DSL vs T1

With the economy the way it is, going through the "How do we save money" meetings seems to be becoming part of my everyday routine. I've been searching around for opinions on the subject of T1 vs DSL.

With DSL offering greater speeds at a fraction of the price what would the pros/cons be to implementing DSL as a cost saver? Sure T1s offer voice and data as well as dedicated bandwidth, versus only data on DSL with bandwidth flucatuating based on user count, time of day, distance from the CO, but in my particular situation, we only have approximately 150 users with internet access, and only have about 50-60 users actively connected to the internet at any given time.

If I was to say get multiple DSL connections to replace our two T1s, or go with a DSL and a Cable connection (for redundancy) and load balance between them, would this even out the bandwidth, redundancy, and reliability as with the T1s while at the same time saving hundreds of dollars a month?

I'm just spitballing and seeing if anyone has any similar experience or input. Thanks in advance for the ideas.

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Comments

pwjohnston

They have cable inet for business now too. At least Comcast does where I'm at.

tiersten

The major difference is that DSL and cable won't have a SLA. The telco can turn around and say hrmmm yeah... we're fixing it sometime... come back next week.

arwes

We ended up getting a T1 point to point to our Baton Rouge, LA branch office. They use terminal services to connect to us, and for whatever reason the site to site VPN was slowing them to a crawl. We use MikroTik for our routers. When they work, great! When they don't, good luck finding anyone who knows anything about them. But ever since we put the T1 in, they've been mostly complaint free.

We do however use Comcast as a "backbone" for networking our phone system to our office in Rayville, LA and to our Baton Rouge, LA office. It's another thing that when it works, it's great. But when Comcast has an outage, no more direct dialing between offices.

contentpros

The choice is often what are you using the connection for? DSL connections are usually asymmetric where your down speeds are generally faster but your up speeds are lower and as previously mentioned the SLA's. If you are just using it to surf and fetch mail DSL is probably fine but if you are hosting sites, mail, terminal services/Citrix, or vpn you may want/need better up speeds.

Are you monitoring your current bandwidth usage or do you have any sort of usage baselines? Saving money is great but it is important to keep scalability in mind.

bellhead

Do you have a voip phone system?

If you have one stay with the t-1's, if not I would mix my services keep one t-1 and just get a pipe for the internet. Dsl or cable.

You have to remember with a t-1 a bell tech will come wind, sleet, or snow within 3 hours, dsl or cable you fall into a ticket que and are just another number.

flares2

Thanks, a lot of good points. Currently no web hosting or VoIP, but we do use Citrix and will soon be hosting email locally as opposed to through our corporate office. I'm thinking of keeping one of our two T1s and adding a Business DSL line, then through the firewall try to load balance by protocol, keeping all corporate applications through the T1 and general internet usage through the DSL.

Paul Boz

tiersten wrote: »

The major difference is that DSL and cable won't have a SLA. The telco can turn around and say hrmmm yeah... we're fixing it sometime... come back next week.

That depends on the provider. At the service provider which I used to work for we had SNMP traps from the static DSL customers' modems and would contact the customer at their contact number 24/7 and dispatch accordingly. If the customer didn't answer at 2am we would dispatch at 9 when they opened. If they were open for business we would immediately call them and ask them if they're down. If so, dispatch immediately. this was on business class fiber to the facility as well as static DSL.

desertmouse

I'd check into EOC or ethernet over copper. My guess is you could pay 1/2 of what you're currently paying for the same bandwidth. And you get the same 4 hour SLA, and you get the same up/down speeds as the two T1's. *Win*

EDIT: forgot to mention - EOC scales well so you can add bandwidth easily when that mail server comes home.

tiersten

Paul Boz wrote: »

That depends on the provider. At the service provider which I used to work for we had SNMP traps from the static DSL customers' modems and would contact the customer at their contact number 24/7 and dispatch accordingly. If the customer didn't answer at 2am we would dispatch at 9 when they opened. If they were open for business we would immediately call them and ask them if they're down. If so, dispatch immediately. this was on business class fiber to the facility as well as static DSL.

Yeah. It would depend on the provider. Most providers I've seen don't guarantee anything even for a "business" line though. For example, here in the UK all a business DSL line gives you is lower contention in the ATM backhaul. If you want a SLA then you need to get a leased line.

My home DSL is a "business" product and it suffers quite a few random drop outs. My ISP are pretty good at fixing things at their end and informing me what the causes are but it still happens. Most of the time, it isn't their fault and actually something somewhere in the telcos network.

bellhead

Also, when I worked for the telco we offered different levels of data service. It didn't stop at T-1's for data, we offered a mixed bag of services offering 10mbs both ways for about the price of $500 a month. It was 4 dsl lines bonded with a download of 20/3.5 really, but for web surfing it was ideal. Also we had a truly 10/10 service with fiber to the building, 100/100, and gigabyte ethernet. It really all depends upon what you need, but for the price of one t-1 you could get the 10/10 service with the fiber, it required a 3 year contract was all. The one thing I miss about my job was the sales commission, I would rack up about a $1000 a month talking to networking people who just didn't know the Bell's offered all these existing services. By knowing the technical side and the products it was easy money.

desertmouse

desertmouse wrote: »

I'd check into EOC or ethernet over copper. My guess is you could pay 1/2 of what you're currently paying for the same bandwidth. And you get the same 4 hour SLA, and you get the same up/down speeds as the two T1's. *Win*

EDIT: forgot to mention - EOC scales well so you can add bandwidth easily when that mail server comes home.

To the OP: Did you ever decide / follow anything?

Kaminsky

With outsourcing, a lot of clients want a secure point to point and will not touch DSL regardless. Those not wanting so much bandwidth for certain links regularly go Kilostream. ( yeah .. you read it right! ) Some won't even share patch panels. Biggest single KS I have is 960k which is enormously expensive and I could probably get a few E3s for the same price... Go Figure !