T1 Vs ADSL

shayser

Currently we have Eircom Business Enhanced (5Mbs down) @ €160pm but only get about 250kbs +/- ... they say that's it. It is too slow.

We've been offered a T1 1Mbs line for €500pm. 2Mbs is also available at €800... ex VAT for both.

Is an uncontended line really worth this much? I mean it would have to be supersonic compared to ADSL wouldn't it, to justify this price?

Boston

With the T1, you're only guaranteed the bandwidth. You won't get 250kb's with the T1, you will get something around 120kb's, except it will be constant. If it's too slow, get another adsl line in. T1's lines are only worth it, if what you have is unreliable, and you need reliability.

Robxxx7

i maybe wrong here but i thought T1 was the U.S standard 1.54mbit bandwidth/connection whereas E1 is used in Europe/Japan providing 2mbit!

Patrickof

You're right, but the equipment in most telco's can deliver T1/E1/T3/E3 etc. It's usually just a function of the CO side equipment and the CPE.

The T1 is only going to be uncontended between the user site and the network, there's no guarantee that its traffic will fare any better on the network than that from a DSL line.

Where are you? Maybe there's not much backbone capacity from your location.

Robxxx7

Just seems a bit odd to use T1 to me, generally most customer connections between CO and CPE are E1 PRI or other E1 type connections/protocols (DPNSS,DASS2), whereas connections between CO's are generally SS7.

Now, the number of customers wanting/requiring T1 in Europe must be quite small.. perhaps he is being offered fractional E1 ?

To have a mixture of both T1 and E1 in a CO can be done, but i don't see the benefit or costs savings from it ...unless there are some big U.S customers in Ireland who only want T1 access due to their equipment constraints.

I'm going abit of thread here ... but i didn't think that Conventional T1 was being sold here...well you live and learn

elvis2002

well a 2.048Mbps E1 line will not give you any speed increase than you currently have if all you can get is 250KB/sec (I assume you meant KB because 250kb might as well be a 56k modem with serious speed problems). A 2Mbps E1 line will give you max download rate of 256KB/sec and no more. Thats it! You wont be gaining anything then. You'll get the reliablity of course but the expense of it all is just too much. With the 5Mbps service you should be getting speeds of more than 500KB/sec (theoritcally with a max of 640 but 620 might be more a realistic max). Stay with the DSL. It's providing a solution for now anyways when there isnt a better alternative available that doesn't burn a whole in the company's pocket.

elvis2002

Robxxx7 wrote:

i'm going abit of thread here ... but i didn't think that Conventional T1 was being sold here...well you live and learn

I would agree with.

zuma

elvis2002 wrote:

well a 2.048Mbps E1 line will not give you any speed increase than you currently have if all you can get is 250KB/sec (I assume you meant KB because 250kb might as well be a 56k modem with serious speed problems). A 2Mbps E1 line will give you max download rate of 256KB/sec and no more. Thats it! You wont be gaining anything then. You'll get the reliablity of course but the expense of it all is just too much. With the 5Mbps service you should be getting speeds of more than 500KB/sec (theoritcally with a max of 640 but 620 might be more a realistic max). Stay with the DSL. It's providing a solution for now anyways when there isnt a better alternative available that doesn't burn a whole in the company's pocket.

I use a 5Mb DSL connection on a regular baisis and the fastest I have EVER got is 550KB.
No one on a 5Mb line from eircom ever gets in the 600+KB region due to loss and such things.

bk

Given that you are getting speeds less then 3m. It might be an idea to downgrade to 3m [1] and instead get in a second 3m line. In fact you could get 4 3m lines for the cost of your 1 5m line [2].

[1] The only downside of a 3m line is that it has a 40GB cap compared to an unlimited cap with the 5m product.

[2] Excluding line rental.

BTW you could also take a look at Smart's Business BB products:
http://www.smarttelecom.ie/businessbroadbandinfo.php

Boston

Robxxx7 wrote:

Just seems a bit odd to use T1 to me, generally most customer connections between CO and CPE are E1 PRI or other E1 type connections/protocols (DPNSS,DASS2), whereas connections between CO's are generally SS7.

Now, the number of customers wanting/requiring T1 in Europe must be quite small.. perhaps he is being offered fractional E1 ?

To have a mixture of both T1 and E1 in a CO can be done, but i don't see the benefit or costs savings from it ...unless there are some big U.S customers in Ireland who only want T1 access due to their equipment constraints.

I'm going abit of thread here ... but i didn't think that Conventional T1 was being sold here...well you live and learn

You know, neither you nor the other chap have even tried to answer his question, but rather engaged in a useless bit of mental masturbation. the guy is being offered a 1mb contention free connection, and he want to know what he should do. the exact protocol is of little importance.

Patrickof

LiouVille wrote:

You know, neither you nor the other chap have even tried to answer his question, but rather engaged in a useless bit of mental masturbation. the guy is being offered a 1mb contention free connection, and he want to know what he should do. the exact protocol is of little importance.

Actually LiouVille, I did mention about the contention. The T1 contention free bit is possibly irrelevant dependent on where the chap is. So it'd be nice to know a bit more beofre making wild comparisons based on zero information.

If its just down to raw speed then a 5Mb dsl line is faster than a T1 - no probs there. But if both are measured while downloading from a slow site, then they'll both do just as badly.

The contention free bit can only be provided by eircom across its own portion of the network, eg maybe a user in cork gets a dedicated t1 path up to Dublin and then is connected to the 'net. Whereas a DSL punter in Cork has to share the backbone with everyone else until connecting to the 'net in Dublin.

shayser

The service was described in the proposal as Tier1 1mbs Uncontended. I presumed (very possibly in error!) the term T1 was abbreviation of Tier1.

I'm in Donegal, where I would imagine contention would be relatively low.

I don't understand the rational behind the proposal. 3 x ADSL X 2.7mbs = 8.1mbs = 480pm Vs 1 x T1 = 1mbs+ = 500pm. Hence, my post really.

Would ADSL2+ up the figure of 2.7mbs on DSL any?

Robxxx7

LiouVille wrote:

You know, neither you nor the other chap have even tried to answer his question, but rather engaged in a useless bit of mental masturbation. the guy is being offered a 1mb contention free connection, and he want to know what he should do. the exact protocol is of little importance.

Sticks and stones and all that

Obviously not everyone is as knowledgable as yourself :rolleyes: and quite often discussions can go abit awry...but keeping it on thread... from my experience of using E1's or T1's, the cost for these will not be worth it ...assuming you have not noticed any major issues with contention, then you would be better placed for the price to have another 5mbit line or leave with what you have already ...

There...got there in the end

Boston

Patrickof wrote:

Actually LiouVille, I did mention about the contention. The T1 contention free bit is possibly irrelevant dependent on where the chap is. So it'd be nice to know a bit more beofre making wild comparisons based on zero information.

If its just down to raw speed then a 5Mb dsl line is faster than a T1 - no probs there. But if both are measured while downloading from a slow site, then they'll both do just as badly.

The contention free bit can only be provided by eircom across its own portion of the network, eg maybe a user in cork gets a dedicated t1 path up to Dublin and then is connected to the 'net. Whereas a DSL punter in Cork has to share the backbone with everyone else until connecting to the 'net in Dublin.

He gave you all the relavent information. You chose to debate the finer points of E1 Vs E2, and never mentioned adsl once in you're reply, nor did you ask for more information. You did not answer his question. Now go away.

shayer, It really doesn't matter how populated you're area is. If you're area has enough people to warrent upgrading the exchange to adsl, their will be conention most of the time.

T1's are lines which are not shared with other users. Depending on network conditions and the speed of the place you're downloading from, they may be allot faster, or allot slower then a normal adsl line. I personally don't think they are worth it. And the money would be better spend getting a faster adsl line, even if it is contented. Others disagree.

Robxxx7 wrote:

Obviously not everyone is as knowledgable as yourself :rolleyes: and quite often discussions can go abit awry...but keeping it on thread... from my experience of using E1's or T1's, the cost for these will not be worth it ...assuming you have not noticed any major issues with contention, then you would be better placed for the price to have another 5mbit line or leave with what you have already ...

There...got there in the end

Well done... was it good for you?

aaronc

shayser wrote:

Currently we have Eircom Business Enhanced (5Mbs down) @ €160pm but only get about 250kbs +/- ... they say that's it. It is too slow.

We've been offered a T1 1Mbs line for €500pm. 2Mbs is also available at €800... ex VAT for both.

Is an uncontended line really worth this much? I mean it would have to be supersonic compared to ADSL wouldn't it, to justify this price?

As mentioned above it is a bit strange to be offered T1 but ignoring that and assuming you're getting an 1Mbps IP transit connection for €500 per month then while it's probably crazy compared to the international market in Dublin it's not too bad. Your costs will be something like:

- 1 Mbps IP Tansit €500/month
- 1 Mbps Internet connection €250/month
(If the €500 includes internet connectivity then it's definitely a good deal)

If you can get a T1 (leased line) connection then you may have some ducting available in which case you could get a fibre or metro Ethernet connection and I've seen 10Mbps transit offerings for around the €800 per month price.

Also Smart Telecom have a €1500 per annum (per annum is not a typo) product for a 10Mbps transit connection to INEX so if the majority of your traffic is for Irish destinations and you're near a Smart POP that could save you a small fortune.

With the DSL products it does depend on what you're using it for but if you need a gauranteed level of bandwidth then you're just as well to ignore the quoted maximum download and upload speeds. If the main use for your connection is web/email then the DSL offerings I've experienced would be ok but for anything more heavy duty then that I'd take the 1Mbps at €500 per month.

Aaron

Patrickof

Ok, so the question is: which is better? a 1Mbps Tier 1 connection or a DSl line?

There's three parts to measure,

(a) the link to the internet (within the main Dublin site belonging to the ISP)
(b) the link between Dublin and Donegal
(c) the access link to the customer site

A DSL service (of say 5mbps) allows speeds up to 5Mbps across the parts A,B,C above. Congestion can occur at B or C or both. As more users are added in the Donegal region, the congestion at B will get worse.

Part C is uncontended whether its a 1Mbps leased line or a DSL line. So no difference there.

A 1Mbps Tier 1 link will provide bandwidth dedicated to you of 1Mbps along A, B, C above, with the usual proviso that the cannot obviously guarantee speeds of sites on the internet. However, the link will always be able to deliver 1Mbps no matter how many are others are active on any part of the network.

Adding extra DSL lines may not increase the bandwidth one bit, this depends entirely on the capacity of B. If its only 5Mbps in total (probably more than this but just to illustrate) then connecting more DSL lines will not provide any more bandwidth.

So to answer your question, the DSL link is probably better but this is entirely dependent on the amount of bandwidth between Dublin and Donegal.

Oh and by the way Liouville, if you're going to accuse people of not asking for extra info etc. then at least have the decency to go back and re-read the posts first I had asked his location which in this instance happens to be the critical bit of information!

bk

Patrickof wrote:

Adding extra DSL lines may not increase the bandwidth one bit, this depends entirely on the capacity of B. If its only 5Mbps in total (probably more than this but just to illustrate) then connecting more DSL lines will not provide any more bandwidth.

That is certainly possible, but I would say extremely unlikely. I've yet to hear of anyone actually suffer from contention, that isn't to say that it can't happen, but so far all the cases I've seen of slow connections is down to bad quality lines not being able to maintain the higher speeds.

Given that he is considering spending €500pm on a T1, I'd think that it would be well worth his time getting a second 3m DSL line (cost about €65pm including line rental for minimum 6 months will still cost less then 1 month T1 rental) to just try it out.

Really it depends on what your business uses the connection for. If you are hosting servers, then a T1 would be better (high upload speed, no contention, SLA), on the other hand, if you are doing this, a hosting company would be a better idea. If you are doing VPN between two offices to share networks and resources, the T1 would also probably be better. However if you are just doing normal office tasks, surfing the web, sending and receiving emails etc, then multiple DSL lines might be the better option.

zing

From a quick scan of this thread the one thing I haven't noticed is anyone mentioning support. IIRC an xDSL service (regardless of whether it's business or residential) is treated a a residential service by Eircom as it uses a bog standard phone line. That gives them something like 5 days to fix. A T1 or frac E1 will be treated as a business service so should have a considerably shorted time to fix.

Or at least that's how it was when xDSL first launched. Can't remember the exact # of days to fix in each case but I would suggest you ask and get firm answers for both. If the service is anyway business critical I would tend to opt for the serial line.