Cogent Communications was founded by David Schafer in 1999, the same year as my first IP communications company Super Technologies, Inc. But, a real success story, Cogent Communications almost immediately acquired 13 other companies such as Allied Riser, PSInet and NTT/Verio server division over the next three years, 14 billion in capital for 16 million dollars. It has grown from a couple 100 On-Net buildings to 1500 and points of presence to 800. For those not familiar with the term \"On-Net,\" that means Cogent has fiber in those 1500 buildings.

Wholesale bandwidth and colocation are two of the telecommunications buzz phrases that bring to mind Cogent Communications. In a DIDx audio podcast with Cogent Communications' John Sacco the definitions of both are explained well enough to introduce a Bandwidth and Colocation for Dummies' book.

Colocation is the housing of one's servers in a professional data center environment that is more resistant to flooding, hurricanes, power outages and so on. The locations may have greater bandwidth capacity, specialized services, lower latency, less jitter and packet loss such as remote hands and security. Redundant power and generators can also be available. Companies choose to take advantage of colocation facilities by placing their mission critical devices there.

Wholesale services tend to offer a deeper discount than commercial pricing. The second is specialized, i.e., for Fortune 500 companies. A more specific example is Netflix, one of Cogent's largest customers. Wholesale services is perfect for ILECs, CLECs, data centers, hosting providers, ISPs and companies at a lower rate which makes it amenable for them to resell to their clients.

Almost 1/3 of the above kind of traffic takes place over Cogent Communications' infrastructure and services. They are actually the most directly peered network in the world. Cogent network is fully optical. They recently have expanded into the Asian area such as Singapore and Tokyo.

John Sacco explains what dedicated versus shared Internet access is, upload and download speed, over-subscription and the ordering process. Cogent Communications does not over-subscribe, and it offers only dedicated Internet access. He shares information about different types of wholesale bandwidth including ethernet, DS3, wavelength, and lit and dark fiber optic cable.

\"When you light dark fiber, it becomes lit with wavelengths of 1GB, 2.5GB or higher. You place equipment on either side of a dark fiber strand and light the dark fiber into the light spectrums, and they can be 10, 15, 20 different light spectrums of every color you can think of like a rainbow. Picture the rainbow, and every one of these light waves' colors is a wavelength,\" Cogent's Sacco explains.

On a totally different track of talk, we discussed goals in helping our communities. John Sacco participates in Relay for Life and Little League type of activities, but he is most involved in his friend's charity program The Stockdale Foundation that helps less fortunate high school graduates who cannot really afford to or do not want to go to college. It targets those who want to pursue a technical career. John's friend's daughter passed after a car accident, and to turn such a sad event into something positive, he started the charity program in her honor.

Mr. Sacco shares information about www.cogentco.com referral program opportunities such as those of vendor referrals and master agents to round out the interview.

* 1999 was a great year as Prince once sang, \"Say the telephone a ringin'.\"