In disclosure, I work for a Cogent competitor, but for that reason, I've studied the model closely.
Cogent uses (or, more precisely, plans to use) deep wave division multiplexing which does indeed lend credibility to their claims of 100 Mbps on the MAN. However, their claims of "non oversubcribed bandwidth" are patently silly. Even on a 2 gbps peering point they could only serve 20 customers and the number of gigabit peers (or Internet backbones) is still pretty small. Also, the wholesale price of bandwidth for non tier-1 ISPs (they aren't a tier 1) is between $200 and $500 per meg depending on volume. They are not sending you $20,000 - $50,000 in bandwidth for $1000 a month. Sorry. World doesn't work like that.
Also, they are an in-buidling provider of the same type as Allied Riser (ticker: ARCC) and Cypress Communications (ticker: CYCO). Both of those companies have had 10 mbps Ethernet (10bFX, 10bT, or 10b2 believe it or not -- and you thought coax was dead...) offerings for over a year now and, if you look at the charts, can't make ends meet even with oversubscription. Cogent's proposal is even more silly.
The Cogent plan is great if your offices are all on the same MAN and most of your traffic is bound for those offices. Otherwise, you can send 100 megabits out to some peering point where it will be dropped in the congestion.
Also, I invite anyone to call Cogent and ask for a customer list. The last write up I saw of them or Yipes! had one guy with a T1 saying he'd like to buy a line from them when the service is available. It isn't.
Sorry. Didn't mean to rant, but people with claims like this discredit providers with real services (and business plans) and do a lot to confuse the public.
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Cogent uses (or, more precisely, plans to use) deep wave division multiplexing which does indeed lend credibility to their claims of 100 Mbps on the MAN. However, their claims of "non oversubcribed bandwidth" are patently silly. Even on a 2 gbps peering point they could only serve 20 customers and the number of gigabit peers (or Internet backbones) is still pretty small. Also, the wholesale price of bandwidth for non tier-1 ISPs (they aren't a tier 1) is between $200 and $500 per meg depending on volume. They are not sending you $20,000 - $50,000 in bandwidth for $1000 a month. Sorry. World doesn't work like that.
Also, they are an in-buidling provider of the same type as Allied Riser (ticker: ARCC) and Cypress Communications (ticker: CYCO). Both of those companies have had 10 mbps Ethernet (10bFX, 10bT, or 10b2 believe it or not -- and you thought coax was dead...) offerings for over a year now and, if you look at the charts, can't make ends meet even with oversubscription. Cogent's proposal is even more silly.
The Cogent plan is great if your offices are all on the same MAN and most of your traffic is bound for those offices. Otherwise, you can send 100 megabits out to some peering point where it will be dropped in the congestion.
Also, I invite anyone to call Cogent and ask for a customer list. The last write up I saw of them or Yipes! had one guy with a T1 saying he'd like to buy a line from them when the service is available. It isn't.
Sorry. Didn't mean to rant, but people with claims like this discredit providers with real services (and business plans) and do a lot to confuse the public.