Hmmm.... Spring has sprung and the waft of drivel from a new season Cogent salesdroid filled my telephone earpiece today. I've never liked the Cogent way of business and my understanding of their IP transit is that it falls into the "cheap for a reason" category. However, perhaps someone would care to elaborate (either on or off-list) what the deal is with the requirement to sign NDAs with Cogent before they'll discuss things like why they still charge for BGP, or indeed any other technical or pricing matters. Seems weird ?!? Laura
I recently cancelled a circuit with them that began life as transit and converted to P2P, where the BGP fee never disappeared, and had been fighting them on it for eight months. Now that the circuit is gone they've switched to completely ignore mode. So, not likely I'll use them again. I did the initial conversion because I got tired of customers with Google IPv6 issues and fortunately had a P2P need it could satisfy for a bit of time. On 3/31/22, 11:40 AM, "NANOG on behalf of Laura Smith via NANOG" <nanog-bounces+dhubbard=dino.hostasaurus.com@nanog.org on behalf of nanog@nanog.org> wrote: Hmmm.... Spring has sprung and the waft of drivel from a new season Cogent salesdroid filled my telephone earpiece today. I've never liked the Cogent way of business and my understanding of their IP transit is that it falls into the "cheap for a reason" category. However, perhaps someone would care to elaborate (either on or off-list) what the deal is with the requirement to sign NDAs with Cogent before they'll discuss things like why they still charge for BGP, or indeed any other technical or pricing matters. Seems weird ?!? Laura
I've used Cogent for years and have never been asked to sign an NDA with them. Of the 4 providers I use regularly they are the second highest price so I wouldn't consider them cheap any more either. There's no better or worse than any transit provider these days. Aaron On 3/31/2022 10:38 AM, Laura Smith via NANOG wrote:
Hmmm....
Spring has sprung and the waft of drivel from a new season Cogent salesdroid filled my telephone earpiece today.
I've never liked the Cogent way of business and my understanding of their IP transit is that it falls into the "cheap for a reason" category.
However, perhaps someone would care to elaborate (either on or off-list) what the deal is with the requirement to sign NDAs with Cogent before they'll discuss things like why they still charge for BGP, or indeed any other technical or pricing matters. Seems weird ?!?
Laura
-- ================================================================ Aaron Wendel Chief Technical Officer Wholesale Internet, Inc. (AS 32097) (816)550-9030 http://www.wholesaleinternet.com ================================================================
On 3/31/22 11:38, Laura Smith via NANOG wrote:
However, perhaps someone would care to elaborate (either on or off-list) what the deal is with the requirement to sign NDAs with Cogent before they'll discuss things like why they still charge for BGP, or indeed any other technical or pricing matters. Seems weird ?!?
Same reason your employer doesn't want employees telling each other their salary. Not every similarly situated customer pays the same for the same service.
It's illegal to prevent employees from discussing salary. Are you saying Cogent is doing unlawful things? Ray Orsini Chief Executive Officer OIT, LLC 305.967.6756 x1009 | 305.571.6272 ray@oit.co | www.oit.co oit.co/ray How are we doing? We'd love to hear your feedback. https://go.oit.co/review -----Original Message----- From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+ray=oit.co@nanog.org> On Behalf Of Paul Timmins Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2022 11:57 AM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: EXTERNAL: Re: Cogent ... CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. If you are unsure, please forward this email to the CSE team for review. On 3/31/22 11:38, Laura Smith via NANOG wrote:
However, perhaps someone would care to elaborate (either on or off-list) what the deal is with the requirement to sign NDAs with Cogent before they'll discuss things like why they still charge for BGP, or indeed any other technical or pricing matters. Seems weird ?!?
Same reason your employer doesn't want employees telling each other their salary. Not every similarly situated customer pays the same for the same service.
On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 9:05 AM Paul Timmins <paul@telcodata.us> wrote:
However, perhaps someone would care to elaborate (either on or off-list) what the deal is with the requirement to sign NDAs with Cogent before
On 3/31/22 11:38, Laura Smith via NANOG wrote: they'll discuss things like why they still charge for BGP, or indeed any other technical or pricing matters. Seems weird ?!?
Same reason your employer doesn't want employees telling each other their salary. Not every similarly situated customer pays the same for the same service.
Having fought that issue[0], I'd like to point out that employees voluntarily sharing salary data is federally protected speech in the US, and cannot be waived through an employment contract: https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-rights/your-rights-to... . "Under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA or the Act), employees have the right to communicate with other employees at their workplace about their wages. Wages are a vital term and condition of employment, and discussions of wages are often preliminary to organizing or other actions for mutual aid or protection. " ..."policies that specifically prohibit the discussion of wages are unlawful." I understand the parallelism you were aiming for, but given how many people labour under the mistaken notion that US companies can forbid you from talking about your compensation, I felt it prudent to point out that's actually not a terribly good comparison. ^_^; Thanks! Matt [0] https://www.quora.com/My-coworker-asked-about-my-salary-how-should-I-respond...
On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 03:38:15PM +0000, Laura Smith via NANOG wrote:
However, perhaps someone would care to elaborate (either on or off- list) what the deal is with the requirement to sign NDAs with Cogent before they'll discuss things like why they still charge for BGP, or indeed any other technical or pricing matters. Seems weird ?!?
Because they know that the sillier bits will be poked fun at on NANOG if they allow them to be disclosed? Because if you can't talk about your pricing, then they aren't as likely to be facing customers who know how cheap it was sold to some other party? ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net "The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"-Asimov
------- Original Message ------- On Thursday, March 31st, 2022 at 16:43, Joe Greco <jgreco@ns.sol.net> wrote:
On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 03:38:15PM +0000, Laura Smith via NANOG wrote:
Because they know that the sillier bits will be poked fun at on NANOG
if they allow them to be disclosed?
The ironic thing is they demand NDAs and yet they don't comply with requests to stop unsolicited marketing despite written historical promises that they would.
On 31 Mar 2022, at 12:11 PM, Laura Smith via NANOG <nanog@nanog.org<mailto:nanog@nanog.org>> wrote: ... The ironic thing is they demand NDAs and yet they don't comply with requests to stop unsolicited marketing despite written historical promises that they would. While I cannot speak to their marketing practices in general, Cogent has taken specific positive steps to avoid inadvertant use of the ARIN Whois data for solicitation (taking place after our January 2020 engagement with them on this topic), and in August of 2020 they regained direct access to the publicly available ARIN Whois data. We do occasionally get reports of potential misuse, but it is definitely far fewer than before (and many track back to contact information provided to them via other means.) As always, if you believe that your ARIN Whois contact information has been inappropriately used for solicitation by any organization, you can report it to us at compliance@arin.net<mailto:compliance@arin.net> for review and potential investigation. Thanks! /John John Curran President and CEO American Registry for Internet Numbers
I have a morbid curiosity what their CRM system looks like, and how many entries are in it and what their internal notes/work flow looks like. This opinion is formed from the external perspective of being a person who is a very cold sales lead and yet continues to be occasionally called by a new sales person every 4 to 6 months. On Thu, 31 Mar 2022 at 08:39, Laura Smith via NANOG <nanog@nanog.org> wrote:
Hmmm....
Spring has sprung and the waft of drivel from a new season Cogent salesdroid filled my telephone earpiece today.
I've never liked the Cogent way of business and my understanding of their IP transit is that it falls into the "cheap for a reason" category.
However, perhaps someone would care to elaborate (either on or off-list) what the deal is with the requirement to sign NDAs with Cogent before they'll discuss things like why they still charge for BGP, or indeed any other technical or pricing matters. Seems weird ?!?
Laura
participants (9)
-
Aaron Wendel -
David Hubbard -
Eric Kuhnke -
Joe Greco -
John Curran -
Laura Smith -
Matthew Petach -
Paul Timmins -
Ray Orsini