setting up t1 line at office

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akapaulk

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Jun 21, 2002
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I'm working for a company that has 10 computers and all of them are on dialup :rolleyes: We download a lot of emails and usually it takes a good 3-5 hours (1/2 of a business day) to download everything with attachments. I have persuaded management to get a cable/dsl line.

Here's the problem. Since we are located in an unincorporated region, neither cable or dsl service our surrounding area. I have done some research and a t1 line will work for us.

Here's my concern - if it was cable/dsl I would be able to network the entire office very easily, but I have no experience with a t1 line, however I don't think it should be THAT hard to install if you know how to setup up basic networks.

Are there any good t1 line setup sites? Any good routers you guys can recommend? This is only for 10-20 computers (if we expand in the future). I need something really simple to setup. I know my basic dhcp and so on. The only thing I need is

1) which types of routers are good for a t1
2) is there anything special I need to know when setting up a t1 line or is it pretty much like setting up a cable/dsl connection. I'm planning on putting everyone on dhcp, or maybe put everyone on a static local ip address..

Please help.

PK
 
Cisco 1700 series router, maybe a 1600 used if yer on a budget...all depends...

your phone carrier will provide you with the details on protocol spec (HDLC, frame relay, etc) so they will give you the information and you can configure the router with those settings (which we could help you with).
 
and yes, the serial (T1) interface on your router will be the "real" routable internet IP address from your ISP.

it would probably be best to do NAT and use private addresses for all your clients
 
Depending on the provider you get the T1 from, they will sometimes allow you to lease a router from them.

Generally I've seen Cisco 2600's in place, and a few Siemans routers (much "cheaper" than a cisco)

I've also done a Cisco 2500 just because our 2600 fried on us.

The 2600's are mostly used because they are reliable, but for such a small company I'm not sure you could justify the cost of purchasing it outright.

As for as you are concerned, unless you plan on doing *everything* related to the T1, you don't really need to worry much about setting it up.
The provider more than likely will handle that for you. All you need to do is then plug in the Ethernet into your Firewall, and then on into your LAN
 
I used a site called http://www.shop4t1.com/

We have an AT&T t1 to our office in WI. Speeds are great, had no downtime in the 7 months we have been using them. We do their managed package which includes router rental and full management by them for an extra $50 a month. We are paying $650 a month.

Side note, I am setting up a T1 from ATT in West Des Moines this weekend through this shop4t1.com. I highly recommend them. If you need a sales contact, pm me.
 
I have a full T1 thorugh Covad and use a Siemens se5940 router. We initially had some outages due to the outside wiring (SBC/Ameritch side) but after that things have been fairly stable.

Where in Chicago are you located? (I'm in Schaumburg)

Also, how much are you looking to spend? Do you want a full T? If so, I wonder how they're going to feel about spending ~$500/month when they only have ten computers.
 
We use 2600's for our T1s at all our remote sites, plugs directlyy into the line that SBC gives up and routs its happy butt off all day long.

DO NOT FORGET! That now is also the time to plan and put into place your security and options for central administration, but remeber that SECURITY is key and will make you Job/Life easyer.
 
f7 man, f7 ;)

Something with an internal or external csu/dsu would suffice. We use cisco 1700's for that types of application.
 
+1 on the 2600 Cisco.. There is always Netopia for the smaller offices, or you can just lease one from the provider and let them worry about setting up the access side.
 
since you have only 10 comps there why not get a intergrated voice/data t-1?

depending how many voice lines you have there could save them on the phone bill and on the data
 
^^^^^^
Ver good point. You could justify the higher cost of a T1 with lower cost of VoIP.

As for setting up the network, I would recommend that you get them to hook it up for you. They will normally do it at a small extra cost, but you can also lease the router from them and they service/replace whenever needed. This can save you alot of headaches in the long run.
As soon as the connection is set, then it's all up to you to sort out the firewall and switch. But if you do go the VoIP route, make sure you get a good Cisco switch with QoS control so the voice doesn't break up.
 
can you guys explain using VOIP with a T1? How much bandwidth does it take up? Currently our phone system is 6 lines. With 15 extensions. Can the VOIP be set up like this. And what happens if all 6 lines are used to the T1 speed? This is a very interesting way to maybe convince my work to go the t1 route as well. How much does it roughly cost to do say 6 lines like we currently use?
 
Another vote for a Cisco 2600. I haven't had to do much at all to ours in the 3.5 years we had ours. For much a small office, you may want to look into getting a burstable T1, it might be cheaper. As long as you average low bandwidth overall, they work fine.

For wiring, it's just the same as cable/dsl. You want to think some security into it as well, so your users don't have useless machines filled with spyware/spam/viruses and taken over.
 
travanx said:
can you guys explain using VOIP with a T1? How much bandwidth does it take up? Currently our phone system is 6 lines. With 15 extensions. Can the VOIP be set up like this. And what happens if all 6 lines are used to the T1 speed? This is a very interesting way to maybe convince my work to go the t1 route as well. How much does it roughly cost to do say 6 lines like we currently use?
Click to expand...

Welll First question would be are you lease a fractional t1 or all of the t1?

If you rent the entire t1 all you need is a few devices to use the t1 just as a regular phone line/ and data line. You can do this with a fractioanl T1 but things start to get limited. T1 and T3 and all that can be used for both voice/data, But you need equipment to pull the data from the voice apart. And these devices are kinda spendy. VOIP is totally different. I think you are gettign a bit confused. But you could scratch all the phone lines and us VOIP, while using all the T1 for data. But then again you will need to buy more devices for that. You have to weigh the amount of money you will save per device cost. I don't know that you will be saving all that much if you only need 6 phone lines.

Usually this is done with a big company.
See in my company we lease 2 T3's it is roughly like 80/.20 split. 80% for data bandwidth and the other for voice. We have about 30 phone lines that split into 300 + EXTS for Voice that will go into a phone system for the 300 + people here.

You have to do some math to see if you will save money over say a 5 year period.
Oh math, I love it. :(
 
thanks I wasn't too sure how all of that worked together. We had a fractional T1 in our apartment in college, I think my roomates were insance for actually going through with it.

But I never really thought about VOIP until I saw this thread. Than I started looking more into it yesterday. So how much bandwidth does a phone call take up?
 
travanx said:
thanks I wasn't too sure how all of that worked together. We had a fractional T1 in our apartment in college, I think my roomates were insance for actually going through with it.

But I never really thought about VOIP until I saw this thread. Than I started looking more into it yesterday. So how much bandwidth does a phone call take up?
Click to expand...

Well I really have never used VOIP so I really don't know, but I found some info that might help a little bit.

Each VOIP unit has a specific codec that does something like comprression and encapsalation of the voice to the packet.
So different codec for VOIP use different bandwidth settings.

Here is a summary

http://www.terracall.com/FAQs_white_1.aspx has this table which shows how the codec's theoretical bandwidth usage expands with UDP/IP headers:

Codec BR NEB
G.711 64 Kbps 87.2 Kbps
G.729 8 Kbps 31.2 Kbps
G.723.1 6.4 Kbps 21.9 Kbps
G.723.1 5.3 Kbps 20.8 Kbps
G.726 32 Kbps 55.2 Kbps
G.726 24 Kbps 47.2 Kbps
G.728 16 Kbps 31.5 Kbps
iLBC 15 Kbps 27.7 Kbps

BR = Bit rate
NEB = Nominal Ethernet Bandwidth (one direction).


(Theory)
So it looks like the G.723.1 5.3 Kbps takes 20.8 Kbps of bandwidth.
You are getting a full T1 , I think, so since you have 10 computer I think you would have 10 people at your office. Again i am guessing. Solets say all 10 people are on the phone.

Lets do math :(

T1 is 1.5 Mb which is ~ 1500 to make it easy /8 which gives you almost 200Kbps

So if all 10 people are on all your bandwidth will be used.
But in reality there would really never have all 10 people on so lets say 5 people on.
So That would be 100 so your using 100 of your 200 therefore you can use 100 for downloading eamil and web pages.

So you still have to do more math sorry :( but you might save some $$$ by using VOIP and a T1 and get rid of the phone lines all together. Hop this help a little.

PS. none of the calculation above are in any way exact I did alot of rounding to easy the pain on my brain but hopefully you get the idea :)
 
here are some companies that provide data/voice on a t-1

basically the way it works is that you have 24 channels in a full t-1 they usally split off 8 ot more channels for voice. which means you get around 386k-768k up and down data speed .

These companies listed below provide the equipment/managment for you


http://www.conversent.com/website/homepage/index.asp
http://www.mettel.com

NOTE: These companies are based in the New England Area.


Only draw back is that if your t1 get's knocked out your phones will be out too. We have about 70 small to mid sized business customers running like this with out any problems. Also the saving on your phone bill are genrally around 30% or so and the data cost is about $45-$99 per month. So all in all you get dsl like speed for about $45-$99 range.

ps.I do NOT work for the fallowing companies
 
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