On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 2:49 PM, jack craig <jcraig@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > so far, t1 & cable modem are separate, discreet options. > ... > > The cable connection rates are real low compared to our t1, i am not > thinking > we ought to get the cable connection and if its as fast as advertised, > ditch the t1 we have now. > Jack: You're really comparing apples and oranges here. T1 is essentially a set of 16-64 kbps connections bonded together to form a ~1 Mbps connection, typically symmetric (up/down speeds the same) and provided by "The Phone Company." As such, it's a well-known, mature, pretty highly-engineered product that can be expected to deliver very high Quality of Service (QOS) and can be contracted to have a particular Service Level Agreement (SLA) that provides for certain uptimes, response times, and penalties for failure to deliver service. But you pay for all those acronyms. A business cable service, while a step up from consumer-grade service, usually doesn't provide the same level of quality nor reliability. It's typically asymmetric (16 Mbps/2 Mbps, for example) and those speed ratings may be "burst mode" ratings and not actually long-term expected bandwidth. If you're providing some services to your customers via your Internet connection, the QOS/SLA may be important to you, particularly if you can place a value on your services in terms of hard dollars lost per hour of downtime (or sluggishness). And there are other factors to consider, such a latency (roughly, how long it takes to start a transmission). And cable plant installations vary all over the place, from highly-reliable to highly-fallible. If you know of other businesses in your area, you can get some sense of the reliability of the local plant and the local Cable Guys. And you ought to check on http://www.dslreports.com/ as well for reports from your area. I'd inquire with the cable company what their SLA policies are, or what might be available. At typical US prices of $600/mo for T1 versus $99/mo for cable, the face value of saving $6000 a year sounds attractive, but those savings can easily be stomped on by a one-week-downtime. On the flip side, if you're really just providing more bandwidth for the employees to surf and play PacMan on Google, business-grade cable can be a cheap investment. You might want to consider paralleling the two services: use the T1 for the essential services and the cable for the office surfing. Experience a downtime or two with each of them and determine what's best. Finally, there are other options. We use a business DSL here in the office for our highly-reliable static IP services, and a cable connection for office surfing. Bandwidth isn't as great as a T1, but costs are significantly lower. The two services are completely separate and we don't route between them (other than via the Internet), although we could cobble together some patch cables if one or the other was down long-term. It's worth shopping around and determining what's the right mix of services for your situation. -- Ted Roche Ted Roche & Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
