T1 vs Cable

A

awesomo

Gawd
Joined
Mar 20, 2010
Messages
528
This company has had an expensive T1 setup for a while. 1.5mbit coming in, 3mbit wan, and four 1.5 mbit connections at the branch offices. Let's just say slow is a nice word to describe this. Another thing is they have a SLA for 99.999% uptime, yet we have had offices (including the HQ) go down for a few hours here, a few hours there, a day here, a day there, and all we get is a small credit on our bill because they were unable to meet the SLA. AND nothing has been down enough to warrant a breach of contract. That small credit doesn't help us much because a few bucks doesn't equal the productivity lost for that day.

What is used over the wan is file transfers to the HQ server and voip desk phones that connect to the HQ phone server.
I am trying to come up with better solutions than the unreliable slow crap they have now. I have solutions that would speed things up quite a bit but then reliability comes into play.

First, I know I can get Charter 50/5 cable, but upload is where it really counts here and cable's upload (especially Charter's) is very overshared. On top of that, cable doesn't offer an SLA of any sort, so I would supplement that with DSL connections at each office. Has anyone here used cable/dsl and vpn's to carry voip traffic from remote offices to an HQ using cable? It's not my failover, shaping, and QOS I am concerned about, It is the cable companies ability to provide me steady bandwidth.

Second, I am trying to get Metro Ethernet quoted. This would be the ultimate solution if it's cost effective. If anyone has this, could you give me a ballpark on what you are paying, for what speed, from who, and how reliable the service has been?

Anyone care to share if they have a bigger setup like this and what they did to solve their bandwidth needs? If only fiber was available everywhere....
 
Well looking at what your company or whatever pays for all those T lines I would say that a 10/10 Metro ethernet line is going to be way less. Like 900 a month if you sign a long enough agreement.

Comcast 100/10 (gets 7-12 fluctuating) at a client and they pay 299.99/mon with a ded IP.

.
 
how many offices? have you considered a MPLS solution? who are the existing T1s through? are those T1s off contract? If not, do you have early termination clauses in those contracts?

if those T1s and the associated contracts (or worse month to month) are old chances are you can get a much better service for the entire network for less than you're paying now.
 
Add a peplink multiwan router and combine as many as possible
 
houkouonchi said:
Is this you?

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r26362036-When-can-we-expect-higher-upload-

I replied to that thread about bonding and stuff.

Metro Ethernet probably depends a lot on location and competition. One of our offices in Brea, CA has a 100m/100m metro ethernet connection (50mbit commit so overages if 95th percentile is over 50m) and it runs around $2000/month from AT&T.
Click to expand...

It is, I am still awaiting a quote on Metro Ethernet. I am aware of how you bonded the links and actually have a dedicated server I could do this with, but with voip traffic, encapsulating it, sending it to a dedicated server, encapsulating it again and sending it to it's destination will add too much to a g729 packet in terms of overhead and latency. You already had awesome lines with awesome routing, If only I could get fiber anything here....
 
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madrebel said:
how many offices? have you considered a MPLS solution? who are the existing T1s through? are those T1s off contract? If not, do you have early termination clauses in those contracts?

if those T1s and the associated contracts (or worse month to month) are old chances are you can get a much better service for the entire network for less than you're paying now.
Click to expand...

5 offices, Offices 1-4 are using t1's to connect to an mpls network, office 5 has two bonded t1's for 3mbit connected to the same mpls network. Then the HQ has a single T1 line providing access to the HQ and all the branch offices and we have a PRI for the phones. They have about 10 months left on the contract, the termination clause is "you owe us the entire amount of service costs for the duration of your contract", I am trying to deal with sales people at these companies and I would rather walk across a field of glass. I want availability for my location, and a price. Doesn't seem so hard does it? But, myself and another individual at this company have been trying to deal with a few sales reps, which all should have to enter a few numbers into their computers, spit out a quote with all technologies available to me and their costs, and email it to me, but I have yet to see anything past a new PRI quote.
 
tangoseal said:
Well looking at what your company or whatever pays for all those T lines I would say that a 10/10 Metro ethernet line is going to be way less. Like 900 a month if you sign a long enough agreement.

Comcast 100/10 (gets 7-12 fluctuating) at a client and they pay 299.99/mon with a ded IP.

.
Click to expand...

I so wish I could get Comcast there, but it is Charter land only... I get Comcast into every office I can.
 
awesomo said:
Has anyone here used cable/dsl and vpn's to carry voip traffic from remote offices to an HQ using cable? It's not my failover, shaping, and QOS I am concerned about, It is the cable companies ability to provide me steady bandwidth.
Click to expand...

Yup...recently completed a WAN, 5x locations. Central office has a 15,000/2,000 pipe, satellites are mixed...6,000/768 DSL and 10,000/768 cable.

My experience with business class cable...even business DSL...granted there's no "SLA"...but IMO SLA stuff if overhyped. I've had clients with T-1's and all that SLA crap and seen them have headaches with their T-1s. I have a ton of clients on business broadband that runs just fine.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Yup...recently completed a WAN, 5x locations. Central office has a 15,000/2,000 pipe, satellites are mixed...6,000/768 DSL and 10,000/768 cable.

My experience with business class cable...even business DSL...granted there's no "SLA"...but IMO SLA stuff if overhyped. I've had clients with T-1's and all that SLA crap and seen them have headaches with their T-1s. I have a ton of clients on business broadband that runs just fine.
Click to expand...

That is EXACTLY my feeling on the matter. I install business cable everywhere I can. I have installed voip systems relying on that business cable with very little downtime and no echo or clipping issues. If cable is not available, then I go for DSL, and if all else fails there is leased lines. For whatever reason this company has leased lines, and even with a SLA, we got a $2 we couldn't fix it fast enough credit in May for having one of our branch offices down for a day and a half. It is a JOKE. My plan is a mix of Comcast, Charter, and DSL lines (whichever is available at the office) and pfSense Hamakua appliances at each of the offices with IPSEC tunnels and *maybe* failover. Charter in middle Michigan doesn't have the best track record.
 
T1 is a relic of the dial-up era. The idea of increased uptime seems to be more myth than reality these days. 1.5Mbps is a pittance.

I use a Comcast Business connection and reliability has been very good. It's not perfect, but when problems do occur support is FAST. It's nothing at all like their residential support, and the people you end up talking to do actually seem to give a shit.
 
If you could get that 150/75 FiOS connection to a business, I don't know how you could pick T1 over it.

The speed of the connection alone over T1 would increase your business enough to make up for any downtime the FiOS had. Of all the years I've had FiOS now, we've never had a single second of downtime that I noticed.

Comcast, while it used to have issues in the summer where I live, eventually was rewired to the point I would assume uptime is near perfect also.
 
We have Charter's dedicated Fiber service. 200mb/200mb with guaranteed bandwidth and 31 static IP addresses. We get notices of when any work is going to be done that may effect us. It we are down more than 30 seconds they call asking if there is a problem. A bunch more other services I can't think of right now. In the 7 years we have had them we had 1 unscheduled outage that lasted 4 hours.
 
If the OP is in MI they dont have FIOS in that state and do the OP have you looked at dark fiber or fiber from charter setup?
 
OP, not sure what state you are in, but I am a MetroE Engineer for Comcast here in the Boston area. If at all possible, no matter who the MSO is, go MetroE if you can. Dedicated fiber to the premises, SLAs, all working at flat layer 2 depending on what type of circuit you want. Comcast's MetroE product line consist of the following circuit types:

EDIA= Ethernet Dedicated Internet
EPL= Ethernet Private Line A.K.A Point to Point
EVPL= Ethernet Virtual Private Line A.K.A Multi-Point to Point
ENS= Ethernet Network Service or E-LAN A.K.A Multi-Point to Multi-Point or Full Mesh

This runs on a MPLS backbone core network, which I am sure other MSOs are doing. Your path to the Provider edge is single ended, but redundancy built into the core is amazing. Comcast, depending on where in the country, uses either Juniper MX960s, or Cisco CRS-8, ASR 9000s and Juniper EX4200 Agg boxes. We also use CWDM in the field to Mux/Dmux multiple customers on the same common glass. Works beautifully. If you are in an area where Comcast is a possibile solution for you, let me know and I can put you in touch with the right folks.

Mike
 
See only problem is if the OP is rural parts of MI you wouldnt be able to get MetroE that is only available to larger surrounding cities.

Only way to get good bandwidth is getting either fiber from telco or cable company or go with a dark fiber company.
 
Yup, I'm out of luck. Well, rather, my client is out of luck. They are just in a bad location to need this kind of technology, nor do they have the budgets to pay for what is available. It looks like they are going to have to use Cable/DSL for their pricepoint and needs.
 
mikey71497 said:
OP, not sure what state you are in, but I am a MetroE Engineer for Comcast here in the Boston area. If at all possible, no matter who the MSO is, go MetroE if you can. Dedicated fiber to the premises, SLAs, all working at flat layer 2 depending on what type of circuit you want. Comcast's MetroE product line consist of the following circuit types:

EDIA= Ethernet Dedicated Internet
EPL= Ethernet Private Line A.K.A Point to Point
EVPL= Ethernet Virtual Private Line A.K.A Multi-Point to Point
ENS= Ethernet Network Service or E-LAN A.K.A Multi-Point to Multi-Point or Full Mesh

This runs on a MPLS backbone core network, which I am sure other MSOs are doing. Your path to the Provider edge is single ended, but redundancy built into the core is amazing. Comcast, depending on where in the country, uses either Juniper MX960s, or Cisco CRS-8, ASR 9000s and Juniper EX4200 Agg boxes. We also use CWDM in the field to Mux/Dmux multiple customers on the same common glass. Works beautifully. If you are in an area where Comcast is a possibile solution for you, let me know and I can put you in touch with the right folks.

Mike
Click to expand...

The HQ, which is really the only site that matters in this case, is in a Charter territory. You have given an excellent explanation and have confirmed why I started looking for Metro Ethernet in the first place. It is a very cost effective technology compared to legacy circuits. I will keep in in mind if I ever have clients that need a bigger pipe that can actually get it.
 
No problem. MetroE is indeed a great solution. Its completely scaleable to your company needs, we support a variety of handoffs, ie..copper, optical, and we maintain your VLAN integrity by using Q in Q tagging and service/support is top notch. I like to simplify it by saying that we are just a transport device from A to B. Your data ingresses our network and we rip it across our core to the other side using the lates pseudowire/EVC technology. Its really that simple. I won't continue to ramble on about the product like a salesperson, because that I am NOT! Glad I could help out.:D
 
mikey71497 said:
No problem. MetroE is indeed a great solution. Its completely scaleable to your company needs, we support a variety of handoffs, ie..copper, optical, and we maintain your VLAN integrity by using Q in Q tagging and service/support is top notch. I like to simplify it by saying that we are just a transport device from A to B. Your data ingresses our network and we rip it across our core to the other side using the lates pseudowire/EVC technology. Its really that simple. I won't continue to ramble on about the product like a salesperson, because that I am NOT! Glad I could help out.:D
Click to expand...

You can keep talking if you want, you gave a lot of awesome technical insight. No sales person would actually know all that, lol.
 
awesomo said:
That is EXACTLY my feeling on the matter. I install business cable everywhere I can. I have installed voip systems relying on that business cable with very little downtime and no echo or clipping issues. If cable is not available, then I go for DSL, and if all else fails there is leased lines. For whatever reason this company has leased lines, and even with a SLA, we got a $2 we couldn't fix it fast enough credit in May for having one of our branch offices down for a day and a half. It is a JOKE. My plan is a mix of Comcast, Charter, and DSL lines (whichever is available at the office) and pfSense Hamakua appliances at each of the offices with IPSEC tunnels and *maybe* failover. Charter in middle Michigan doesn't have the best track record.
Click to expand...

I use pfSense in a very similar situation. Our main office now has 2x MetroE installs (one 100/100mb Comcast, the other AT&T at 10% of the speed for 75% of the price - and with the several hundred man-hours to install it, I'm not surprised if they lose money at that o_O ). The satellites have mixtures of cable and DSL, using Hamakua's running pfSense with OpenVPN + OpenOSPFd. I highly recommend this setup over IPsec.
 
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obrith said:
I use pfSense in a very similar situation. Our main office now has 2x MetroE installs (one 100/100mb Comcast, the other AT&T at 10% of the speed for 75% of the price - and with the several hundred of man-hours to install it, I'm not surprised if they lose money at that o_O ). The satellites have mixtures of cable and DSL, using Hamakua's running pfSense with OpenVPN + OpenOSPFd. I highly recommend this setup over IPsec.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info, I will definitely look into it. Do you know how the overhead on a packet compares to ipsec?

Edit:
IPSEC= 52 bytes
OpenVPN= 69 bytes
Not bad, I have always setup OpenVPN for client computers but never used it for a tunnel, I am going to have to give it a go.
 
I just got quoted on business ethernet at my location. $2000 a month, $1200 up front, 2 year contact. Ouch.
 
awesomo said:
This company has had an expensive T1 setup for a while. 1.5mbit coming in, 3mbit wan, and four 1.5 mbit connections at the branch offices. Let's just say slow is a nice word to describe this. Another thing is they have a SLA for 99.999% uptime, yet we have had offices (including the HQ) go down for a few hours here, a few hours there, a day here, a day there, and all we get is a small credit on our bill because they were unable to meet the SLA. AND nothing has been down enough to warrant a breach of contract. That small credit doesn't help us much because a few bucks doesn't equal the productivity lost for that day.

What is used over the wan is file transfers to the HQ server and voip desk phones that connect to the HQ phone server.
I am trying to come up with better solutions than the unreliable slow crap they have now. I have solutions that would speed things up quite a bit but then reliability comes into play.

First, I know I can get Charter 50/5 cable, but upload is where it really counts here and cable's upload (especially Charter's) is very overshared. On top of that, cable doesn't offer an SLA of any sort, so I would supplement that with DSL connections at each office. Has anyone here used cable/dsl and vpn's to carry voip traffic from remote offices to an HQ using cable? It's not my failover, shaping, and QOS I am concerned about, It is the cable companies ability to provide me steady bandwidth.

Second, I am trying to get Metro Ethernet quoted. This would be the ultimate solution if it's cost effective. If anyone has this, could you give me a ballpark on what you are paying, for what speed, from who, and how reliable the service has been?

Anyone care to share if they have a bigger setup like this and what they did to solve their bandwidth needs? If only fiber was available everywhere....
Click to expand...

We're still currently in T1 hell here as well. One especially bad point to point circuit that just dies horribly over and over and over (for 9 motherfucking years!!!!). I currently have that site going across cable and doing a site to site vpn with HQ.

It's not all that fast, and you get odd refresh problems via rdp. but it is at least stable. No voip on our end to contend with at least.
 
mikey71497 said:
No problem. MetroE is indeed a great solution. Its completely scaleable to your company needs, we support a variety of handoffs, ie..copper, optical, and we maintain your VLAN integrity by using Q in Q tagging and service/support is top notch. I like to simplify it by saying that we are just a transport device from A to B. Your data ingresses our network and we rip it across our core to the other side using the lates pseudowire/EVC technology. Its really that simple. I won't continue to ramble on about the product like a salesperson, because that I am NOT! Glad I could help out.:D
Click to expand...

We're going metroE as well. Should begin implementation about end nov early dec. Sweet sweet fiber.
 
First, I know I can get Charter 50/5 cable, but upload is where it really counts here and cable's upload (especially Charter's) is very overshared.
Click to expand...

Charter does offer a 100/10...(Docsis3 is required)
Its not spoke of, or mentioned very often...
On a single modem, i normally only get 6-7Mbits of the 10 upload..:rolleyes:

1496813831.png


ps...
You gotta offer them your first born to get this...

pss. Load balance a couple of these with pfsense, and max out your local nodes bandwidth :D
 
Roscowgo said:
We're going metroE as well. Should begin implementation about end nov early dec. Sweet sweet fiber.
Click to expand...

Good stuff! Not sure if it's with Comcast or not, but good luck..I am sure you will enjoy it. Having dedicated glass in the building is where you want to be.
 
awesomo said:
I just got quoted on business ethernet at my location. $2000 a month, $1200 up front, 2 year contact. Ouch.
Click to expand...

Is business ethernet the same as MetroE in your area? It can be pricey but you get what you pay for. I know up here in Boston, we will eat some of the cost of the build out. Most of our customers are higher bandwidth customers, 30mb Plus. 10mb for 2k a month for dedicated glass, SLAs, 24/7 support? You have to count all that into the price and not just look at it for the bandwidth.

What type of CPE would they be giving you?
 
We are in a TW Telcom area and have had a T1 with them for over 10 years. When I finally got a hold of the bill and reached out to our sales rep I was able to get us a 40mbps fiber line and a 2mbps isdn line for our IP trunks for the same price as that single T1.

Fiber is the way to go if you can get it
 
My previous employer had a setup that was close to yours, except that we had 4.5Mb MPLS into HQ, 3Mb to each other location and a DS3 to the Internet. We were getting ready to move HQ to a 6Mb connection when I left. We found that HQ needed more bandwidth into it since all the smaller locations fed to it. We were also discussing moving the Internet connection to the MPLS cloud instead to make it faster for the smaller locations.

We had our DS3 down for 24 hours due to flooding in the state (some guy in a backhoe took out fiber for 3 or 4 telecom companies trying to save his town). We got back 1/3 of our monthly bill for being down for 24 hours.
 
I cant say this enough, Failover, failover failover! Get a second link from a different provider, over different lines, having 3mbit pipe as fail over is much better than having primary down and everybody loses connectivity and work stops. Whatever you decide for primary, get a cheapish secondary.
 
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