Tier 1 ISP

VBN · 17 Sep 2008 at 12:37

Hi

Can any one recommend or slate any Tier 1 ISP's thinking of moving my current provider and would be interested in your comments. Also has anyone ever come across any metrics on market share, ranking etc for Business Tier 1 lots of consumer stuff but no business orientated.

Thanks

bigredshark · 17 Sep 2008 at 13:10

The complete list of tier 1 ISPs is...

AT&T
Global Crossing (GBLX)
Level 3 Communications (L3)
NTT Communications (Verio)
Qwest
Sprint
Verizon Business (formerly UUNET)

Added to the following who are not tier1 but pretend to be by virtue of settlements with a tier1 peer.

AOL Transit Data Network (ATDN)
SAVVIS
Above.Net
Cogent Communications
TeliaSonera
Teleglobe
XO Communications

I can recommend level3 for being excellent in terms of performance but unfortunately awful in terms of support. Global crossing and abovenet aren't bad either, also worth considering despite not technically being tier1 are tiscali who have a solid european network and fantastic support.

VBN · 17 Sep 2008 at 15:26

Thanks, we use Level 3 for our co lo infrastructure as our ISP Adapt is partnered with them. Level 3 seems OK, but yes agree very surly support and onsite tech's.

bigredshark · 17 Sep 2008 at 16:42

VBN said:
Thanks, we use Level 3 for our co lo infrastructure as our ISP Adapt is partnered with them. Level 3 seems OK, but yes agree very surly support and onsite tech's.

Adapt aren't just partnered with level3, they're basically just a vehicle for level3 to sell to SMEs, they don't own any of their own network or anything. Amusingly they're even worse than level3 for support though. Level 3 transit is reliable enough but a pain to get appropriate response when it does break...

VBN · 17 Sep 2008 at 17:01

They did buy Centric whose network was apparently shocking so is being upgraded/moved over to theirs....so I thought they did have their own network??

bigredshark · 17 Sep 2008 at 17:07

VBN said:
They did buy Centric whose network was apparently shocking so is being upgraded/moved over to theirs....so I thought they did have their own network??

Nope, just a front for level3's network, or at least they were, might be building some dedicated stuff to take on centric customers but it would be new if they were.

VBN · 17 Sep 2008 at 17:17

Interesting stuff. I guess if its built on top of Level 3's core then certainly reliability should be good. I just get frustrated with the lack of cohesion the company seems to have in getting issues sorted out (Not availability as that seems to be up consistently), it was lack that with Centric TBH.

So you would recommend Tiscali? Do you use them commercially?

bigredshark · 17 Sep 2008 at 17:37

VBN said:
Interesting stuff. I guess if its built on top of Level 3's core then certainly reliability should be good. I just get frustrated with the lack of cohesion the company seems to have in getting issues sorted out (Not availability as that seems to be up consistently), it was lack that with Centric TBH.

So you would recommend Tiscali? Do you use them commercially?

Yes, we're an ISP and our primary tier1 (ish) providers are level3, tiscali and abovenet, we take at least a Gig from each (over 10Gig media).

All are reliable day to day, tiscali support is fantastic, abovenet is good, level3 is awful. Network wise, level3 have great US reachability whereas tiscali have much better routes within europe so they partner each other well, abovenet was selected basically as the next best of the rest to cover an outage from one of the other two and share some load (may change to Verizon or Global Crossing if we can get decent pricing out of them as my understanding is that abovenet rely on a settlement with level3 for complete reachability.)

Regarding level3's network, it's great in the primary nodes (Goswell Road/Braham St) but outside of there it gets a little flaky, we have a connection in another node where the router is a little tempermental at times.

Overall Tiscali are reliable and responsive to support incidents, as yet I haven't really got any bad experiences with them. Downside is they aren't truly tier1 but are as good as in europe.

VBN · 17 Sep 2008 at 18:13

Which ISP are you? (Sounds like a question in GD)

bigredshark · 17 Sep 2008 at 21:18

Not a big player but we're very big/medium business focused, we do a lot of work with banks, property groups, that sort of market and most people haven't heard of us. I try to avoid mentioning names as I occassionally air my views on traffic shaping on DSL on here and would prefer they weren't associated with the company as they're only my views...email in trust if you're particularly interested...