Solid hosting is the lifeblood of every online business. This is especially true in the adult sector as our sites receive customers 24 hours a day from all over the world. When we're down, we might miss a spider crawl and get de-listed from search engines. When our hosting is slow, visitors lose interest and go elsewhere. They certainly won't be bookmarking our sites or waiting for all of our graphics to load before clicking off or closing the window. Those of us that own paysites know that bad performance and downtime not only results in less sales but also in cancellations, refunds and complaints.

"Solid hosting is the lifeblood of every online business. This is especially true in the adult sector..."

The purpose of my article is to discuss the disadvantages of hosting with a company that uses Cogent bandwidth versus the likes of Verio, Level 3 and other Tier 1 providers. The old saying "You get what you pay for" is often true with companies that base their business around selling Cogent bandwidth. However, you might be surprised that in many instances you aren't getting what your host has promised. I could write dozens of pages about this subject but today I'm just going to touch on what I think is an important overview.

Let's start with some hosting economics. These are the economics of a medium sized host, not the largest of hosts. For a hosting company that wants a 100mbit of bandwidth handed off to them in proper hosting facility they usually have several providers to choose from. In case you don't know the math, 100mbit would translate to a theoretical 33,177 gigs/month worth of transfer if it was 100% used. Pricing varies by geographic location and provider but for the most part that much bandwidth from a Tier 1 network like Verio or Level 3 is going to cost 10k-20k per month based on your negotiating skills.

What does a host pay for 100mbit of Cogent bandwidth? $3000. At that price, anyone can get into the hosting business - that should mean something to you. What's even worse, most of the adult hosts selling Cogent are really just reselling for someone else. So, company A buys the 100mbit for $3000 and sells hosting themselves. Companies B, C, and D are resold access to the same pipe for a fraction of the cost - they potentially just got in the business for $500/mo. It's all gravy for company A because their costs are fixed and it doesn't matter to them if the network is oversold because even when it wasn't it was already slower then shit because of the quality of the bandwidth. Who's going to notice the added latency when it was always at least 100ms to begin with?

Cogent's business model wasn't designed for selling bandwidth to real hosting companies. Don't believe me? Read their website. The idea behind Cogent was to bring bandwidth to office buildings for regular commercial users. It wouldn't matter if they had a 100mbit hand-off, their customers are supposed to only be surfing during the day - not hosting sites, etc. Originally this was priced at about $1000 to connect a whole office building. It's hard to say whether the Adult Internet found Cogent or Cogent found the Adult Internet. They were insolvent with their original business model and we as an industry use more bandwidth then anybody.

See, Cogent has never been profitable - it still isn't. They're on a third or fourth round of venture funding. Their "big pipe" is also based on a compression technology that squeezes more data through a smaller pipe and their network does not have good 'peering' arrangements for trading traffic with other providers which is essential for good network performance and reliability. Adult webmasters found Cogent and BOOM there were hundreds of new hosting companies selling bandwidth for .50/gig.

There is an argument that this type of bandwidth is suitable for those that do TGP posting, etc. However, several of the largest TGP's don't allow posts from people that host on Cogent. Also, if you ask around you'll find that the largest and most successful people making money from TGP traffic aren't utilizing Cogent - they're buying Tier 1 bandwidth. Why? Well, they've realized that the decrease in bandwidth cost is disproportionate to their sales figures. Should we learn from them? Absolutely! If you want to learn how to do something successfully you need to make sure you're talking to someone that is already there.

Do I think Cogent has it's place in the market? Absolutely! For as long as they are still in business I think they provide an opportunity for new webmasters trying to figure things out. A multitude of companies with similar networks and technology have already bit the dust. If you're using Cogent just accept two things - if they fold your costs will likely triple and if your host only uses Cogent they will surely go out of business. This cheap bandwidth has lowered the barrier to entry and given many webmasters the ability to figure out what the heck they're supposed to be doing to make a living and get their feet wet in the adult sector. Unfortunately, it seems most newbies radiate to TGP posting when really they should also be studying other traffic sources for long-term success.

I'll conclude this article by continuing the demystification of Cogent hosts. Just do some of these things:

1. Question the hardware they are promising! Being in another state means you'll never actually see the gear they are putting you on. If someone is selling you tons of bandwidth and including a dual processing server for $150 per month, that doesn't even annualize out to enough money to pay for the real hardware cost.

2. If their pricing is incredibly low what type of network equipment do they have? Who are their techs and what are their credentials? (You know, a good network engineer is at least 50k a year).

3. Ask to speak with some satisfied customers and validate that they are not in business with this hosting company in any way, they must have nothing to gain. Truly happy customers are always to provide a reference.

4. Ask them point blank if they buy directly from Cogent or other providers. It can be okay if they are buying from another host instead of directly but it's unacceptable to lie about this. One easy way to find out is to do a traceroute and see what hops it hits after Cogent and before one of their web servers.

5. Almost every host I've seen selling Cogent is misrepresenting or flat out lying about having redundant bandwidth. SIMPLE MATH. If I buy 100mbit from Cogent and 100mbit from Level 3 that's somewhere between 13-25k per month in overhead. If their customer pricing model is cheap as hell and based around the 3k Cogent pipe cost, where the heck would the money come from for redundant bandwidth? I'd bet that 3/4 hosts selling Cogent aren't connecting to any other backbone providers.

6. Where are they hosted? Are they in an office building or a secure NOC (Network Operations Center)? This is important for so many reasons! Here are a few: security, fire suppression, power regulation, and proper cooling.

7. Don't believe the hype about uninterruptable power supplies! Most of these inexpensive hosts do not have all their machines on their own UPS as advertised.

That's all I have for today... Hopefully many of you have found this to be either insightful or provocative! I am always happy to E-mail, ICQ or talk live with ANY webmaster on my Toll Free lines. So, if you have questions or comments about this piece please feel free to contact me. If you wanted to explore hosting with my company, MojoHost, I would be excited to have the opportunity to earn your business!