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Tier-1 and Tier-2 ARE NOT DEFINITIONS OF QUALITY!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They have NOTHING to do with a networks quality.
Tier-1 means they do not use transit to reach other networks on the internet, they only use peering.
Tier-2 means they pay for exchanging traffic with other networks.
Transit = paying for routing over another network
Peering = the EXCHANGE of traffic over both networks
There is nothing inherently wrong or bad about a Tier-2 backbone. They are equal and sometimes better because the Tier-2 will have more eyeballs (end user customers/residential users) on their network or direct access to them.
ESPECIALLY now a days, you will be hard pressed to find a real difference between most bandwidth backbones... they will all pretty much provide good performance. The thing to know though is that NO ONE PROVIDER will ever be "the best" or "good enough for everything". Each one is good at certain things and certain parts of the internet. They KEY is to have a wide VARIETY of MULTIPLE providers so that you have that many more routes (or ROADS) to and from the internet.
Did you guys know that Level(3)... (a provider that some of you guys think is the cats meow) IS ACTUALLY SELLING THEIR BANDWIDTH CHEAPER THAN COGENT??????????
The difference between providers comes with the amount of redundancy they have available both in their network and their power infrastructure. Their support performance, value added services, and ease of scalability with variety of hardware offerings.
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