“Premium” vs. Mixed vs. Value Bandwidth
What is “premium bandwidth”? If you’re searching for hosting, vps, dedicated servers, colocation, etc., chances are you’ve run across the terms “premium” and “mixed” bandwidth. But what does it mean? And what if it isn’t premium or mixed?
Basically there are 2 recognized levels of bandwidth: premium, and not – which we’ll call “value” bandwidth. Often value bandwidth is Cogent. They provide a lot of bandwidth to a lot of providers and do it at a very reasonable rate. Cogent is huge… not that the other’s aren’t. But they are the number 1 name that pops up talking about value grade bandwidth.
Permium bandwidth, on the other hand, is made up of Tier 1 providers like: AT&T, Sprint, Saavis, Level 3, etc. These are the REALLY BIG boys with large international networks at very high speeds. Look into these networks if you ever want to put your home cable or even FIOS in perspective.
So that’s 2 types… Premium and Value, but you often see “Mixed” as well. Simple, it just a combination of the 2. Done right, it can be the best of both worlds, better pricing, and better connectivity as well. Typically, if you’re seeing either a dedicated or shared unmetered connection it’s probably going either be or at least have come value bandwidth in there, if not all. I’d look for a mixed bandwidth connection unless you absolutely need 100% pure premium bandwidth, and if you had read this article to find out what it was, you don’t.
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About: Robert: Robert Porter holds MCSE, A+, Net+, Security+, and multiple CIW certifications. He has been in the hosting industry for more than a decade and is founder of Lagniappe Internet L.L.C., a privately owned, completely debt free, hosting company based out of New Orleans. Robert's background includes 25+ years in programming, databases, networking and systems administration. |
