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How bad is Cogent?
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How bad is Cogent?

The company I'm working for is moving to another data center and previously we had Internap and GTT in our upstream. We kept GTT, added Telia, and also Cogent in the new data center. From what I remember, Cogent was a horrible, cheap IP transit.

Our customers are mostly in the territorial US (80% or more). I was wondering if having Cogent in the upstream is a bad idea? Does anybody know if there are any residential ISPs in the US using cogent in their upstream?

We don't do IPv6 so I'm not worried about IPv6 reachability of Cogent, just the horrible name they made for themselves in the past 2 decades.

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Comments

  • lentrolentro Member, Host Rep

    Not too bad. From what I’ve heard, they’ve improved.

    Thanked by 1muratai
  • @lentro said:
    Not too bad. From what I’ve heard, they’ve improved.

    That's good to hear. I wonder if they play nice with Comcast and other big home ISPs in the US?

  • Single homed Cogent is a bad idea. If you have many upstreams, I think having Cogent in your mix is fine. My ISP used to be single homed to Cogent (I'm from Canada, so it might be different in the states) and from my experience it was terrible. I think only cheap ISPs use primarily Cogent transit, and it's more likely that cheap ISPs oversell bandwidth which I suppose compounds the problem.

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    @ehhthing said: it's more likely that cheap ISPs oversell bandwidth which I suppose compounds the problem.

    That is the problem.
    Cogent is much better than what I have HEARD before. We had Cogent only in Bucharest (besides the local mix) and they were much more reliable than the local peering.
    I haven't had the opportunity to test Cogent when they were supposed to be way worse (10 years ago), but since we have had many problems with L3 and none with Cogent, I love them.

    Note: This is EU, in NA YMMV.

  • @muratai said: I wonder if they play nice with Comcast and other big home ISPs in the US?

    I haven't had any issues with Cogent services from Comcast. Cogent peer directly with Comcast. If I traceroute my home IPv4 (in California) from Cogent's looking glass in New York, the route it takes is Comcast most of the way - It goes from Cogent New York to Comcast New York, then the entire rest of the route New York → Illinois → Colorado → California is all on Comcast's network.

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran
    edited June 2021

    @Daniel15 said: It goes from Cogent New York to Comcast New York, then the entire rest of the route New York → Illinois → Colorado → California is all on Comcast's network.

    That is not really helpful, the problems usually appear when a certain destination is in a network which has only Cogent as peering and they are cheap-ass overselling it like crazy. At peak time packet loss goes up to 40%. I have seen some cases (not recently) when our customers complain and I do traceroute back to them.
    Fortunately, the price for wholesale transit dropped a lot now and single-homed networks are few and far between and they buy more bw even then.

  • ApeWebApeWeb Member, Host Rep

    Cogent aren't as bad as they used to be and as long as you are just doing Europe + North American routes it is fine. However I recon hurricane electric slightly better for the same price.

  • jhjh Member

    They are considered a top tier carrier these days. Still better to have others in the mix.

  • aquaaqua Member, Patron Provider

    Are they the best? Hell no. They're just a cheaper alternative to the bigger, more expensive transit providers. They're also only really good for their $75/m /24 IPv4 Subnets to Transit Customers.

  • rubenruben Member, Host Rep

    We have Cogent in two locations in Europe as part of our mix (LGI, GTT, RETN, and Tier-2s).
    While they are pretty cheap, they are not that bad - out of my head I don't remember having any major issue with them on transit so far.
    Support is quite fast to reply, sometimes a bit laboriously if your request is more complex but been happy with it so far.

    I would certainly not recommend going single-homed behind them (would not recommend that with any carrier), also because Cogent does not have Google and HE routes on v6.

    Thanked by 1skorous
  • tomazutomazu Member, Host Rep

    In Italy and Germany Cogent is decent as long as you do not need optimal routing towards the incumbent :-) Do not go single-homed with them, as:

    • now and there some latency and routing issues show up simply because some link is at the limit (happens quite often with DTAG) and Cogent load-balances as good as it can;
    • you do not get a fully working IPv6 via Cogent BGP.

    Generally Cogent has very good support in my experience, especially compared to some other "high-end" carriers like L3. When I open a support ticket with Cogent they are very responsive.

    From a price perspective Cogent is extremely competitive, only HE matches their pricing in the locations we are active.

    Thanked by 1yoursunny
  • jbilohjbiloh Administrator, Veteran

    Single homed to any carrier is a bad idea.

    In my experience Cogent has actually been pretty good the last few years. They've invested very heavily in their network the past half decade and are a long way from what they were in say 2012.

    Thanked by 1yoursunny
  • mike1smike1s Member
    edited June 2021

    I use them as my main upstream, and they've been great other than IPv6, but I've got a workaround I'm implementing.

  • ShakibShakib Member, Patron Provider

    Didn't had any issue yet.

  • randvegetarandvegeta Member, Host Rep

    Dont have direct experience with Cogent, but I know they often compete with HE.net.

    Assuming Cogent/He.net are equivalent, I'd say it's simultaneously excellent and shit. Why? Because they by no measure have the best performing network. Even Cogent <-> Cogent (or in my case HE.net <-> HE.net) can be sub par. But what they lack in quality, they make up for in price and sheer volume.

    For us, HE.net is so cheap, it's just a place we can dump all our traffic if we happen to have a problem with our other routes. When you're 1/10 the price, you can over subscribe big time, and this really makes life easier from a network management perspective.

    Thanked by 1coreflux
  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    @randvegeta said: When you're 1/10 the price, you can over subscribe big time

    And as I have said, that is where the perception problem comes from. Cheap-ass providers buy already cheap transit and oversell the hell out of it. Then they have congestion issues and people accessing them from outside say, bah, it is over Cogent, of course it sucks, when the problem is actually at the other end.

    Thanked by 2randvegeta coreflux
  • randvegetarandvegeta Member, Host Rep

    @Maounique said:

    @randvegeta said: When you're 1/10 the price, you can over subscribe big time

    And as I have said, that is where the perception problem comes from. Cheap-ass providers buy already cheap transit and oversell the hell out of it. Then they have congestion issues and people accessing them from outside say, bah, it is over Cogent, of course it sucks, when the problem is actually at the other end.

    When i say over subscribe, it means buying more than you need. If some are selling more than they have, then yes, thats a problem.

  • jackbjackb Member, Host Rep
    edited June 2021

    @randvegeta said:

    @Maounique said:

    @randvegeta said: When you're 1/10 the price, you can over subscribe big time

    And as I have said, that is where the perception problem comes from. Cheap-ass providers buy already cheap transit and oversell the hell out of it. Then they have congestion issues and people accessing them from outside say, bah, it is over Cogent, of course it sucks, when the problem is actually at the other end.

    When i say over subscribe, it means buying more than you need. If some are selling more than they have, then yes, thats a problem.

    Most people will read oversubscribe as buying 10G cogent and selling 200 1G ports or something along those lines.

  • randvegetarandvegeta Member, Host Rep

    @jackb said:

    @randvegeta said:

    @Maounique said:

    @randvegeta said: When you're 1/10 the price, you can over subscribe big time

    And as I have said, that is where the perception problem comes from. Cheap-ass providers buy already cheap transit and oversell the hell out of it. Then they have congestion issues and people accessing them from outside say, bah, it is over Cogent, of course it sucks, when the problem is actually at the other end.

    When i say over subscribe, it means buying more than you need. If some are selling more than they have, then yes, thats a problem.

    Most people will read oversubscribe as buying 10G cogent and selling 200 1G ports or something along those lines.

    That to me is 'over sell'. It's the opposite of over subscribe. Kindof.

    In our case, we actually never oversell our aggregate capacity. We oversell individual routes and use HE.net to pickup the slack until we can arrange more BW on the desirable routes.

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran
    edited June 2021

    So you use them as a buffer.
    Something similar we did in Milano, uncle bought a ton because was cheap, traffic polled to all our locations for free and used for all kinds of tests, including DDoS mitigation, but then L3 failed more than Cogent, mostly flapping issues, also in Romania the local mix failed more so we got to appreciate Cogent a lot more.

  • DataIdeas-JoshDataIdeas-Josh Member, Patron Provider

    @muratai My home ISP use to have Cogent and HE and was pretty good. Never had issues. Now they moved off Cogent and to HE and Zayo. Since then all access to Google services has grinded to a halt as I am guessing they have a small port with Zayo.
    On the DC side I have Cogent, Crown Castle, and Lumen. Been pretty happy with Cogent besides the IPv6 issues with Google Ports but besides that all good.

    BTY if you need Cogent let me know as I can get you a pretty good deal with them.

  • They're OK for the bulk. You want at least one quality upstream alongside, usually Telia is a good pick for that. Pricing-wise, for me they beat HE recently on a Tbit commit.

  • its mid its not great but its not terrible it should never be single homed tho

  • qpsqps Member, Host Rep
    edited June 2021

    If you are directly connected to the primary POP for the city where you're located, Cogent is decent. Many of the smaller POPs are horribly overloaded, fed by a single or non-redundant path, use old/slow/dying gear, etc. If you're connected to a small POP, it is very common to see regular packet loss when another customer gets pegged, someone uses way more than their commit, fiber cut, router/switch can't handle the traffic load, etc. This isn't necessarily unique to Cogent, but it happens regularly with Cogent. We are experiencing some of these problems with two of the POPs we're connected to, and Cogent mostly shrugs and doesn't offer to fix problems unless they get really bad or some other more important customers scream loud enough.

    If you connect to their main POP for the city you're in (or at least a major POP), the network generally performs OK, but they definitely use QoS and other similar fuckery, especially for certain routes.

    One big positive: Cogent's NOC is the best in the business. They respond quickly, you can call in and get someone on the phone who can actually fix problems, and they are reasonably helpful. Service levels from their NOC are also very consistent. Whoever runs the NOC for Cogent knows how to do this well, and I wish other carriers would take note!

    Thanked by 1coreflux
  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    Keep Cogent, tell GTT to suck it. Be ready to reverse in a decade. Nothing stays the same.

    Thanked by 2mike1s coreflux
  • mike1smike1s Member

    @SirFoxy said:
    its mid its not great but its not terrible it should never be single homed tho

    So I'm doing this wrong? :)

  • @SWN_Michael said:

    @SirFoxy said:
    its mid its not great but its not terrible it should never be single homed tho

    So I'm doing this wrong? :)

    i wouldnt say wrong but i also think redundancy in anything is a good thing

  • mike1smike1s Member

    @SirFoxy said:

    @SWN_Michael said:

    @SirFoxy said:
    its mid its not great but its not terrible it should never be single homed tho

    So I'm doing this wrong? :)

    i wouldnt say wrong but i also think redundancy in anything is a good thing

    I'm wanting to bring on a 2nd carrier, just not really at the top of my priority list right now as Cogent's been very solid so far. I want to get a few more nodes online, along with a 2nd location.

    Thanked by 1SirFoxy
  • @SWN_Michael said:

    @SirFoxy said:

    @SWN_Michael said:

    @SirFoxy said:
    its mid its not great but its not terrible it should never be single homed tho

    So I'm doing this wrong? :)

    i wouldnt say wrong but i also think redundancy in anything is a good thing

    I'm wanting to bring on a 2nd carrier, just not really at the top of my priority list right now as Cogent's been very solid so far. I want to get a few more nodes online, along with a 2nd location.

    Which location are you considering??

  • 1gservers1gservers Member, Patron Provider

    Cogent is far superior to where they were 10+ years ago. While I wouldn't single home to them, due to Google & HE.net IPv6 peering issues, they are certainly valuable to have in a BGP blend. Like any carrier, you'll find a few under performing routes, however we have a BGP optimization appliance that performance routes our network. Therefore, we really don't notice any issues with them, since any issues are automatically routed around by our appliance. There's certainly no reason I can think of not to have them in a BGP blend. It's also very nice that when you pick up the phone and call them, the tech who answers is knowledgeable and able to login to their router and make changes, resolve issues, etc. Can't say that about most carriers these days.

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