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Cogent vs HE.net?
Hi there! I was doing some tests, and found out that (at least according to the looking glass) when I connect with IPv4, I'm routed via Cogent while with IPv6, I'm routed via HE.net (Vultr Tokyo -> mrVM Las Vegas). This seems to be same for other Vultr locations as well. So when communicating, which carrier will be faster/stable (asia (HK/JP) to mrVM as well as los angeles/seattle to mrVM)?
Thanks!
Edit : I'm going to put CF in front of it so it's more of a cf <-> cogent vs cf <-> HE
Thanked by 1uptime
Comments
HE has positioned themselves as a central player in the IPv6 arena, unlike IPv4. Many IPv6 connections transit HE's network that would bypass it if sent via IPv4, in large part due to HE peering with every carrier they can via IPv6, while most carriers have barely any IPv6 peering.
So you mean that with IPv6, all traffic will route through HE, while with v4 network will route through less-congested line?
HE.net has a low-latency route from Singapore to France (Marseille), and then further to Europe, and Cogent isn't known to, or doesn't use it as much for public traffic. So if you try to stay with HE (I guess you can control this by mainly using IPv6), you can find that your latency from Asia to Europe is lower.
Not sure about the LA/LV/Seattle side. As for CF, I don't think it will matter, they will have good connectivity to both.
So CF to mrVM shouldn't have much difference? Thanks for the info
LA/LV doesn't matter, both will be quick. Seattle/LV is better over HE in my experience, but cogent should be fine as well on those short west coast runs.
If this is a NAT VPS then I'd suggest sticking with v6 to avoid potential problems with that shared v4 (ddos, broken port forwarding, etc).
The first thing that comes to mind when I see the terms "iPv6" "Cogent" and "HE" occuring together in a paragraph is some long-standing IPv6 peering disputes ... which I don't know too much about other than it may still be a thing.
HE is undoubtedly the leader in regards to IPv6. Apart from that they don't peer with HE - but Cogent does also not peer with Google (?).
If you intend to enable CF I recommend sticking with v6 and HE. Cloudflare and HE are both present at over 200 Internet Exchange Points and to my knowledge are also peered on there.
Try it out, make a mtr on different days and times and you will see how much loss you have..
Thanks! v6 does seem to be better given that v4 is shared, which may cause problems for softwares that are not intended to be run on NAT environments.
Cogent doesn't peer with HE on v6? That's a bummer
Will try this. Thanks
Not just that they don't peer, they both provide incomplete internet. Cogent can't reach HE and HE can't reach Cogent (over v6).
I wouldn't want to be single homed to either of these providers.
Anyway, latency is not everything and doesn't tell the whole story. Stuff like packet loss or congestion is something that you won't notice just by comparing latencies (unless it's extremely bad)
Holly shit! That really sucks
If I connect to a cogent single-homed server from a HE single-homed server, will it fall back to IPv4, or just return no route and fail?
I did some iperf to cloudflare.com and HE seems to have better bandwidth to CF (getting around 20-40Mbps through cogent while getting constant 50-60Mbps through HE)
If your destination has both an A and AAAA record it should fall back to IPv4.
HE and Cogent don't peer on IPv4 either but at least the route it over Telia.
Let me correct that for you: "I wouldn't want to be singled homed."
Man ... I'm glad to have even just a single home, even sharing rent with a couple people it's not cheap!
All these multi-home providers must be making bank.
Cogent sucks never saw so manny hops in my life of running.
The amount of hops doesn't really matter, some providers hide this using mpls.
Cogent vs HE.net?
Trash vs Garbage?
Try CenturyLink (Level 3), Opentransit (Orange), PCCW, Zayo or Telia.
These 5 know how to properly run a network. The rest is trash.
I would probably pick Cogent over Zayo for transit.
Each provider sucks - they only suck in different ways.
Zayo had a nice network when we used them, however the company as a whole sucked as FHR said they all suck at the end of the day in their own ways.
even if that when i see cogent in my traceroutes i always notice higher ms times.
what about retn guys? they start to be really nice in europe and asia .
Their network is extremely dependent on where you are located. It is much stronger in some cities than in others. This is much more obvious than most of the other options.
Personally I'd pick HE over Cogent. I've had better experiences with HE.
For a NAT VPS, definitely use just the IPv6 if possible. That'll work fine with Cloudflare. I've got some NAT VPSes and never use the NAT IPv4. All the internet providers I use have native IPv6 (both at work and at home) and I can just use Cloudflare if I need to host a site that has to be accessible over IPv4.