Bandwidth situation

[Bradtechonline]

Where I work we can only get a T1 circuit. I've checked into upgrading beyond a T1 with our current provider, and it would cost half a million for AT&T to install anything beyond the capacity of a T1 circuit into our area *rural area*. This is what my provider told me. I always have the capacity to install other T1 circuits, and combine the bandwidth but T1 lines are expensive.

So I'm thinking about moving on to High Speed ADSL in our area. We can get 5 static IP's and 6 Mbps Down 786Kbps up. Only down fall is that ADSL isn't as high a priority as T1 Lines are, and sometimes may go down. In my area though, I think I've only seen my ADSL at home go down once within 2 years of being on it. There are providers in the area trying to sell my wireless, beyond the speed of a T1 but I'm not going down that route.

So basically what decision would you make. Stick with the T1 speed limit always have up time, or risk getting more bandwidth with ADSL and put up with your connection being lower down on priority list if it goes down. I've been managing my bandwidth via QoS but still 1.5 Mbps isn't very much pipe when it seems year after year more applications are going web based that we use.

Looking for some advice, thanks.

 

[netsysadmin]

Give us some more info like how many users/servers use the bandwidth...etc.

John

 

[JackMDS]

Get DSL, leave the T1 as is, and get dual WAN Router.

 

[bruceb]

You would need to weigh the cost of a single or multiple T1 lines versus the cost of the high speed ADSL line.
You might also ask AT&T if they could drop a T3 Pipe into your company. It might be cheaper in the long run
and it will be much faster than even high speed ADSL .. and you would extra bandwidth for other uses.
But you would need some equipment to handle the channel breakout on the T3 unless your router can take
a T3 signal as a direct input .. some can

 

[Bradtechonline]

Originally posted by: JackMDS
Get DSL, leave the T1 as is, and get dual WAN Router.

Didn't realize they made those until this post. Looks like an excellent idea to me. Thanks for the suggestion. So basically I would just hook in my t1 line, and DSL line into this, and the device will integrated the bandwidth? I'll check out what Cisco has to offer.

 

[acaeti]

It won't "bond" the traffic like a bonded T1 will, but it should load balance across the links. In other words, you'll never get the aggregate bandwidth out of the pair of the connections, but with multiple users you will be able to sustain a total load spread across both links.

 

[acaeti]

Of course you could also put a dual wan router across T1 and WISP... If you were to do so I'd recommend having all your VPN users come over the T1 and your office users over the WISP and fail into the T1 if the WISP is down or being crappy.

 

[JackMDS]

To put it simple.

If your T1 (example) is 1Mb/sec. and the DSL would be 10Mb/sec. you would Not be able to download single file at 1 + 10 =11

However, you can download multiple files that all together would amount to 11Mb/sec.

 

[cmetz]

Bradtechonline, are you certain you can get the ADSL speeds advertised? Often DSL is a YMMV technology. Don't commit to that path before you find out what you really can and can't get.

 

[TechBoyJK]

Originally posted by: JackMDS
Get DSL, leave the T1 as is, and get dual WAN Router.

This is what I would do. I think these routers use some form of BGP. But I could be wrong. I guess it depends on the device.

The bottom line is the solution JACKMDS provided gives a form of redundancy. You can make the faster DSL line the priority, and fail back to the T1 if necessary. Plus, when both are healthy, it will make aggregate internet access that much better.