What is the benefit of a T1 over cable or DSL ?
- Thread starter AFB
- Start date
Quality.
That being said, all T1s are not created equal. The backbone the T1 is attached to is important. I have literally hundreds of customers on T1s that get calls everyday with other companies trying to sell them DSL or cable for 1/3 the cost of my T1, but none-- seriously, not one-- will give up their UUnet T1. With a T1 from UUnet (or another Tier 1 provider), you can guarantee you have a full T1 of bandwidth all to yourself straight to the internet. It will not be aggregated or shared along the way. I know many companies who sell T1s and have thousands of customers, yet only have a DS3 connection to the internet.
T1s have symmetrical bandwidth. 1536k up AND down, ideal for server application running across the internet, VPNs, mail servers, website/DNS hosting, etc. Cable and DSL symmetrical offerings are few and far between.
SLAs matter as well. UUnet guarantees their T1 to have 100% uptime. They also guarantee 45ms of latency or less, I believe (might be 55ms). Getting an SLA on cable/dsl can be an exercise in futility.
It all comes down to application. i.e. what are you doing with your connection? If it's simple web browsing and email, with no critical need for guaranteed uptime, or unlimited number of IP addresses, then DSL/cable is perfect for ya. Some applications favor T1s.
T1s can vary in price just as much as anything else as well. I've seen them as low as $450 and as high as $1000 for the exact same thing from the same company. Everything is negotiable.
That being said, all T1s are not created equal. The backbone the T1 is attached to is important. I have literally hundreds of customers on T1s that get calls everyday with other companies trying to sell them DSL or cable for 1/3 the cost of my T1, but none-- seriously, not one-- will give up their UUnet T1. With a T1 from UUnet (or another Tier 1 provider), you can guarantee you have a full T1 of bandwidth all to yourself straight to the internet. It will not be aggregated or shared along the way. I know many companies who sell T1s and have thousands of customers, yet only have a DS3 connection to the internet.
T1s have symmetrical bandwidth. 1536k up AND down, ideal for server application running across the internet, VPNs, mail servers, website/DNS hosting, etc. Cable and DSL symmetrical offerings are few and far between.
SLAs matter as well. UUnet guarantees their T1 to have 100% uptime. They also guarantee 45ms of latency or less, I believe (might be 55ms). Getting an SLA on cable/dsl can be an exercise in futility.
It all comes down to application. i.e. what are you doing with your connection? If it's simple web browsing and email, with no critical need for guaranteed uptime, or unlimited number of IP addresses, then DSL/cable is perfect for ya. Some applications favor T1s.
T1s can vary in price just as much as anything else as well. I've seen them as low as $450 and as high as $1000 for the exact same thing from the same company. Everything is negotiable.
Home cable and DSL plans do not guarantee speeds. They all say "up to" some set speed. Unless maybe if you get a high end business plan. You didn't specify though, so I'm not sure what exactly you are comparing a T1 to.
As deadseasquirrel said though, it depends on what you need. If you need lots of bandwidth, you need something nice like a T1 or better. If it's home use, you must have a lot of money to even consider a T1.
As deadseasquirrel said though, it depends on what you need. If you need lots of bandwidth, you need something nice like a T1 or better. If it's home use, you must have a lot of money to even consider a T1.
amdfanboy, T1 circuits have better diagnostic functions - that is, you can loop-back test the circuit at your CSU, your SmartJack, the remote SmartJack, and the remote CSU - helps a lot with tracking down problems. In the telco network, a T1 circuit is back-hauled from your CO to your ISP as a TDM circuit with a fixed width, instead of being statistically multiplexed into an oversubscribed back-haul from your CO to your ISP - the latter arrangement can be bad for performance.
A lot of it is simply that a T1 service is considered "business class" with costs and support to match. In practice, a SDSL line from UUNet is going to be better than a T1 from Crazy Bob's ISP & Bait Shop. I can't tell you how many folks I see with T1s to random nobody ISPs who have tons of trouble, much more so than a Covad.Net SDSL line would have.
As a matter of market positioning more than anything else, I haven't seen an ISP today who will do multi-homing (BGP et al.) over a DSL line. It can be done technically, I've done it before, but ISPs won't do it because they want to upsell to T1.
A lot of it is simply that a T1 service is considered "business class" with costs and support to match. In practice, a SDSL line from UUNet is going to be better than a T1 from Crazy Bob's ISP & Bait Shop. I can't tell you how many folks I see with T1s to random nobody ISPs who have tons of trouble, much more so than a Covad.Net SDSL line would have.
As a matter of market positioning more than anything else, I haven't seen an ISP today who will do multi-homing (BGP et al.) over a DSL line. It can be done technically, I've done it before, but ISPs won't do it because they want to upsell to T1.
I'm just here to speak on behalf of Crazy Bob's ISP & Bait Shop. Crazy Bob's has some of the best webternet hosting around. Crazy Bob has crazy prices! Crazy Bob must be crazy to sell you people T1's at the prices he does, so before he goes back to the loony bin, you best be gettin' your dial on!
I didnt see that anyone mentioned one of the mosrt important things....
T1's are federally regulated by the FCC and if the circuit gores down the provider has 4 Hours to have it up and running. If inay other types goes down your at the mercy of the company.
T1's are federally regulated by the FCC and if the circuit gores down the provider has 4 Hours to have it up and running. If inay other types goes down your at the mercy of the company.
DainBrammage, please cite a source for that.
In practice, lines going all the way down and staying that way is surprisingly rare in my experience. Lines having errors, or being flaky, is the common failure mode, and one that involves lots of finger-pointing and headache to fix. SLAs generally do not cover this situation, conveniently.
amdfanboy, labor is expensive. You have to balance the difference in cost with the costs associated with the difference in reliability. For a real small business that depends on the Internet, it's not hard to justify it - look at the losses if it goes down. For a small business that doesn't depend on the 'net (a school should fall into this category), then the balance tilts towards saving money and putting up with more problems.
In practice, lines going all the way down and staying that way is surprisingly rare in my experience. Lines having errors, or being flaky, is the common failure mode, and one that involves lots of finger-pointing and headache to fix. SLAs generally do not cover this situation, conveniently.
amdfanboy, labor is expensive. You have to balance the difference in cost with the costs associated with the difference in reliability. For a real small business that depends on the Internet, it's not hard to justify it - look at the losses if it goes down. For a small business that doesn't depend on the 'net (a school should fall into this category), then the balance tilts towards saving money and putting up with more problems.
Yes, please. Because it surely isn't the case nor have I ever heard of this in 12 years being in telco.
Originally posted by: Homerboy
Its simply wrong.
How can you regulate how quick something gets fixed?
Ive been in the telco business for sometime myself, even selling T1+ for many of those years and I have never heard of such a thing.
Urban legend I think
haha! The only certainty in telco is...
"no trouble found" is an appropriate closure for a problem.
DUDE!!!!! I got no freakin' carrier!!!!! What do you mean no trouble found!!!! Is this red alarm here to amuse you? Does that mean no trouble found? So red now equals "no trouble found?!" Don't you understand the fundamentals of telco??? Green, good. Red, bad. Now fix it...probably a bad card in the CO. Should I troubleshoot your circuit some more for you!!!!??
Not sure about the federally regulated stuff, but I know when my circuits go down, verizon is on the phone within an hour letting me know. Who knows if they are fixing the problem. But they are atleast telling me about it.
I appreciate it, since we have 3 techs for 11 buildings.
I don't know of any regulations either. However, most carriers will have a MTTR (Mean Time To Repair) of 4 hours that they will write into your contract and provide an SLA. Now, as was mentioned above, calling them on this is often difficult. With MCI, the 100% uptime SLA includes the local loop (even if it's LEC provided)... though, the outage has to be for a continual hour or something like that for you to get any credits. If the MTTR is not met, I doubt if credits are automatic. Again, like pulling teeth most of the time.
SpunkyJones
Diamond Member
- Apr 1, 2004
- 5,090
- 1
- 81
Originally posted by: spidey07
haha! The only certainty in telco is...
"no trouble found" is an appropriate closure for a problem.
You forgot "Cleared while testing"
Originally posted by: SpunkyJones
Originally posted by: spidey07
haha! The only certainty in telco is...
"no trouble found" is an appropriate closure for a problem.
You forgot "Cleared while testing"
Which means bubba decided to take the jack out of loopback.
An hour? Jeez. When any of my circuits go down, I know the second it happens. It's usually a race to see which goes off first, my phone with a screaming user on the other end, or my pager letting me know what went down.
Most teclo's advertise "proactive notification of line troubles". What this really means is that if they feel like it, they'll notify you if they know there's going to a planned outage. Never once in my 3 years of dealing with telco's in a business dedicated-circuit environment has any teclo ever called me to tell me "hey, there's a problem with your circuit, we're working to fix it." Or "we see your circuit is down, did your equipment fail?" I'm always on the phone with them first, and their usual response after I tell them it's down is "Hmmm...why yes, you're right, it is down isnt it?" Um...yeah. "proactive notification" is a bunch of marketing crap, and a 1hr response time to have them call you and tell you the line is down is even worse.
Homerboy
Lifer
- Mar 1, 2000
- 30,890
- 5,001
- 126
I will agree with you on this for 99% of the carries, HOWEVER the support my old office at nap.net/BBN/GTEI/Genuity (lotsa buyouts there) for or ISPD customers (specific group of wholesale customers.. not end user retail customers) was the best in the business. MANY times they would beat the customer to knowing their cicruit was down or under attack etc etc. I had MANY (some very high profile) customers commend them on their service and response times... it was really beautiful.
What happened? Verizon bailed on Genuity, Genuity went into a terrible tailspin, hit Chap11 and L3 scooped us up for pennies on the dollar (nearly pesos on the the dollar) and dismantled us.
When you work in a rural school enviroment, and anywhere from 2 - 1000 users per building its dependent on location whether you hear it from the users or the telco first, I can see in corporate setting where faster response times would be cruical, but in the enviroments I deal with. Its all about research papers/email/ and the scores for last night's game *sigh*. But you gotta start somewhere.
TRENDING THREADS
-
Discussion Zen 5 Speculation (EPYC Turin and Strix Point/Granite Ridge - Ryzen 9000)- Started by DisEnchantment
- Replies: 25K
-
Discussion Intel Meteor, Arrow, Lunar & Panther Lakes Discussion Threads
- Started by Tigerick
- Replies: 21K
-
Discussion Intel current and future Lakes & Rapids thread- Started by TheF34RChannel
- Replies: 23K
-
-
Facebook
Twitter