business alternatives to Eircom

dade

Guys

at the moment we're using eircoms business enhanced package for our office connection. Eircom have had an outage in their exchange since 7AM (4 hours ago) and it's still not resolved, so I'm looking for an alternative to have as a back up line in-case Eircom go down again.

this would be a smaller connection coz it's just for emergencies etc. anyone any recommendations? i was thinking of IBB or something that way it's wireless and away from Eircom but at the rate cranes etc are going up around Dublin it might not be a good option.

basically just need something that isn't dependant on Eircom, but is reliable.

Nehaxak

Hi Dade.

Myself I would suggest you use something like a Draytek Vigor 3300V router and have both your primary Eircon line plus a couple of cheaper backup connections connected in either a redundant or resillient setup.

It may mean though that you will need to change some server configs and set-up port forwarding on the Draytek but all of this is easily done and not rocket science at all.

That Draytek router costs about 400 Euro all in for the top end model and you can grab a business wireless package from IBB and any other landline based DSL line from someone else for roughly 120 euro's per month between them.

Simple but easily implemented solution for not much upfront costs and very little on-going costs for the benefit it can give you if this ever happens again.

Nehaxak

Ps., Reason I'd suggest the Daytek Vigor 3300V over the other 3300 models is due to the 3300V having four WAN ports, the other two models from the range have only 3 ports each. Just give's you a little extra freedom of choice and another redundant/resillient option if you need.

dade

at the moment I'm looking at alternative ISPs to provide a second line. is IBBs wireless reliable, I've heard conflicting reports from them

Cabaal

bt business is good, most likely much better value then eircoms offering

Nehaxak

The IBB fixed wireless service is fine, so long of course that you have clear line of site and like you touched on, no buildings are going to start popping up in the way in the near future. As a backup line it'd be grand for the job. What's the general area you are based in ? Someone else on the boards here might be in the same general area and can give you more specifics on the services available that they might be using.

35notout

You could also consider Digiweb - there coverage/support is very good in Dublin and is reliable, in case BT is not in your exchange.

watty

Or get fibre and use the eircom dsl as a backup.

Any alternate phoneline supply will likely go same time as main phoneline.

paulm17781

I'd go for Digiweb (wireless), we use them for a back up in work. It works excellently and their support is top notch. Reasonably priced too.

Cabaal

watty wrote: »

Or get fibre and use the eircom dsl as a backup.

Any alternate phoneline supply will likely go same time as main phoneline.

Have to agree with this, while it may not the odds are certainly higher then it would also go down at the same time or experience an issue,

dade

the office is on city quay in Dublin 2. theres a a couple of buildings taller than us gone in between us and Townsend street so we may not actually be in LOS for IBB.

The issue with a wired line going down is why i was thinking wireless.

if anyone cares basically an ASAM went down in crown alley today, took Eircom a while to locate the fault, then a while to locate a replacement now they need to do a firmware update on the equipment to bring it in line with all the rest of the equipment. so who knows when it'll be back

thebman

We are in that area and use Magnet line too. It is still up but our eircom line is down.

Cabaal

brim4brim wrote: »

We are in that area and use Magnet line too. It is still up but our eircom line is down.

Thats cause magnet is LLU so its likely just eircoms equipment failed

thebman

Yeah we were told it was a card that failed or something like that. They didn't have a spare one so they had to get one from a supplier or something like that.

Nehaxak

They didn't have a spare one so they had to get one from a supplier or something like that.

Tesco's.

watty

Cabaal wrote: »

Thats cause magnet is LLU so its likely just eircoms equipment failed

However in my experience someone diggering through the cable is much much more common than exchange equipment failure, and generally takes much longer to fix.

The BBC paid a lot of money for two routes of cable from BT to a transmitter. It went off the air. Subsequent investigation showed that for most of the route the cables in the same duct/trench thing. Yellow monster ate it. We got the TX back on air with a Microwave link (about an hour lost while engineer went on site and emptied rain out of wave guide) which was needed for nearly a week.

thebman

Well they were first notified of it at 7 this morning apparently but it went down over night because some logs and stuff that we expected to be transferred from one server to another didn't transfer.

dade

brim4brim wrote: »

Well they were first notified of it at 7 this morning apparently but it went down over night because some logs and stuff that we expected to be transferred from one server to another didn't transfer.

i logged it at 8am myself with them, from what i was told each time i called them it took til about 11 to figure out what was wrong, then til near 2 to locate a part then they had a firmware/software upgrade to do on the card.

bk

I'd contact Digiweb, Magnet and IBB and enquire about their wireless services (in that order of preference).

You could also look into a variety of companies about a fibre connection and use the DSL as a backup.

Praetorian

You should try and backup eircom's dsl with something thats not dsl based. Our enhanced line has been remarkably reliable in all fairness to eircom and I dont think any other provider could match it.

watty

BT, Digiweb, Magnet & Smart do fibre (In alpabetical order)

zAbbo

I was in a similar situation a few years back, annoyed at dsl downtime, so I got a wireless solution in as backup which eventually turned into the dedicated connection.

It really depends on your budget, Initially I replaced a 128k leased line with a high end DSL service for bandwidth, then complemented it with 8MB Metro.

dade

thanks for the info gonna look into them all over the next week or so.