It sounds like the intended use is on the ocean (container ship, cruise ship, etc). Cellular service is out of the question than. If it's land based, some sort of EVDO service would work great for them.
Better to use Iridium's data service, where you could use data packets to send commands, versus their phone service, where you have to wait for coverage (which can be spotty at some points) to execute commands.
I buy tons transit from Cogent and Hurricane Electric at dirt cheap prices (less than $10/Mb) for my business. On top of that, I can get to a POP such as Equinix in downtown Chicago or Elk Grove Village by leasing excess capacity on the Illinois Tollway's fiber loops, which they rent out at nominal charges.
Excuse we while I wipe the dripping sarcasm off your post =) On a serious note, I intend to pursue the muni broadband idea with my local town, as they already tried to do it once and got smacked by Comcast.
Wow, that seems like a lot of effort they've put into that (even a web service). That effort could've been put into, I don't know, actually increasing capacity to users.
So why don't we get together and start municipal fiber projects in our respective towns? I mean, municipalities can get cheap bonds to build out the infrastructure, and than let companies sell internet access over the fiber (similar to how Speakeasy/Covad can sell ILEC DSL lines). Are we not tired of this bullshit yet?
Best part is when you do it near a road with guard rails, so every time a car goes by at night, the lights through the guard rails look like flashing police car headlights.
It sits on my Windows XP box and serves Netflix and Hulu to my Xbox 360, my PS3, and my PopcornHour box in the bedroom. It costs $30, and works like a god damn champ.
The reason for the cost difference is that Cisco provided all the equipment to Cogent under a leasing arrangement during the dot com boom, and Cogent had to go through reorganization, with Cisco taking a fairly big stake in the company because of the lease defaults (I believe, you'll have to do more research if you're interested). Cogent doesn't have the huge capital expenditures that say Sprint would have.
By this definition, a Tier 1 Network is a Transit-Free network. But not all Transit-Free Networks are Tier 1 Networks. It is possible to become transit free by paying for peering or agreeing to settlements.
Of course, take the quote from the article, as well as the article itself with a grain of salt. Being "Tier 1" is simply marketing speak.
Because Cogent charges 1/2 to 1/3 what other bandwidth providers charge. Where else can you get $4/Mb for connectivity? Hell, at that price who cares if you don't get to the entire Internet.
On a related subject, next person who says "in the cloud" is going to get cockpunched. As parent said, there are no clouds, just highly available clusters.
Anyone organisation that is stupid enough to only connect to one Tier 1 provider is dumb, because that provider doesn't have any other peering or transit if a problem like this emerges.
My company has consulted with some Fortune 500/5000 companies, and when we provide them with options, they in most cases go for the Cogent option. You say it's dumb for going with only one Tier 1 provider. My clients would strongly disagree with you. You may have the requirement to have access to the full net, but they would rather have super-dirt cheap connectivity and the occasional partitioning problem (i.e. Sprint, Level3, etc) then pay the much higher bandwidth prices from other Tier 1 providers. Why? Partitioning doesn't last forever.
So, let's assume your a Cogent customer (as I am, we purchase several Gb/sec of connectivity from them for multihoming) and Sprint all of a sudden pulls the rug out from under Cogent. Am I to tell Cogent, "Connect me back to Sprint at all costs!"? No. I pay Cogent for a certain level of service, and no carrier or network out there guarantees you will be able to reach the entire internet (welcome to "best effort"). If you want that functionality, be prepared to multihome, and pay for it.
Slashdot Mirror
Typical pay ration for girls to guys in porn is anywhere from 5:1 to 10:1, depending on the production company, the "film", etc.
Very good point. Al Capone was brought down because of the IRS, not the FBI.
Credit is a fundamental requirement of an economy. Google is not.
It sounds like the intended use is on the ocean (container ship, cruise ship, etc). Cellular service is out of the question than. If it's land based, some sort of EVDO service would work great for them.
Better to use Iridium's data service, where you could use data packets to send commands, versus their phone service, where you have to wait for coverage (which can be spotty at some points) to execute commands.
I buy tons transit from Cogent and Hurricane Electric at dirt cheap prices (less than $10/Mb) for my business. On top of that, I can get to a POP such as Equinix in downtown Chicago or Elk Grove Village by leasing excess capacity on the Illinois Tollway's fiber loops, which they rent out at nominal charges.
I've done my homework.
Heh, I won't make any jokes about Cogent. We buy several Gb/sec a month in connectivity from them.
I own a small web hosting firm. We do a couple million a year in revenue. I am well versed in network design, peering, transit costs, etc.
Excuse we while I wipe the dripping sarcasm off your post =) On a serious note, I intend to pursue the muni broadband idea with my local town, as they already tried to do it once and got smacked by Comcast.
I demand a star on my geek card than. I would dare to solder a one aught (0 AWG) cable if need be. =)
Wow, that seems like a lot of effort they've put into that (even a web service). That effort could've been put into, I don't know, actually increasing capacity to users.
So why don't we get together and start municipal fiber projects in our respective towns? I mean, municipalities can get cheap bonds to build out the infrastructure, and than let companies sell internet access over the fiber (similar to how Speakeasy/Covad can sell ILEC DSL lines). Are we not tired of this bullshit yet?
Best part is when you do it near a road with guard rails, so every time a car goes by at night, the lights through the guard rails look like flashing police car headlights.
I use Mediamall's PlayOn media software.
http://www.themediamall.com/playon
It sits on my Windows XP box and serves Netflix and Hulu to my Xbox 360, my PS3, and my PopcornHour box in the bedroom. It costs $30, and works like a god damn champ.
The reason for the cost difference is that Cisco provided all the equipment to Cogent under a leasing arrangement during the dot com boom, and Cogent had to go through reorganization, with Cisco taking a fairly big stake in the company because of the lease defaults (I believe, you'll have to do more research if you're interested). Cogent doesn't have the huge capital expenditures that say Sprint would have.
I take it the regional provider you refer to is WV Fiber.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network
By this definition, a Tier 1 Network is a Transit-Free network. But not all Transit-Free Networks are Tier 1 Networks. It is possible to become transit free by paying for peering or agreeing to settlements.
Of course, take the quote from the article, as well as the article itself with a grain of salt. Being "Tier 1" is simply marketing speak.
On the one hand, I'd say the school in question should have been multihomed if their connectivity is critical.
As a multihomed Cogent transit customer, Sprint should've been multihomed so their EVDO customers could still get to Cogent if the peering went bad.
If Cogent or Sprint were purposefully dumping packets of the other to the bitbucket, the whole multihoming argument is moot.
Because Cogent charges 1/2 to 1/3 what other bandwidth providers charge. Where else can you get $4/Mb for connectivity? Hell, at that price who cares if you don't get to the entire Internet.
You usually end up as the red-headed step child when your competitors charge $50-100/Mb for connectivity and you charge $4.
Sprint has reconnected to Cogent to mitigate the connectivity loss for the time being.
On a related subject, next person who says "in the cloud" is going to get cockpunched. As parent said, there are no clouds, just highly available clusters.
I take issue with this part of your post:
Anyone organisation that is stupid enough to only connect to one Tier 1 provider is dumb, because that provider doesn't have any other peering or transit if a problem like this emerges.
My company has consulted with some Fortune 500/5000 companies, and when we provide them with options, they in most cases go for the Cogent option. You say it's dumb for going with only one Tier 1 provider. My clients would strongly disagree with you. You may have the requirement to have access to the full net, but they would rather have super-dirt cheap connectivity and the occasional partitioning problem (i.e. Sprint, Level3, etc) then pay the much higher bandwidth prices from other Tier 1 providers. Why? Partitioning doesn't last forever.
So, let's assume your a Cogent customer (as I am, we purchase several Gb/sec of connectivity from them for multihoming) and Sprint all of a sudden pulls the rug out from under Cogent. Am I to tell Cogent, "Connect me back to Sprint at all costs!"? No. I pay Cogent for a certain level of service, and no carrier or network out there guarantees you will be able to reach the entire internet (welcome to "best effort"). If you want that functionality, be prepared to multihome, and pay for it.
Bingo. Sprint shut down peering to Cogent across their network, even though litigation is still ongoing.