even out pretty much 50:50, just like for anyone in Kansas City.

  • hostdarehostdare Member, Patron Provider
    edited April 2017

    I can imagine the shit-storm it would have been , if colocrossing is doing single homed say in buffalo . They are better !

    Thanked by 1vimalware
  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran
    edited April 2017

    @hostdare said:
    I can imagine the shit-storm it would have been , if colocrossing is doing single homed say in buffalo . They are better !

    Well, buckle up.

    • Colocrossing's Buffalo location was singlehomed Level 3 for 6 or so month and to this day has yet to get IPV6 online.
    • Colocrossing's San Jose location was pure GTT for years and is likely pure Zayo now.
    • Colocrossing's Seattle location is located in a zColo location with only Zayo available.
    • Many providers inside of either of the Hurricane Electric datacenters are purely single home. Linode called these locations home base for countless years and only recently started to mix their own blend.
    • Vultr has multiple locations where they seem to have a single pipe with GTT or things of that nature.

    It's fun to try to start shit with us, but help me explain the others? This isn't counting pretty much every provider on this forum which rents/colocates in a facility without their own dedicated paths. Sure, the facility they're in might have multiple providers but I can speak from experience that it means little.

    Listen, if you're an active customer you're more than welcome to ticket in and I'll personally explain what our plans are and when we plan to have them completed. Continuing with Choopa was not an option for us anymore so we looked for viable options. I've always tried my best to be as transparent as I can about this stuff.

    We'll work towards getting on some IX's where doable and add more providers. This is a big project for us since we've been relying on datacenter run networks since the very beginning.

    Francisco

  • @William said:

    Microlinux said: Oh the horrors of single homed connectivity on dirt cheap VPS from a provider who does a pretty damn good job otherwise.

    And another one that did not get the point. To slowly dissolve on your tongue: proven issues to US networks - no full IPv6 table - Tunnelbroker with no SLA for v6.... you get it now?

    I get that Cogent has issues. None of them affect me. No problem for lots of other people, either.

    It is a problem for some. In that case I would recommend they choose a different provider and move on.

    It's a good service with good support. It's low end. It seems like its being worked on, I don't really care either way. They satisfy my real world requirements. Network is not everything to everyone, every time.

  • randvegetarandvegeta Member, Host Rep

    @William,

    What is your opinion of HE.net and Cogent in HK? Baring in mind the cost differential with proper providers in the area.

  • Colocrossing's San Jose location was pure GTT for years and is likely pure Zayo now.

    Appears to be NTT/GTT now, Zayo doesn't appear to be in their mix.

    Vultr has multiple locations where they seem to have a single pipe with GTT or things of that nature.

    The only singlehomed locations they have (last I checked) are Tokyo (NTT) and Sydney (Equinix).

    The above said, Vultr's Tokyo DC has been one of the better performing ones I have used. A small VPS I've got in HE's Fremont 2 DC has been performing well for over two years now. Sure, being singlehomed isn't great from a reliability (or, in some cases, performance) perspective, but I still get better performance to BuyVM in NY than I ever did in NJ coming from AT&T during peak hours. I'd almost always work with the host who is reliable with the entirety of what they are working with over the one that has a very diverse network blend.

  • ClouviderClouvider Member, Patron Provider
    edited April 2017

    I suppose it's worth highlighting here that using DCs blend is not necessarily a bad decision - especially if it's a good blend. Being connected to a good DC blend is much better than being single homed to a Tier 1, especially to Cogent or HE.

    Thanked by 2vimalware tux
  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    @Clouvider said:
    I suppose it's worth highlighting here that using DCs blend is not necessarily a bad decision - especially if it's a good blend. Being connected to a good DC blend is much better than being single homed to a Tier 1, especially to Cogent or HE.

    True in theory. In our own tests that hasen't been the case. We've had:

    • Lots of failures in Luxembourg because of their old Cisco's and some funny port channel setup.
    • Heavily congested connectivity at EGI.
    • Choopa's terrible setup in NJ.

    When we were looking for a new place post Buffalo we went to Choopa because everyone, even CC itself, called it the "gold standard". At the time maybe they were, but that wasn't the case for the 3 years we were there.

    Again, at no point in this discussion did we say we weren't bringing anything else in. We've already documented what was on the way and what our long term goals are.

    GoMutant said: I still get better performance to BuyVM in NY than I ever did in NJ

    Not an uncommon comment. I have more than a few users that couldn't break 100Mbit/sec day in, day out, rimming full 1Gbit/sec now without issue.

    Nothing has changed in our configuration, exact same routers and switches in place.

    Francisco

  • ClouviderClouvider Member, Patron Provider
    edited April 2017

    Francisco said: True in theory. In our own tests that hasen't been the case. We've had:

    Lots of failures in Luxembourg because of their old Cisco's and some funny port channel setup.

    Heavily congested connectivity at EGI.
    Choopa's terrible setup in NJ.
    When we were looking for a new place post Buffalo we went to Choopa because everyone, even CC itself, called it the "gold standard". At the time maybe they were, but that wasn't the case for the 3 years we were there.

    Again, at no point in this discussion did we say we weren't bringing anything else in. We've already documented what was on the way and what our long term goals are.

    I'm not pointing fingers at you whatsoever @Francisco.

    And I agree, obviously as with every carrier, the quality will vary, hence I said

    especially if it's a good blend

    That allows you to benefit from the scale of the operator who can have much more transits and peering that your traffic levels could justify (or could get you), at much lower price that your scale could get you, in a much more resilient setup than you would otherwise be able to afford at your scale.

    My problem with using a single Tier 1 is that one's effectively a hostage in their territorial wars, which at the end affect Customers. Tier 1 also won't route around their Customer by using peering with another Tier 1 because they can't (they don't have transits by definition) if there's a problem or congestion, something that a good local operator could help you with easily, simply by dynamically preferring a path of another upstream if one is better.

    Thanked by 1vimalware
  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    Clouvider said: That allows you to benefit from the scale of the operator

    Unless you're commiting a lot you're at mercy of how cheap the owner wants to be too. When we originally signed with Choopa the network was heavily NTT, some GTT, pretty sure some Level3 and other providers. By the end of it we were almost entirely Telia. Telia decided it was a good idea to sell capacity to every DDOS vendor out there and they got their faces caved in multiple times.

    We complained at which point they gave us a community to 'remove Telia from our routes', which worked...for about a week. After that they removed it since I'm assuming a lot of people were using it.

    Francisco

  • ClouviderClouvider Member, Patron Provider
    edited April 2017

    @Francisco how is that worse than being behind singlehomed Telia at that time you're mentioning ? If you'd have only Telia directly at that time 100% of your paths would be affected, rather than some or most when you were using DCs mix.

    You can't reasonably defend that being behind a good mix of someone else is worse than being directly with a single Tier 1.

    Thanked by 1vimalware
  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    Clouvider said: You can't reasonably defend that being behind a good mix of someone else is worse than being directly with a single Tier 1.

    I can when we had an average of an hour of downtime per month due to their routers crapping out, them blowing out their peers, routing, fiber, etc.

    The amount of human error related issues we had on their end was shocking. During the peak of the NTP wars they decided to change how they do route-map's, communities, etc, and completely broke BGP communities. We were in left in a position where we couldn't su our autonull for multiple days while they redid things again to address that.

    Another time they decided to block all private IP space on their routers/switches, forgetting that us and some of their other customers used private IP's for peering.

    There's a misunderstanding here. I'm not saying having a T1 only is better in every case, i'm just saying that for us it's better than putting up with Choopa's shit. There was no point looking for another vendor that has a mix of their own when we had already made the decision to start doing it ourselves.

    I hope that clears it a bit :)

    Francisco

    Thanked by 1vimalware
  • ClouviderClouvider Member, Patron Provider

    @Francisco as I said, I was not pointing fingers at you, more saying in general.

    Thanked by 1hostdare
  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    @Clouvider said:
    @Francisco as I said, I was not pointing fingers at you, more saying in general.

    I generally agree with what you've said, I see this more as a...special case :)

    Francisco

  • hostdarehostdare Member, Patron Provider
    edited April 2017

    This is what I saying it maybe better for you than choopa but in way nobody pointing finger at anybody . I said I know a couple of vps providers using single homed with out naming one single provider because I know it can cause pr issue . You can read my previous post in this thread . I am not your customer ,so I do not know your network performance. We are just giving generalized statements .

  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    hostdare said: Do not know why you point me specially

    I quoted why I pointed back :P

    Anyway, it's almost 2AM and I've gone over the same points a few times so I don't have much else to add to the conversation.

    Francisco

  • hostdarehostdare Member, Patron Provider
    edited April 2017

    Wow due to cc ? Cc had single homed in buffalo before but I think this is fixed now . There were enough thread about them for that . Buffalo is now okaish with my test from multiple locations .

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