Talk:Tier 1 network

message: The article goes into detail discussing nomenclature, rationale, and marketing but only briefly mentions technical relevance under 'routing'. However, that mention appears to have a biased view, using terminology such as 'lower tier' when mentioning other networks.  The technical irrelevance, or as illustrated in that portion outright danger and detriment to traffic propagation should surface more readily. jzp (talk) 16:05, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  relevance? 

message: The article title should be "Tier 1 ISPs". A tier one carrier, meaning a telecom carrier of voice services is something different and is definable via FCC rules. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.46.68.194 (talk) 2005-10-21 14:01:08 (UTC)G
"This is what happened between Cogent and Level 3 recently." --This needs to be replaced with the date of the occurance and a brief explanation. I know Wikipedia tries to be timely but "recently" ages fast. I am leaving this comment as I am not the one qualified to write about this. 
Ray Trygstad 14:27, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: this appears to have been fixed. Good call. Jasongetsdown 17:23, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  updates 

message: The companion article is just a short list, and really has no meaning outside the context of the main article, and isn't referenced outside the main article.
-- Randal L. Schwartz 16:56, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed merge from [[List of tier 1 internet service providers]] 

message: I'm merging the contents of List of tier 1 internet service providers.  This should be a quick merge.
However, that article is in the odd situation of having a talk page MUCH longer than the article itself!  I don't know if we're supposed to merge the talk pages too.  For now, here's a link to the talk page as it stands now...  talk page snapshot Jamie 01:33, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Merge complete.  The page still needs to be cleaned up and wikified.  Jamie 01:41, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merging [[List of tier 1 internet service providers]] 

message: The tag was added by MureninC, who (from text not shown correctly in the tag) says:
:"This list looks really strange, it only has one non-american company, and major players like Telia are not here at all; information must be extended, and if Telia etc. do not qualify, then they must be put into Tier 2 article with explanations"
I don't know enough about the subject to comment either way, so comments are appreciated. It would probably help to have verified sources for this information (cf. WP:NOR) --H2g2bob 16:56, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Changed to globalise tag, as that seems more in-keeping with the problem --H2g2bob 17:12, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV Tag 

message: Ok people, I know we ALL think that our favorite carriers are Tier 1's because their website says it is, but that doesn't make it so. In addition to some blatant vandalism from Cogent and Telia staff repeatedly adding themselves, there are no shortage of well meaning users who want to add networks because they legitimately believe that they know of a new tier 1 which hasn't been mentioned. Please, let me assure you that every true Tier 1 has been included in the list of 9, and all of the common misconceptions and previous subjects of debate have been added to the Not-Tier-1 list, along with a verifiable reason why they are not.
Just because a network is not a Tier 1 does not make it any more or less important, so PLEASE stop vandalizing the legitimate technical facts of this article with marketing. If you think you have a network which is a tier 1 and isn't listed, please ask here and someone will be happy to research it and tell you why it isn't and help you add it to the Not-Tier-1 list. If you have any doubt in your mind, ask yourself "am I an expert in the complex issues surrounding tier 1 interconnection?". If the answer is no, the network you're thinking of is probably not a tier 1.
Thanks you! :)
Humble226 07:58, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: AboveNet does not pay for peering with Sprint they pay a fines for bad peering ratios. Does this still put them as a non-tier 1 provider? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.184.57.9 (talk • contribs) 00:28, 26 April 2007
We need to take a look at AS6461 (abovenet)...   I can't find any evidance that they actually buy transit as stated here.   In fact, until 2004 they provided transit for cogent.  If i take a look at a BGP feed from them, I see every tier one as a direct neighbor.  That being said, if they are tier 1, they are the smallest one given they only announce about 4700 routes to their peers  --- Jwvo 03:28, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of Not-Tier-1's 

message: I do think the 'not tier 1' section is quite confusing. I understand the need for a list of those commonly (and wrongly) assigned to being Tier 1 but my first impression when scrolling through the article was that this must be a list of Tier1's, now the text does make this clear but I think maybe a heading with something like "Non Tier 1 networks attributed to be Tier 1" (or something slightly more concise perhaps?)
ny156uk 08:04, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of Not-tier-1's 

message: I am looking at Route views routing archive to test tier 1 claims. I am a very beginner. When I saw the following, my initial thought was that ATDN (AS1668) buys transit from 703. Isn't that true? If not, can someone tell me which ISPs are peering and which ISPs are buying transit from others? 
  [vijay@lab data]$ grep "2914 701 703 1668" oix-full-snapshot-2006-07-01-0000.dat | uniq
  *                   129.250.0.85             6             0 2914 701 703 1668 i
  [vijay@lab data]$ grep "7018 701 703 1668" oix-full-snapshot-2006-07-01-0000.dat | uniq
  *                   12.0.1.63                              0 7018 701 703 1668 i
--Vijaykcm 04:28, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is ATDN a Tier 1 Network? 

message: Whoever did this list seems to have forgotten Cable & Wireless. They are a British company who owns, operates and leases backbone, pipe, bandwidth (whatever you want to name it) to other telecom companies across the world. To leave them out of a list like this seems to be a disservice by the uninformed.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.35.224.64 (talk) 2006-08-24 22:52:47 (UTC)
----
Cable & Wireless (AS1273) buys transit from Level 3 (AS3356) and Savvis (AS3561). You can see paths like the following ones from route-views.
  11608 2914 3356 1273 8866 9070 20876 31296 35424
  11608 2914 3356 1273 9158
  11608 2914 3356 1273 9158 15564
  11608 2914 3356 1273 9158 35376
  11608 2914 3561 1273
  11608 2914 3561 1273 10292
  11608 2914 3561 1273 1103 1104
  11608 2914 3561 1273 1103 1128
  11608 2914 3561 1273 1103 12654
--Vijaykcm 04:46, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who was forgotten? 

message: I noticed that XO was recently added as to the list of true tier 1 networks.  Can anyone confirm that they are no longer subject to being paid peers of Sprint and Level3, as the previous version of this page indicated? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jaufder (talk • contribs) 20:38, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  XO a Tier 1 

message: What about Telstra, AS1221? Who is their upstream provider? It seems most routes go via AS4637 which is Reach, half owned by Telstra. I'm not an expert in this matter, I'm looking for information. Icd 02:49, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Telstra? 

message: Are there standards which a "Peering Agreement" must meet in order to be considered a peering agreement for the purposes of this article? Are there different types of Peering Agreements? For example if three networks all interconnect (A, B and C) could network A have an agreement with B that says they will relay to C in the event of a failure in the A-C connection but at the same time have an agreement with C that says that they will only peer for traffic between A and C but will not pass on traffic to B. If so should these be examined and tiered? mec 12 August 2007
:If A is a tier 2 network, C is a tier 2 network, and B is a tier 1 network, there are probably plenty of examples of that in the real world.  In the typical case, A is buying transit from B, and C is buying transit from B, and there's some more direct and cheaper A-C settlement-free interconnection.  JNW2 19:55, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Peering Agreement Standards 

message: This article is currently incoherent. I understand that some of the content in earlier versions was controversial, but the current version of the article is just a mess.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Geoffsnowman (talk • contribs) 23:27, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clean Up Badly Needed 

message: Is there really controversy around Savvis' Tier 1 status? There is no citation of source on that claim, and they are commonly regarded as a Tier 1 amongst most I speak to in the ISP community. Toph (talk) 20:50, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: This article is full of unverifiable and controversial content as well as a great deal of what could charitably be called original research. A full rewrite is needed, but I have largely bowed out of this attempt because I work in the industry myself (I feel I can be neutral, but others can easily disagree) and I felt I was edging up to the possibility of an edit war with another user. You can find some of our debate on this elsewhere on this discussion page. -Dayv (talk) 20:17, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Savvis 

message: Could someone please define "transit free" ?  It's surprising that it's not defined in the article.
Leotohill (talk) 00:41, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Define transit free 

message: I just stumbled on this article from UUNet. After reading it I don't think that I have any better sense of what a tier one provider is. So much of this entry is just trying to define a tier one provider, and going back and forth about who could be considered one. The title of this entry isn't "List of tier one providers," so it should be explaining what they are and what they do. I think the opening sentence should be expanded to give a better idea of what happens at the tier 1 level. The long definition section isn't particularly valuable, in the opinion of this single reader.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.7.105.107 (talk) 15:54, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Less space on definitions, more on what they do 

message: Since AS is an abbreviation of autonomous system, should it not be spelled 'AS' and not 'as', as is currently written all over the article? Reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbreviation, it is not entirely clear, but I believe that AS would be the preferred use. I will go ahead and change if no one objects!? Kll (talk) 05:36, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: My feeling is that 'AS' is the correct abbreviation.  'as' is just improper capitalization, I think. This AS request form from ARIN uses "AS Number" in the text.  Go ahead and make your proposed change without fear!  Cheers, —fudoreaper (talk) 17:52, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  A tad late, but I've now gone ahead with this change :) Kll (talk) 18:33, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  as to AS 

message: The claim (transit free) is verifiable by those of you who have an account on Renesys' MI tool. Pf 193.0.24.206 (talk) 09:18, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  as6762 

message: As seen in their press release (http://www.level3.com/index.cfm?pageID=491&PR=962), Level 3 is at least temporarily paying Comcast to serve content to Comcast users.  Some users (or user) have taken this to mean that they have a paid internet transit agreement with Comcast, qualifying them as a Tier 2 provider instead of a Tier 1.  I believe this is false for several reasons.
First of all if you look at the definition of Tier 1 it is as follows,
"tier 1 network is one that can reach every other network on the Internet without purchasing IP transit or paying settlements. By this definition, a tier 1 network is a transit-free network that peers with every other tier-1 network."
Comcast is a Tier 3 network.  Level 3 can reach Comcast's network without ever paying a fee (as per the Tier 1 definition).  The issue is that Comcast now wants to charge to forward data on its network to its USERS.  A Tier 1 network must reach all other networks for free, not every user.  For example if I create a private network (and connect it to the internet) and then require anyone to pay to access the computers on the network, this doesn't cause all Tier 1 networks to suddenly become Tier 2 because they can't reach my networks users unless they pay a fee.  The Tier 1 networks can still reach my network for free, it's just a closed network and if they want to reach the individual computers there would be a fee.
Second, this isn't a transit agreement.  Transit refers to my network A, using network B to reach network C.  Network A in this case would be Level 3, network B is Comcast, network C doesn't exist.  The traffic that Comcast wants to be paid for is traffic that ends on their network.  This isn't how the internet works and is unprecedented for a Tier 3 network to charge to have data from the internet delivered to it while also charging your users to have it delivered.  If anything, you pay to have data delivered to your Tier 3 network.
Third, if you want to get technical, Comcast pays Level 3 far more to use their backbones than Level 3 pays to send data under this temporary agreement to Comcast's users. The net cash flow is towards Level 3, so they aren't really paying Comcast on a whole.  That is, in my opinion, the real reason behind Level 3 agreeing to this until the FCC sorts it out.  Level 3 could just stop serving Comcast and Comcast would be screwed but this would cost Level 3 more revenue than they saved by not paying Comcast these ridiculous fees.
Comcast lost revenue they had previously received for Netflix traffic and are attempting to be compensated. This is absurd and if it continues would set a bad precedent.  Level 3 is still a Tier 1 provider.  If someone has a different opinion, or I have my facts wrong please state it here instead of childishly editing the Wiki page repeatedly.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.6.93.87 (talk) 18:32, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, making the change. Absolute Relativity (talk) 11:12, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I have restored the content from before this whole issue started. This is not a peering agreement issue that effects status, and Comcast is not even a Tier 1 network in the position to affect Internet peering. Business disputes happen all the time; they are not encyclopedic material usually and this issue is not even settled yet. If ever, this may be of interest to network neutrality articles, not here. Kbrose (talk) 17:51, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

text: Actually this clear definition of "transit" makes everything about these definitions surrounding tiers much clearer. Even the article on Peering doesn't define it so well. A tier 1 network is then a network that is connected well enough that it has something to offer for any other network hence not being required to pay anyone. Any network in the periphery will have much reduced interconnection and has, typically, much more to gain by reaching everyone else than everyone else has by reaching it. This is basically what differentiates the tiers. It's basically about the size of the 'economy' you present and represent. However what interests me most is how the donut peering model influences the power of these 'core' networks in relation to the peripheral networks who can potentially create their own 'provincial roads' bypassing the 'central highways'. Xennex81 (talk) 14:09, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Level3/Comcast 

message: The article comments how only 6 of the tier 1 carriers are US based.  I know Global Crossing is headquartered in Bermuda, but isn't this just for tax reasons?  Do they actually have substantial operations there? AGeorgas (talk) 01:45, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Global Crossing 

message: The refs for the tier 1 table are http://as-rank.caida.org/ and a diagram based on it. Why not just use the current numbers, rather than "September 2007"? The Sept. 2007 numbers are not even available form the sources, AFAIK. The closest is a diagram of July 2007: http://www.caida.org/research/topology/as_core_network/2007/images/ascore-simple.2007_big.png  -Colfer2 (talk) 15:20, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Data does not match source, AS Rankings 

message: I don't understand the fuss behind being a transit free network which means very little to actual users. However users do notice the difference in latency from one network to another. Hence shouldn't quality be a measure of latency rather than which network buys transit and which one is doing paid peering etc ?? 
Something like Knodes Index http://www.fixedorbit.com/metrics.htm or similar maybe a better measure for quality of a  network. Comments ??  — Preceding unsigned comment added by A6v  • 10:51, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Way too many people seem to thing that Teir 1 is something to look for in an ISP. In fact for single homed customers looking fo reliable service using a teir 1 provider is a BAD idea (and using a wannabe Teir 1 provider like cogent is an even worse idea) because it puts you one peering dispute away from losing access to parts of the internet. The Teir 1 providers provide an important role in terms of providing other providers with routes of last resort but generally a single homed customer who wants the best service should be looking for a Teir 2 provider with good links to at least two different Teir 1 proviers and preferably good local peering too. Plugwash (talk) 01:05, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is transit free important or low transit latency ?? 

message: "Telecom Italia, Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom (AS5511) all became transit-free during the year."
http://www.renesys.com/blog/2011/01/a-bakers-dozen-2010-edition.shtml  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.224.211.54 (talk) 16:32, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  latest tier1 additions 

message: The article lists AS5511 as Tier 1 then says it is actually Tier 2. This is contradictory and should be fixed. --a3_nm (talk) 23:22, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  France Telecom (AS5511) both listed as Tier 1 and Tier 2 

message: Can someone verify Cogent and AOL (I guess ATDN?)? 2001:470:1F07:8C0:0:0:1:204 (talk) 03:32, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cogent and AOL 

message: Cogent (AS174) is listed both in the Tier 1 list and the "Other major networks" list. Probably should be fixed.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.247.179.19 (talk) 19:03, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cogent listed twice 

message: The section on Routing seems to be quite inaccurate. The sources stated do not really verify the statements or assumptions. I'm going to try to rewrite it to the best of my ability... at this point. I have rewritten everything and expanded it greatly. Some of the logic is based on what you guys would probably call "original research". There are some PDF papers available online that provide extra intel but not much else. I have ventured into  to do a little exploration of public peering. In the process I came to understand "tier 1" and the whole tier model much better. I think I have provided both a logical and practical explanation of the tier 1 relationships. Let me know what you think if anything. I will perhaps do a rewrite of earlier sections as well to provide a much more consistent and clear definition.
Xennex81 (talk) 18:25, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Routing 

message: Based on other entries on this discussion page and developments of the last two or three years, I've updated the list of Tier 1 networks. I've added citation for all carriers based on information from CAIDA (which seems objective) and ordered them alphabetically. Furthermore, I removed Cogent from the list of 'other major networks' (this was a duplicate) as they don't seem to buy transit and don't seem to have paid peering agreements (at least not on a verifiable basis), I removed AboveNet from the list of tier 1 networks as public information shows that they now have a paid peering agreement/buy transit from at least two tier 1 networks (Verizon and Level(3)).
If you feel this edit is erroneous, please correct me. Uhro87 (talk) 19:06, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  August 2014 update 

message: The graphic to demonstrate the connection of different internet tiers has inconsistent language and randomly placed terms such as POP which is not defined on the page. It is more of a word cloud. Isn't it possible to place links inside of an svg graphic to at least link to the definition. 
Toyotabedzrock (talk) 02:45, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Graphic 

message: Liberty Global has three regional corporate headquarters but board meetings take place in Denver where the majority of the board meetings take please, including the Chair so the overarching Headquarters location for the table, based on international tax laws, would be the United States. If there's a disagreement please provide reasoning. Jellinator (talk) 05:10, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Headquarters 

message: China Unicom and China Telecom are Both tier 1 ISPs. Why arn’t they on the list? Chelldog (talk) 18:19, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Because they purchase IP transit --Volkirik (talk) 08:16, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  China Unicom and China Telecom 

message: Less than 20% of transit for a listing in other major networks is an arbitrary requirement, but it objectifies the methodology to list ASNs near the Tier 1 status. https://radar.qrator.net and https://asrank.caida.org/, as well as other sources, show if a relation is peering or transit. If both sites agree, it is pretty accurate. https://bgp.he.net shows the % of routes from one source. Under this criterium listed in the article, here is the breakdown for my undo of the addition of RETN, China Telecom as well as China Unicom and Vodafone CW as a counter-example, I stopped adding up when hitting the 20% mark: 
RETN (AS9002): CenturyLink (AS3356) IPv4 alone accounts for 21.2%, IPv6 CenturyLink (AS3356) and GTT (AS3257) combined for 21%
China Telecom (AS4134): CenturyLink (AS3356) IPv4 alone accounts for 21.4%, IPv6 CenturyLink (AS3356) and Cogent (AS174) combined account for 21% 
China Unicom (AS4837): IPv4 CenturyLink (AS3356), China Telecom (AS4134) and Cogent (AS174) combined account for 20%, IPv6 Verizon (AS701) alone for 38.4%
Vodafone CW: IPv4 Telia accounts for 6%, and IPv6 Telia accounts for 12.9%
I am open to a change of methodology that will be explained in the article but will revert any randomly added ASNs, that do not match the criterium outlined in the article.
Grünebanane (talk) 21:45, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree. methodology should be checking if tier-2 has global internet backbone (international POPs) or not. If they dont, they should be listed in Tier-2 Page. --Volkirik (talk) 10:00, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: The proposal of Grünebanane is better because the definition of tier 1 is reach every other network on the Internet solely via settlement-free interconnection and 50% of reach with backbone is not close to tier 1. --Jan Mathys (talk) 12:54, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  The important thing in Tier-1 league is to have "OWNED" worldwide backbone, and POP in Hub Cities, Thousands of ASN or hundreds of rented POPs/leased lines does not mean anything to them. Tier-2 NSPs like as6939 aim to increase peer count to reduce their prices and expenditures. AFAIK, He.net gets more than %80 of the Internet traffic for free. But they lack quality and prestige, so they are newer going to become Tier-1. Search datacenter/hosting forums; most of their customers are dual-homed via Zayo, Cogent or smth else. --Volkirik (talk) 19:31, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

text: Do you have any source that Tier 2 with global PoPs equals a status near Tier 1? There is no single source of truth, but I was not able to find anything close to this. According to your 50% rule, for example Vodafone Germany would need to be listed because a settlement-free peering with CenturyLink and the rest of their peerings are enough to get over your 50% threshold. --Grünebanane (talk) 14:00, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  How many ASNs do Tier-1 NSPs have? Residential individual customers never get ASN while there are 70 thousand ASNs worldwide announcing IP prefixes. Most of them are content networks. For example He.net is mostly considered near Tier-1 but their quality is very low, and they lack peering to 4 Tier-1 NSPs. Those 4 NSP are not willing to peer with He.Net because they simply do not own fiber. Another example is China Telecom Global who has national and international backbone, has prestige between Tier-1s, and they just lack peering to Sprint. Now are we going to consider he.net Tier-1 and CTG not? Let me tell you something; Cogent is never going to peer with He.net just like NTT,GTT and TATA. But there is a great possibility for  RETN, CTG, CU and VFCS to become Tier-1 soon. --Volkirik (talk) 19:29, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

text:  Another good example would be Cloudflare; they may be peering more than %80 of their traffic, but they still have to pay nice money to Tier-1 NSPs and most of them will either not peer with content heavy networks like He.net and Cloudflare or allocate low capacity to them. This is of course to force them pay for traffic. --Volkirik (talk) 19:44, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

text:  Big players working for Tier-1 status mostly intend to peer with upstreams, not content networks or small eyeballs. This is why you see most of ASNs accessed via several big players when you look serious players' BGP announcements. If you peer with everyone with OPEN policy, you will waste your reputation and screw up traffic levels and ratios. --Volkirik (talk) 19:55, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  How do you come up with the 50% rule? Please give me a reason why this rule is compatible with the Tier 1 definition of the item. Jan Mathys (talk) 07:26, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  We are not defining Tier-1 here. Tier-2 networks start by peering with several networks. Then they are still Tier-2 until all of the traffic is peered and access to all networks are established for free. There is no percent rule in between. Mostly when the ISP or NSP is peering %50 of the traffic, it (mostly) means they want to become Tier1. Majority is also means %50+, While minority is less than half.. This topic has been target of the revert wars for a long time. Because somebody adds their national service provider or a content network with %60-70 peering ratio. What is your reasoning with %80 rule? Maybe you should contact moderator or admins of wikipedia. I am trying to stop revert wars here. %50 is good percent and requires nice investment. --Volkirik (talk) 16:12, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other major networks definition/methodology 

message: The section "list of tier 1 networks" starts with the following definition: "These networks are universally recognized as Tier 1 networks, because they can reach the entire internet (IPv4 and IPv6) via settlement free peering.". By this definition, Cogent is not a tier 1 network. Why is it listed as one? 95.33.229.122 (talk) 13:38, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Tier-1 networks do not have to peer with content-heavy networks. Ask Google and He.net why they do not announce their prefixes via their upstream providers to CogentCo. --Volkirik (talk) 16:02, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  After giving it a good deal of thought: The question we have to answer first is whether a carrier's inclusion in that list indicates that it ought to have full reachability, or whether it in fact does. If it's the former, then the above points have some pretty good weight to them, though we should clarify the phrasing on the article. But I think it's actually the latter that's the case: the list is meant to represent the situation today, and the reasons for Cogent lacking certain routes are irrelevant. Thoughts? — CFSworks (talk) 18:02, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  It's been nearly 2 months and nobody has put forth a reason why Cogent should be an exception to the rule, so I've made the change. It is my hope that if anyone disagrees, they provide solid reasoning here rather than starting an edit war. CFSworks (talk) 23:20, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cogent is not a tier 1 network 

message: Why is Hurricane Electric listed as a T2 and Cogent as a T1? It does not make sense. Cogent lack peering of Google AND HE on v6. It shows "This doesn't make Cogent Tier-2 as content-heavy networks are supposed to purchase IP transit or paid peering to reach eyeball networks." But Hurricane is not a content network. 
So you would either show Cogent as a T2 (at least on IPv6), or show them both as T1s not peering with each other (and HE not being a full T1 on v4).  — Preceding unsigned comment added by KR72 (talk • contribs) 00:36, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I take issue with the phrasing and lack of justification of that note. I've gone ahead and stuck a "citation needed" tag on it, as it must be established that: 1) Cogent is an eyeball network. 2) Hurricane and (perhaps more easily) Google are content networks, in spite of Hurricane listing their traffic ratios on PeeringDB as "Balanced." 3) According to whom, exactly, is it that content networks explicitly ought to pay eyeball networks (as opposed to this merely being a custom)? CFSworks (talk) 07:07, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  Addendum: I have rephrased the note from "This doesn't make Cogent Tier-2" to "This doesn't disqualify Cogent" as there's no question that Cogent isn't Tier-2 (by virtue of them not "purchas[ing] IP transit to reach some portion of the Internet.") but rather whether Cogent is excused from the requirement that it "can reach all major networks on the Internet." CFSworks (talk) 10:23, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

text: I simply disagree. cogent has been tier-1 from the beginning... he.net does not have any owned fiber.. simply put they are trying to become tier-1 by joining IXPs with open policy.. I strongly suggest he.net lovers to contact wikipedia management so this discussion could end with voting. --Volkirik (talk) 05:36, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  Volkirik They already are a T1, especially over IPv6, other than Cogent denying them peering. Cogent does not peer with 2 Tier 1 carriers over v6, so they are not a T1 on IPv6. Especially by the definition on this page "network that can reach every other network on the Internet solely via settlement-free interconnection" which Cogent cannot do by lacking peering with Hurricane and Google. HE is not a content-heavy network, lol. And your attempt at trying to offend me by saying "he.net lovers" was quite a failure, I am not even a customer of them :) KR72 (talk) 13:14, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  maybe you should also setup a network. and request free peering from level3. maybe this way you can make them and their worlwide backbone tier-2? he.net does not have a mile of fiber. renting means tier-2. --Volkirik (talk) 13:35, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  can you please provide a source showing that HE does not own any fiber? I could not find anything backing up that claim FieryCosmos (talk) 21:26, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

text:  As long as we're grabbing sources, I'm particularly interested in a source for "renting means tier-2." The consensus that the article seems to suggest is that tier-1 status is determined solely on whether the routers of a network can reach the whole internet without purchasing routes from any other provider, full stop. How those routers achieve this (whether they're in owned or rented datacenters, or powered by owned or rented electrical systems, or sending traffic over owned or rented fiber) is of no consequence. If that's not the case, the main article will have to be updated (with citations) to add these extra exceptions to the tier-1 definition. CFSworks (talk) 07:24, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  yea whatever! --Volkirik (talk) 12:24, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'll take that as a retraction (although it doesn't change anything - HE.net is still tier-2 by virtue of purchasing transit). CFSworks (talk) 23:33, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cogent & HE. 

message: Source: https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/t-mobile-strikes-1-deal-sell-sprint-fiber-assets-cogent
Does this mean that T-Mobile should be removed from the tier 1 list? Has Cogent gained tier 1 status as a result of this deal? Eladts (talk) 01:26, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  T-Mobile sells Sprint fiber assets to Cogent for $1