This company is the Internet Service Provider of Internet Service Providers

On this episode of Connected Nation, we sit down with two representatives from Cogent Communications.  We discuss the evolution of data centers, talk about Cogent's work globally, and find out what it's like being the Internet Service Provider of Internet Service Providers.

Recommended links:
Cogent website

Guests' LinkedIn: Jeff Reinis and Craig Grace

Chapters

• 0:00 Meeting the representatives from Cogent Communications
• 1:30 What Cogent Communications does and how it began
• 3:13 Why you've never heard of Cogent—but your ISP has
• 7:06 Preparing infrastructure for extreme weather
• 10:41 Operating globally and managing international accounts
• 13:09 Networking at the Broadband Communities Summit
• 15:29 The energy demands of modern data centers
• 22:30 Surprising ways to save power in high-density environments

Transcript

Jessica Denson (00:07):

On this episode of Connected Nation, we continue our coverage from the Broadband Community Summit. On this edition, I sit down with two representatives from Cogent Communications. We discuss the evolution of data centers, talk about Cogents work globally, and how it is the internet service provider of internet service providers. I'll explain. I'm Jessica Desen, and this is Connected Nation.

(00:33):

 So I just wrapped my interview with Tracy Dokes, with MCNC, and I came back to sit down in the little podcast area and I had some invaders in our area. Some people <laugh>, I'm just kidding. Uh, Jeff Reinis, right. And Craig Grace with Cogent Communications are sitting here and we just started chatting about how tired we are, how old we are, how we want more comfortable shoes. And I said, Hey, why don't y'all do an interview with me. Say hello, fellas. <laugh>.

Jeff Reinis (01:01):

Hello. Hi. How are you doing? We are the Space Invaders. <laugh>.

Jessica Denson (01:05):

You are <laugh>. Some people won't get that drop, but we do. We do. I remember it. Yeah. Age <laugh>. So Jeff, say hi. Hello. And Craig, say hi. Hi. Just so people know your voices from each other. Um, so let's, let's get started. Let's talk about Cogent communications. Jeff, why don't you begin? Uh, tell me a little bit about Cogent Communications and the mission of the organization.

Jeff Reinis (01:30):

Sure. Cogent Communications is what I like to call the carrier's carrier. Uh, we're the largest ISP global ISP in the world. Tier one ISP provider.

Craig Grace (01:43):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Jeff Reinis (01:44):

With an as number of as 1 74. Um, to sum it all up, we carry about 30% of all global traffic in the world, which is,

Jessica Denson (02:00):

It's, it's,

Jeff Reinis (02:01):

Which is a significant amount of traffic.

Jessica Denson (02:03):

Yeah. <laugh>. So, uh, Craig, how would you answer that same question? What is Koic Communications in its mission?

Craig Grace (02:10):

Well, coaching communication is definitely ISP, it's one of their main products. Dave Schafer started the company in 19 99, 19 99. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And it's just grown from there, um, through a lot of acquisitions when all the.com stuff who people were around back then blew up. Dave Schafer was able to take, take, uh, advantage of all those assets. And here recently, he was able to purchase the, um, sprint Network away from T-Mobile. And if for you don't know what Sprint stands for? Southern Pacific Railroad.

Jessica Denson (02:37):

Oh, <laugh>.

Craig Grace (02:37):

So that means all of our, all of our fiber and right of ways are on the railroad. And if any of you have tried to, uh, um, build across the railroad tracks, you know, it takes about six months. And what that means to a lot of people is you're not gonna have backhoe Bob cutting your fiber because nobody's gonna be digging across the railroads. And we have some of the shortest paths. And since that purchase acquisition of Sprint Networks, they've actually lit over 900 different pops and locations where we can deliver a hundred gig or 400 gig waves in 30 days.

Jessica Denson (03:04):

So, uh, Jeff, if you guys are one of the largest or the largest carrier, how come the average person haven't, hasn't heard your name?

Jeff Reinis (03:13):

It's all about advertising and word of mouth. We've decided the best form of advertising is letting our service, uh, and business speak for itself. Uh, if you're an ISP, you've heard of us.

Jessica Denson (03:31):

Uh,

Jeff Reinis (03:31):

If you're, you know, a residential business or something like that, you really haven't. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. We focus on business to business and do not really, uh, play in the business to consumer roles.

Jessica Denson (03:48):

Gotcha. So you're the provider of the providers, essentially.

Jeff Reinis (03:51):

Yes.

Jessica Denson (03:52):

So, Craig, expand upon that. How does that really work? How do you, how does that work? Do they put their slap their logo on your equipment or what?

Craig Grace (04:00):

No, so how that works is, so we have our a SN number, and then they have their a SN number and they'll purchase IP from us. And we have, and we're one of the main carriers, so we don't have to pay for peering. We're one of the very two carriers to do that. So they sit there and they don't, they have their connections with their people and then they have their own routers, their own equipment, and their own, and their own name brand.

Jessica Denson (04:21):

Got it. So essentially you provide your band space bandwidth is,

Craig Grace (04:26):

We connect everybody to them. So they have their connections out, they have all their eyeballs out to where they need to go, their eyeballs come in and they want to go somewhere else, but we have the connections to where somewhere else is. Gotcha. Because we, but we can, we connect to 30%, carry 30% of the traffic. And so we can make those shorter hops so they can go directly to there. So if they buy from a smaller ISP buy from another I, medium ISP to get to somewhere else, well, it's somewhere else they're getting, they're like three down from us. So they could actually just go directly to Assn 1 74, and then it, then it would be one hop away from the person they really want to get to instead of three or four hops.

Jessica Denson (05:02):

Gotcha. And by hop you mean connected?

Craig Grace (05:05):

Yeah, well, connection. So, so every time it hits another router on the network, it's a hot, because you're think of it from hopping from one connection to another connection, and that creates latency.

Jessica Denson (05:16):

Gotcha. And Craig, uh, for you, what is your role with, with Cogent?

Jeff Reinis (05:22):

I'm a global account manager. So I focus on a net centric or born on the web. I like to refer to it as type of company. And my reach is global. Uh, I can sell to anybody any place in the world as long as they're net centric or born on the web type of company.

Jessica Denson (05:45):

And so, Craig, Craig, not Greg, but Craig with a c what do you do with the company?

Craig Grace (05:50):

Um, I'm, I'm a sales manager. So I manage global account managers, which are net centric. And then I also manage, uh, national managers where business would be a corporate account business that would, that was here before the internet existed. And then we have some, um, regional account managers. And those managers are just focused on one to three smaller locations. So that's what I do.

Jessica Denson (06:12):

And, um, we were talking, uh, we had to pause for a moment 'cause I was coughing <laugh> because of this. Apparently the Sahara Desert or something has invaded Texas. I don't know what it is. But, um, you said you were driving in through the rain. Uh, where are you guys based?

Craig Grace (06:26):

Uh, so, so Jeff and I are from Dallas, Texas, but our company's headquartered in Washington dc But yeah, we hit one of these Houston rainstorms yesterday. It was one of those driving behind a semi 30 miles an hour for about a half an hour with flashers going on until we finally got out of it. You would think the rain would've knocked out to say Desert Storm, but

Jeff Reinis (06:44):

You would've thought Yeah. You would've thought, they've always said, wait five minutes and the weather in Texas will be different.

Jessica Denson (06:52):

It really was that way. Yesterday it was sunny, then it was pouring rain, and then it was kind of misty, and then it was, yeah, it was a little crazy yesterday. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Reinis (06:59):

Walk outside, walk down the street a block <laugh>, and you'll need to take a shower right when you get inside.

Jessica Denson (07:06):

Yeah. It's so humid. Especially in Houston. It's so, it's one of the hu most humid places on the planet Earth is what I believe.

Jeff Reinis (07:13):

I agree with you. It definitely is <laugh>. That's no lie.

Jessica Denson (07:17):

Uh, so, uh, Jeff, well, let's talk about storms for a moment. When it comes to, um, infrastructure and that type of thing, how does cogent, um, prepare for or plan for or respond even after the fact to storms across the country? We're seeing wildfires, everything. I mean, if, if you're all over, especially globally, you probably see everything, hurricanes, uh, tsunamis, you know, everything. So how do you prepare for stuff like that?

Jeff Reinis (07:45):

It's redundancy. Built with redundancy. Built with redundancy. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Um, our network's built on a ring architecture. So if we lose one portion of the ring, we can reroute and still be up and on online. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. For our clients, uh, we offer a hundred percent SLA for our customers, which is not a common occurrence in the industry, but with us, uptime is of most important to, to us and to our clients. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Uh, but that, and again, everything is built with redundancy in mind.

Jessica Denson (08:27):

And how would you answer that, Craig?

Craig Grace (08:28):

Uh, completely. It's all redundant networks. Like I help build the networks. Um, the, my background is carrier, so I always sold the carriers and help build cots network and sprints network. And we've got, just got a great meantime to repair. And nobody else offers a hundred percent up time. They do 99% this and that. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. But now we're a hundred percent uptime. And, you know, also, you know, with the North American fiber networks that we purchased, that's definitely specific down the railroad, just the shortest, didn't see distance with the shortest latency. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Um, and then, um, you can call one of our trouble ticket numbers if you'd like our hotline, wherever you reside in the world, and you'll be answered with a direct person. They can help you. You'll not be passing person to person. We don't have a lot of layers. They can pick up that phone call and it's pretty much answered within the first what, 15 seconds, Jeff? Yep, yep. Absolutely. And it's a person that can actually address your, your dealing with, and then we will, we'll dispatch somebody. And our meantime to repair is less, it's like, I think it's less than three hours. It's two hours and something, I think the last published

Jeff Reinis (09:28):

Two hours.

Craig Grace (09:29):

Yeah. I think we say four hours, but our last published time that we met was, was like under three hours, two hours and 14 or 16 minutes.

Jessica Denson (09:37):

That's incredible. Yeah. That's a And you mean that globally?

Craig Grace (09:40):

Yes. We mean that globally. Mm-hmm

Jessica Denson (09:41):

<affirmative>. 100%.

Craig Grace (09:42):

And also in our, and also our multi-tenant office buildings as well, besides our core networks.

Jessica Denson (09:48):

Talk about that for a moment. That is a big deal here. I've seen a lot of MDU, um, there's a lot of communities, um, like organizations that are attached to that. Is that the next frontier when it comes to a lot of internet service providers or

Craig Grace (10:04):

No, I, I think the, the tall, the mt. Obs when they have, you know, a nice tall, shiny buildings that's kind of we're focus and we are not focused on any residential services at all. We, we will sell to companies that have turned like an office building into, uh, a residential, but we don't sell to the residents. We can hand off to them and they can service the residents. But I mean, our goal is if it's a great shiny tall building with 500 customers in it mm-hmm <affirmative>. Absolutely we'd like to be in that building, but we're not going out and going to like 1.9 million buildings that, you know, that's our provi our main goal is to be the largest inner provider and keep that status in the world, and also be the largest wave provider in North America.

Jessica Denson (10:41):

Gotcha. So, uh, Jeff, since you are a global con company, where, what are the other areas that you're in, in the world and, uh, how does the company work? Like, how do you know your counterparts over there <laugh> in India or wherever it may be that you guys work?

Jeff Reinis (10:58):

Absolutely. Um, from a sales staff, we intermingle with different companies. Once a rep is working an account, it's protected for that account manager,

Jessica Denson (11:12):

Uhhuh <affirmative>.

Jeff Reinis (11:13):

But from a company and it being a global, uh, account manager, I can work anywhere in the world. As I had mentioned earlier, uh, I know many of my counterparts over there. Uh, typically I will, uh, start working in conjunction with somebody in a foreign land, uh, because I, I'm not fluent in any other language except for English,

Jessica Denson (11:40):

Uhhuh, <affirmative>.

Jeff Reinis (11:40):

Uh, and sometimes in order to make a company feel comfortable in doing business with you, you want them to speak in their native language. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Uh, so I'll work with the teams over there to bring the comfort level to that company to, you know, to do business with us. Um, but yeah, that's pretty much it in a nutshell.

Craig Grace (12:03):

Hey Jeff, can you tell us with the last three countries you sold, provided services to clients to? Good question.

Jessica Denson (12:09):

Wow. My new co-host, <laugh> Craig Grace. Right. Is awesome. That's a good question. You know, asking

Jeff Reinis (12:14):

China, uh, India, Europe, Poland, the list can go on and on and on. The internet is a global thing. It doesn't stop at the borders of the us. No. Uh, and everyone needs internet connectivity because they all need to be interconnected. You have clients in the US trying to reach information in Europe

Craig Grace (12:43):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Jeff Reinis (12:43):

And vice versa. Uh, we're one of the few companies out there that can do that seamlessly and very quickly and affordably for these clients.

Jessica Denson (12:57):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so, uh, we're at the Broadband Community Summit, as I mentioned as when we started the interview. Why was it important for you each to be here and what do you hope to see in the future?

Jeff Reinis (13:09):

What I hope why we're here is because many of our clients are, uh, it's a small world. This it

Jessica Denson (13:19):

World. It's, yeah.

Jeff Reinis (13:20):

As big as it is, it's a tiny, tiny world. Uh, the world can be your oyster, as I always like to call it, <laugh>. Uh, what I'm hoping to see and gain from this is insight. What the future holds, what companies are doing, how we can partner and assist companies. Because that's what it's all about. Sharing wealth of knowledge and helping other companies succeed. Uh, and while you're doing that, succeed yourself.

Craig Grace (13:52):

Yeah, absolutely. To come and network with people. 'cause we don't do everything like cx we don't provide any equipment, any CPE mm-hmm <affirmative>. But they're working with different broadband communities. Well, those communities need wavelength back to major pops and ISP. We have, we have middle mile, middle mile fiber, or regional fiber, and we have long haul fiber. So we can enable that. And I'm looking at a customer right over here that has four or five pops and we can definitely connect those pops together. Or if they have rural customers that would like to connect, we can actually provide the wavelengths back to them so they can provide the ip. So there's different areas we can actually play and we can actually enable them to be able to provide that real access to their, to their customers. Then we can turn around and also do BGP if they would like to have another ISP provider. So we're, we're here to just all work together. And a lot of these people we've known over there, we've known George Sta for a lot of years that we're looking at. So just a lot of people that we've known and worked with in the industry for a long time. How many years of industry do you have, Jeff?

Jeff Reinis (14:48):

Roughly 35. Yeah,

Craig Grace (14:50):

Roughly 35. I started, um, back in 96 when Clinton signed the telecommunications Act.

Jeff Reinis (14:54):

So, you know,

Jessica Denson (14:55):

Oh,

Craig Grace (14:55):

<laugh> <laugh>. That's when I got, when the clec, when the CLEC Gold Rush came on. Uhhuh <affirmative>, that's how long I've been here. So a lot of these people I know and their friends, and we're all here, it's a big community to help the other person. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 'cause we can't do everything. That's not how IP or Telecom works. Some people are gonna be on the residential, the equipment side, long haul, regional fiber, middle Mile America, whatever you like to call that. He of the big data center experience. And that's, that's one of my areas which I'm, I'm better at building networks. He better at data centers. He can talk to me about three phase power and anything else you'd like to talk about? <laugh>,

Jessica Denson (15:29):

The data centers. Right now, the AI thing is the big thing with that, right? Like, doesn't it take a lot of energy to power those?

Jeff Reinis (15:34):

That is, when it comes to data centers, it's all about power. Uh, at least nowadays. And, you know, the AI emergence is it's absolute phenomenon that's happening. Uh, data centers are popping up all over the world, um, and, you know, they're finding alternatives to power and it's, it's fascinating just to see the growth of what's going on in the industry.

Jessica Denson (16:07):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. It's growing so quickly too, changing so quickly.

Jeff Reinis (16:11):

It is, it's, you know, when I first started in the data center industry, I'm not gonna be super long-winded, it was all about it. You know, natural cooling of AC units and things of that nature. The big no-no in data centers of old were, we don't want any liquid in the data center.

Craig Grace (16:34):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Jeff Reinis (16:35):

Now, the only way you're able to cool these super computers and these super chips that are coming in is by liquid cooling them,

Jessica Denson (16:47):

Uhhuh <affirmative>.

Jeff Reinis (16:47):

So now liquid is being brought into the data center to keep things cooler and at more ideal operating temperature.

Craig Grace (16:57):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Jeff Reinis (16:58):

Uh, with that much power being brought into data centers and these chips, even though these chips are super efficient, the heat that they generate is unbelievable. So it's all about, you know, when it comes to data centers, it's all about space. The power being electricity, uhhuh, and the cooling. That's pretty much it. I mean, <laugh> from a data center standpoint

Craig Grace (17:29):

Mm-hmm

Craig Grace (17:29):

<affirmative>.

Craig Grace (17:29):

And some of these new, new servers, chips, they take three phase power because they have to have three or four connections. Is that correct? How many connections have you been seeing?

Jeff Reinis (17:37):

Absolutely. I mean, the, the energy draw that some of these computers are taking is, heck, what a, what a house would normally use. It's in rock.

Jessica Denson (17:52):

Wow. Why is that? Is it just because, I mean, I've heard this before, but why is that? It's, it's just the massive amount of com computation, a compute.

Jeff Reinis (18:05):

Yep. 100%. It's the massive amount of compute power that these things are displaying. NVIDIA's the leader in that, uh, a MD is another big, big player in this space, uh, with the GPU cards.

Craig Grace (18:21):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Jeff Reinis (18:22):

Uh, AI is where it's at right now. It's disrupting the way America does business.

Jessica Denson (18:31):

Yeah. Um, at Connected Nation, and I know I just sit down, so we were just learning about each other. We're working with, uh, new, uh, newbie ventures to build IPS in rural areas, internet exchange, uh, points. And part of that, they're talking about putting some data stuff, but that's where they exchange data. But that's different than a data center, right?

Craig Grace (18:52):

Correct. Right.

Jessica Denson (18:52):

That's the data center is actually where these computers operate and exchange points is where they exchange information rather than going to a big city.

Craig Grace (19:02):

Correct.

Jessica Denson (19:03):

So, see, I know something <laugh>, right? I just wanted to show that I need something, I'll

Jeff Reinis (19:06):

Hire

Craig Grace (19:07):

You.

Jessica Denson (19:07):

Yeah.

Craig Grace (19:07):

Yes, absolutely. And the other thing we're seeing is that, um, you know, we're in the telecom business providing fiber assets, but the big data centers, the main draw is energy, like Jeff was saying, is that people are looking at where can we get energy? So they're buying up the land next to these rural energy providers, and then if they can't purchase certain land, and they're looking at where can I buy land during, by where a natural gas production line goes in. Oh, yeah. I think if that's why, if you look at GE Renova stock, which I own, none, they've gone from one 50 to four 50. That's because the data centers are going out, buying the equipment to go ahead and put on the property to build their data center. Because right now you have, I'm not exactly sure of this, but a longer than a two year period of time before the utility companies to PUC or whatever for that area can actually bring that much power on board. So they're not going to wait as long for that. And also, TXE just initiated a $15,000 permitting fee, if you would like to look at this, if you're going to use so much megawatts. And also if you're a, a miner in Texas, a crypto miner, and you use over 75 megawatts and you don't file, you have to pay, you have a $25,000 fine.

Jessica Denson (20:17):

Oh, wow.

Craig Grace (20:17):

So we're seeing the electricity driving where the data centers are going, and it used to be the fiber, but when you're talking about a billion dollar data center, they're willing to pay what a fiber is, like $300,000 a mile in sand, not rock, not through Austin, but on average. Yeah. To build fiber.

Jessica Denson (20:33):

So this may be a dumb question, but is there a push to try to be able to handle these type of, these massive data loads with less energy? Is there some to figure that out underway? <laugh>?

Jeff Reinis (20:51):

Yes. And whoever figures it out will exceed Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and everyone else. For the richest person in the world,

Jessica Denson (21:04):

They will win. Yeah. I wish my brain worked that

Jeff Reinis (21:07):

Way, but Absolutely. Um, they're, they're always trying to catch up to, you know, the other, the other flip side of it mm-hmm <affirmative>. Which is the power draw and everything.

Craig Grace (21:20):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. In fact, Jeff, didn't they change the colors of the, uh, the racks and cabinets recently because of power, didn't they?

Jessica Denson (21:27):

They changed the color. Interesting. Jeff

Jeff Reinis (21:29):

<laugh>, well, data centers of old, and this is not always the case, but you know, traditionally when you walked into a data center, you would see black cabinets

Craig Grace (21:41):

Mm-hmm

Jeff Reinis (21:41):

<affirmative>. Uh, and, and that was great because power draw of old servers and, and the energy needed to power a data center wasn't significant. But what companies have really been able to find is when you've changed the cabinets to white, the lighting reflects off of it. It makes the data center brighter, thus using less energy, becoming more energy efficient, saving that data center operator money. Oh, wow. So it's, it's gone down to that. They're

Jessica Denson (22:30):

Like every little way. Yeah.

Jeff Reinis (22:32):

Every little bit makes a significant difference. And it's, and it does work.

Jessica Denson (22:39):

It's fascinating.

Jeff Reinis (22:39):

If you go into newer data centers, it's common to see white cabinets and white cabinets that are considerably taller than the older traditional cabinets.

Jessica Denson (22:53):

And the height has some that helps as well.

Jeff Reinis (22:55):

The height doesn't help much from the energy in, in a certain way, but it makes that single cabinet denser.

Jessica Denson (23:07):

Oh, gotcha.

Jeff Reinis (23:07):

So you can fit more servers into a single cabinet. Uh, so that's pretty much the purpose of a taller cabinet.

Jessica Denson (23:15):

Well, just sitting down and finding you two here in my <laugh>, the podcast area, this has turned into a very interesting conversation.

Jeff Reinis (23:22):

Space Invaders,

Jessica Denson (23:24):

<laugh>. I know, I like it. Um, now I'm gonna have that Space Invaders music. Remember that. Do, do, do do, do Sounds in my head for the next two days. I know.

Jeff Reinis (23:33):

I, I don't know what you're talking about. <laugh>.

Jessica Denson (23:35):

You do. Well, Craig Grace and Jeff Rainis, did I say your last name right? You, you corrected me earlier. Um, I appreciate you both from co, co cogent, excuse me, communications. Thank you for your time.

Jeff Reinis (23:48):

Thank you Jessica. Jessica, I appreciate it. Thank you very much. This was awesome. It was awesome.

Jessica Denson (23:53):

We'll continue our coverage from the Broadband Community Summit on our next episode of Connected Nation. I'm Jessica Sen. Thanks for listening. If you wanna know more about us, head to connect to nation.org or find our latest episodes on your favorite podcast platforms.