High(er) speed internet options??

[Z24]

I'm looking for options to hook up a small business (8 - 10 office staff) to the internet.

The problem is, Cable and DSL are not available. As of a year ago, ISDN was not available (going to inquire again tomorrow).

Are there any other options to research? How much does a fractional T1 cost? Is frame-relay an option for internet access? Are these typically available anywhere?

Thanks,
Dave

BTW, satellite is not an option.

 

[ScottMac]

Frame Relay would probably be your best option. It should be available from nearly any ISP to pretty much anywhere in the country. The parameter to keep an eye on, especially if it's looking like a good (cheap) deal is the Committed Information Rate (CIR). CIR is the bandwidth you pay for, whether you use it or not; it's what the carrier/ISP says he can deliver to you 99.99% of the time. There are deals where you can buy zero CIR lines....but you'll pay for every so many KBytes ot Mbytes that crosses the cloud.

For example, you may be getting a physical T1, but if the CIR is 128K, any traffic rates that exceed 128K are usually billable. Every carrier/ISP has a different deal, get any promises on paper....

First figure out how much traffic the network will need to maintain as an overall average ("sustained rate&quot.

Then look at what events (random or scheduled)that will cause traffic peaks ("peak rate&quot, and how long (time-wise) the peaks are likely to be ("burst rate&quot.

As I mentioned before, every ISP/carrier has a different deal, get a couple solid quotes, ask about "What if...." for going over your contracted CIR, get references if they're available. Most ISP/carriers only operate on multi-year contracts (they'll do shorter contracts, but they're WAY more expensive)....so shop wisely, y'all are gonna be siamese twins, joined at the cloud.

FWIW

Scott

 

[Z24]

If you go the frame-relay route, what kind of hardware do you need in the office?

Also, if I understand this correctly, you're not limited to local ISP's with frame relay as it's not distance dependent. Is that right?

 

[L3Guy]

About half the time, the ISP furnishes the router.
If not, its probably best to ask the ISP to recomend one.

However, any router with V.35 or T-1/56K interfaces that supports frame relay should work
Examples would be Cisco 1600/2500/2600, Nortel AN/ASN, 3Com 227, etc.
The choice of routers depends on training, support, compatibility with ISP, etc.
There are probably others, as well.

All the routers mentioned are "small office" routers.

HTH

 

[ScottMac]

"It depends"

If you're using the connection for office-to-office, then it's gonna stay in one carrier's cloud (or his contracted delivery partner). If you're using it to get to the Internet, once you're on the Internet, you go wherever you want.

The ISP/carrier will give you "DLCIs"...a number representing your virtual circuit into the cloud. If you're going office-to-office, your local router is gonna be aimed at the cloud, the cloud is gonna route it to the DLCI on the other end. You can have multiple DLCIs that connect to a single physical interface or sub-interface.

It's very common for field offices to connect at 128 or 256, then have a T1 or two coming into the home office. The cloud aggregates the circuits and passes them through the same physical interface. So, even if you connect to ten different offices scattered around the country, you still only have one T1 connection back at Corporate to catch the traffic. This same scenario is available to (more expensive) point-to-point, but since the bandwidth is dedicated to you and your organization, the aggregate from teh field can only equal the inbound bandwidth (like, up to a T1). With Frame Relay, because it's non-dedicated media, you can oversubscribe (within reasonable statistical limits) the inbound link.

FWIW

Scott

 

[doug]

You might try looking around at www.dslreports.com to see what options are available. You can also call your local phone company to see what they offer, I can't get cable or DSL, well actually I can get iDSL which is essentially DSL over ISDN.