Changing ISP for better service?
Posted by itguytn@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 17 comments
We've had issues for the past year and a half of our three year contract on our Verizon Business internet. After a recent outage, our rep said we may have to look to a different LEC to get better service.
Providers in the building are Verizon, AT&T, and Cogent.
Is AT&T or Cogent worth leaving Verizon Business or do we just suffer through the outages when they happen?
trebuchetdoomsday@reddit
if you want to DM me the address, i'm happy to dig up pricing for ATT / Cogent. i'm assuming you're looking for dedicated fiber & not shared bandwidth like an ATT business fiber.
itguytn@reddit (OP)
Appreciate the offer but we have a local group to deal with at&t and I have a senior regional guy at cogent that provided good prices for them.
PlanetValmar@reddit
If you are only looking at internet, make sure to go through ACC Business for your AT&T connection. It will be the same if not better pricing, and much much better to deal with. From a service standpoint, it's the same lines, and the same AT&T techs. But from an account/billing standpoint, it's a different company, and you'll be glad you used them.
ShadeXeRO@reddit
I've had better luck with NHC than ACC. ACC Billing was a nightmare for us.
trebuchetdoomsday@reddit
though i'm told to go through momentum for cogent fiber requests.
MrBoobSlap@reddit
In my experience, Cogent and AT&T tend to have the highest quality connections in terms of latency and peering. That’s not to say they’re always the best, but if you’re having difficulty with Verizon, I would certainly give one of those two a try.
I am of course only referring to their DIA fiber products. AT&T’s PON-based fiber is also good if you can get it (almost as reliable as the DIA, just no SLA).
However, you may want to make the case to the business to get redundant ISPs so that you can greatly reduce the impact of an outage. Cogent and AT&T’s DIA services are generally very reliable, but having a backup connection definitely will improve reliability that much more.
patmorgan235@reddit
Unless you're on cogent and want to connect to whomever they're currently having a peering dispute with.
pdp10@reddit
This. Cogent refuses to peer with, e.g. Hurricane Electric for IPv6. This means that if you're stuck with Cogent as sole transit, you either have to rely on Happy Eyeballs in every single pieces of software, or disable IPv6. That's why we blacklist Cogent in RFPs.
itguytn@reddit (OP)
Backup is for sure my preferred solution to this. Thanks
CryptosianTraveler@reddit
I don't know what their deal is at Verizon, but make sure your "outages" are truly outages. Because my residential service has been down maybe 3 times over 14 years. That's not to say I don't have service problems. I used to have them all the time until I finally bothered to look at it. The bandwidth was fine. It was their lousy DNS servers.
So before you go switching around, just for giggles change the primary DNS server on one PC, probably yours. I use Cloudflare as a primary. 1.1.1.1
That may give you a better experience. If not then of course proceed with the change. For advice on that you're better off asking fellow tenants. Internet is a lot like cell service in that the quality of it has a lot to do with where exactly you are.
itguytn@reddit (OP)
This was originally XO service on XO lines but then Verizon bought XO. Year and a half ago we switched over to Verizon Business service, still on the XO lines. XO service was rock solid and reliable. Verizon Business service for a year and a half has dropped the connection over a dozen time, normally for a couple of minutes to an hour but three or four of these has been multi day outages. No one can seem to figure out why it keep dropping.
Quietech@reddit
Wow. Don't out your rep for being so honest with you. You need to compare your service with your neighbor's. Hopefully you get a tech head who can give you the info you need. If you do make the change, I'd recommend an overlapping period in case there's something weird with your location and the new folks are worse.
u/Humpaaa makes a good point too. All providers will have outages at some point. I remember one that took out several cell phone carriers and ISPs in my area because a car crashed and burned an important junction point. They were all down for a few days while repairs were done. That impacted operational companies by having everybody jump onto their other devices.
I might be mishmashing events, but that's the jist. Don't forget to make a proper map of your internal networks and see what would be changed by changes to the outward facing IPs. VPNs and other point to point connections come to mind, especially with DNS not changing instantly.
itguytn@reddit (OP)
Thanks, and wouldn't out them for this. Appreciate the advice to keep both for a month or so if we switch. As for mapping IPs, we had to do this when we switched over to this service a year and a half ago and it wasn't bad at all.
Humpaaa@reddit
No idea about american ISP quality, but you might be looking for some redundancy for your WAN access.
Depending on your business case, get a 2nd ISP business circuit, or a cheap consumer line without SLAs of another provider. So one can take over if the other fails.
itguytn@reddit (OP)
This is one the of the options and my preferred choice, if management would sign off in it. However, if they won't, they'll request a carrier change, even with the possibility of outages with a different carrier.
grouchy-woodcock@reddit
This is the way.
ganlet20@reddit
Cogent is usually better than Verizon business but they had a nationwide routing outage a few months ago for an hour.