Have only had experience of Level3 & MCI/Verizon in the UK I prefer Level3 due to the following... Scale of the Network Host lots of big content providers across the Globe Very few outages (1 in 12months) on the UK backbone Customer support was very good Always an account manager to assist with any issues. Hope this helps Stephen Bailey - Lead Technical Services Specialist IS Network Services FUJITSU Services Fujitsu Services Limited, Registered in England no 96056, Registered Office 22 Baker Street, London, W1U 3BW This e-mail is only for the use of its intended recipient. Its contents are subject to a duty of confidence and may be privileged. Fujitsu Services does not guarantee that this e-mail has not been intercepted and amended or that it is virus-free. -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Paul Stewart Sent: 05 November 2007 16:04 To: Gregory Boehnlein; nanog@merit.edu Subject: RE: Least Sucky Backbone Provider We had the same issues with Cogent .. I feel your pain... level(3) has always been good for us - very few issues and their support has been great from our perspective. MCI/Verizon did not work well for us at all - their network was solid and customer service wasn't too bad ... our problem was that less than 20% of our traffic was preferred via MCI's routes. Funny how one of the largest networks in the world was the least attractive BGP wise.... of course everyone's network is different with every provider so YMMV.... Never dealt with AT&T as we're based in Canada...;) Paul -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Gregory Boehnlein Sent: Monday, November 05, 2007 10:52 AM To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Least Sucky Backbone Provider Good morning, I'm considering dropping Cogent completely out of my transit mix, as the number of outages and problems they have been experienced over the past year has reached an unacceptable level. It has gotten to the point that we their BGP session is shutdown for longer periods than it is on. Based on the availability of on-net fiber in my facility, I have narrowed the field to the following candidates: 1. Level 3 2. MCI/Verizon 3. AT&T I'm looking for comments from actual customers of the above providers in relation to; 1. Network reliability and performance 2. Responsiveness to outages 3. Proactive notification of network maintenance 95% of our traffic mix is US48 in nature, so International routes are not a huge decision point. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ---- "The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and contains confidential and/or privileged material. If you received this in error, please contact the sender immediately and then destroy this transmission, including all attachments, without copying, distributing or disclosing same. Thank you."