Help me understand why T1's are so great.

C

criccio

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Mar 26, 2008
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I feel im really missing something here when I look at the speed of a T1 line. 1.544Mbps? :confused:
Arent they also really expensive? I get a 15/2 FiOS line from Verizon for only $50 a month. What are you paying for in a T1? Why are they regarded as "fast"?
 
It's not the speed, it's the Service Level Agreement that you can get with dedicated circuits. Essentially you get a contract that states if you have more then 10 minutes downtime in the month you are entitled to credits from the provider.

BTW, that "10 minutes" is just some random number I pulled out of nothing. Actual agreements can depend on a number of things but hopefully that gives you an idea.
 
Xipher said:
It's not the speed, it's the Service Level Agreement that you can get with dedicated circuits. Essentially you get a contract that states if you have more then 10 minutes downtime in the month you are entitled to credits from the provider.
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QFT...
That, and it's symmetrical... you get 1.54 up as well.

I'm considering going to T1 too. Slower on the download, but you can always join another one for more speed.

But ATT gives you a router that they maintain. If they can't ping it for like 5 minutes, they open a trouble ticket. 9/10 they knew about trouble before you do.

Also you can order like a dozen IP addresses all included in the price ;)
 
They were fast 10 years ago, as far as today the only benefits they have are SLAs and you can generally get them anywhere and a lot more places than cable/dsl/fiber even within a city with all those services.
 
In my experience...that "SLA" you get with T-1s...ain't all that. In the early days of broadband..as ISPs went through their learning curve, yeah cable and DSL was finnicky. But over the past <quite a few years>....they've matured. My clients on business grade broadband are fine...stable. Believe me...if there's an outage..my cell rings.

We've had issues with clients with T-1s before. A big restaurant group we take care of down in NYC....Verizon's T-1...holy crap..my colleague who takes care of that one spends insane time on the phone with broken VPN tunnels due to the T being down. All the time. They're finally dump that and going to FiOS.

I have a client up here that is on a T also..with another ISP, which has had their T down for a day.

Compared to a HUGE amount of clients on business grade broadband....I really don't see "downtime", the ISPs have gotten their act together when it comes to business grade broadband. Usually 5 or 6 static IPs, no blocked ports, no monthly caps...it's wide open for your use.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
My clients on business grade broadband are fine...stable. Believe me...if there's an outage..my cell rings.
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Ours has been nothing but issues.

I've had ATT come out and inspect things, check interference (none), signal, everything... yet it still randomly times out or DROPS every so often (random lengths of time).

Even got ATT to switch us to a new physical port in their central office: same thing.

Ideally I'd love to have FiOS but it's not available here.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
In my experience...that "SLA" you get with T-1s...ain't all that. In the early days of broadband..as ISPs went through their learning curve, yeah cable and DSL was finnicky. But over the past <quite a few years>....they've matured. My clients on business grade broadband are fine...stable. Believe me...if there's an outage..my cell rings.

We've had issues with clients with T-1s before. A big restaurant group we take care of down in NYC....Verizon's T-1...holy crap..my colleague who takes care of that one spends insane time on the phone with broken VPN tunnels due to the T being down. All the time. They're finally dump that and going to FiOS.

I have a client up here that is on a T also..with another ISP, which has had their T down for a day.

Compared to a HUGE amount of clients on business grade broadband....I really don't see "downtime", the ISPs have gotten their act together when it comes to business grade broadband. Usually 5 or 6 static IPs, no blocked ports, no monthly caps...it's wide open for your use.
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The business grade broad band connections also have an SLA attached, which is why they are also so expensive compared to residential counterparts.

But realistically, if you want costs savings and uptime, just get two diffrent carriers using two diffrent meduims and then use a load balancing router on the end... problem solved.
 
You can have more than 1 T1 and get more bandwidth, though after 4 of them you are better off going with a T3/DS3.

Dedicated bandwidth, 1.54 is not the maximum, it is what you are going to get. Cable (even business) is a this is the maximum you might possibly recieve, if you are lucky. DSL the speed varies depending on how far you are from the CO (Central Office). Fiber shouldn't have those limitations, but it is also the one I am least familiar with outside of ATM and Frame Relay.

SLA, Service Level Agreements, With these your provider pays you when you lose conectivity. Depending on what you sign your contract on, it could be on the basis of single downtime, all the way to yearly. Just as an example, my office went down for 24 hours. I got over 1/3rd of my monthly bill credited back to me because of that one single outage. That is also the only outage I have had in 3 years. The penalties are pretty steep for T1s and T3s when there is downtime.

Priority disptach vs "best effort" even with business class DSL, and Cable most of the time it is "best effort" to get it back up and running. T1s schedule repair on your time, Cable & DSL are on their time.

Five 9s reliability.

Flexability: With T1s you can do nifty things like get two T1s, have one for Internet, and the second one be Phone service, but when you are not using all 24 incoming phone lines, the rest can be used for Internet. You can even do this with a single T1, use part of it for Internet, part for Voice.

Those are the major reasons to look at T1 vs cable, or DSL. The price on T1s has really dropped over the past few years. I am getting 6MB off a DS3 for what I paid for a single T1 just 8 years ago.
 
We are running a T1 at work. It works fine for our small business but I hate because it is really slow compared to other services I have used. I have make sure I don't download or try to update too many things during the day or our 20 users that use a web based catalog complain because it takes too long to for pages to load and a we have dedicated VPN to a partner company that uses our database. If I have anything too intensive going on users complain the internet is too slow and our partner company calls us complaining db access is taking too long. It really limits what I can do during the day. :( Tempted to tell my boss it is time upgrade, especially with since he wants an in house web and email server in the future.
 
Jutsu said:
We are running a T1 at work. It works fine for our small business but I hate because it is really slow compared to other services I have used. I have make sure I don't download or try to update too many things during the day or our 20 users that use a web based catalog complain because it takes too long to for pages to load and a we have dedicated VPN to a partner company that uses our database. If I have anything too intensive going on users complain the internet is too slow and our partner company calls us complaining db access is taking too long. It really limits what I can do during the day. :( Tempted to tell my boss it is time upgrade, especially with since he wants an in house web and email server in the future.
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That reminds me of back in the day when a company got a T1 line, they were made... everyone would talk about how fast the internet is and how blazing it is. Now, people hardly get excited over a DS-3.... let alone a T1. :p Ahh the times.
 
T1's were awesome when you had dual Intel Pentium 3's running a CS 1.2 server. Tech has moved up so fast that it is truly antiquated now. Good mind you, just not great. FIOS or DOCSIS 3.0 is the way to go now.

USB 1.0 works, but I don't want it. :)
 
Wow, this thread blew up. So what Im seeing so far, is that nowadays, a 30/30 FiOS connection would be great for business's? Phones and Video can be carried in over the line aswell.
 
Jutsu said:
We are running a T1 at work. It works fine for our small business but I hate because it is really slow compared to other services I have used. I have make sure I don't download or try to update too many things during the day or our 20 users that use a web based catalog complain because it takes too long to for pages to load and a we have dedicated VPN to a partner company that uses our database. If I have anything too intensive going on users complain the internet is too slow and our partner company calls us complaining db access is taking too long. It really limits what I can do during the day. :( Tempted to tell my boss it is time upgrade, especially with since he wants an in house web and email server in the future.
Click to expand...

Look at getting a Packeteer for packet shaping.
 
Ockie said:
The business grade broad band connections also have an SLA attached, which is why they are also so expensive compared to residential counterparts.

But realistically, if you want costs savings and uptime, just get two diffrent carriers using two diffrent meduims and then use a load balancing router on the end... problem solved.
Click to expand...

Not much more expensive though, typically just under double of a home package of same speed.

Yeah I have a few clients on dual WANs...most of those having Moto Canopy as the failover...although I've run both cable and DSL at the same time at home.
 
Ockie said:
That reminds me of back in the day when a company got a T1 line, they were made... everyone would talk about how fast the internet is and how blazing it is. Now, people hardly get excited over a DS-3.... let alone a T1. :p Ahh the times.
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My boss still thinks the T1 we have is like the fastest thing in the world lol. Along will all the Dell Dimension 2300s we have running as workstations lol. I am going to have to type up a nice portfolio and get him updated. He always wants latest the greatest stuff so I don't think it will be to hard to convince to upgrade once he realizes that there is better out there.

Although with the way the economy is right now it might be harder to convince to spend the money. :rolleyes:

Zlash said:
Look at getting a Packeteer for packet shaping.
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Thanks Zlash I will take a look into it.
 
Jutsu said:
My boss still thinks the T1 we have is like the fastest thing in the world lol. Along will all the Dell Dimension 2300s we have running as workstations lol. I am going to have to type up a nice portfolio and get him updated. He always wants latest the greatest stuff so I don't think it will be to hard to convince to upgrade once he realizes that there is better out there.
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Wow... If that's what your boss thinks is "the latest and greatest" then he's a bit deluded...

I think I might have one or two P4's with HT sitting around and a couple more Pentium D boxes, but just about all of my systems are Athlon X2, C2D or C2Q. We tend to replace systems every 18-24 months, even for our customer service reps.
 
litkaj said:
Wow... If that's what your boss thinks is "the latest and greatest" then he's a bit deluded...

I think I might have one or two P4's with HT sitting around and a couple more Pentium D boxes, but just about all of my systems are Athlon X2, C2D or C2Q. We tend to replace systems every 18-24 months, even for our customer service reps.
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Yes the guy who working in my position before me did as little as possible to upgrade or maintain the technology, hence why he doesn't have a job anymore. Now I am here but there is a bit a budget pinch. Hopefully next year I can do a complete overhaul of everything...

As for my boss he is kind of tunnel visioned on his work and as long as he can work he doesnt care
 
Jutsu said:
As for my boss he is kind of tunnel visioned on his work and as long as he can work he doesnt care
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And he shouldn't care.

Why would the boss care about the underlying technology as long as he is able to work?

Ultimate, the IT department/person is simply support. You are there to enable the other people to work efficiently. Never forget that.
 
Jutsu said:
Yes the guy who working in my position before me did as little as possible to upgrade or maintain the technology, hence why he doesn't have a job anymore. Now I am here but there is a bit a budget pinch. Hopefully next year I can do a complete overhaul of everything...

As for my boss he is kind of tunnel visioned on his work and as long as he can work he doesnt care
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I had that problem when I started here, though that was more because there were less than a dozen people in the company (including the owners), half were part-time, and the owners saw little need for anything but a DSL line, 3 analog phone lines, a 16-port hub, and a few homemade Athlon XP boxes.

Even after I started pushing for more tech there was a lot of resistance because of the cost. For the first year or so most of the upgrades were made because hardware failed, we outgrew a printer, etc., and not because I told them that spending a little money now would see a big return on investment.

After a few successful upgrades that realized HUGE benefits I've kind of been given carte blanche on IT and development purchasing. It got to the point where they realized that while yes, I was spending a lot of their money and they didn't always understand where or why, that my decisions had been made with the company's best interests in mind.

I'd suggest looking at your infrastructure and picking out one aspect that is particularly behind the times and then pitching the idea to upgrade that. Assuming it goes well your boss will be a lot more receptive to future pitches.
 
Jutsu said:
My boss still thinks the T1 we have is like the fastest thing in the world lol. Along will all the Dell Dimension 2300s we have running as workstations lol. I am going to have to type up a nice portfolio and get him updated. He always wants latest the greatest stuff so I don't think it will be to hard to convince to upgrade once he realizes that there is better out there.
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Funny I wonder if our bosses are brothers. We host a few websites for local companies at my work on a crappy fedora box but we also run an office with 12 users constantly browsing the web/e-mailing/streaming music and a bunch of other things. Downloading a patch for a machine makes me want to slash my wrists so I have tried to convince my boss to go to Comcast Business. I host some stuff from home and it has been rock solid, 0 outages since I got the service 4 months ago.
 
Ockie said:
But realistically, if you want costs savings and uptime, just get two diffrent carriers using two diffrent meduims and then use a load balancing router on the end... problem solved.
Click to expand...

It's not just access...
Your IP addresses are big, when folks connect in using them (vendors, etc).
Two modem then would be fantastic if all you did was surf or have outgoing traffic.

ianshot said:
Dedicated bandwidth, 1.54 is not the maximum, it is what you are going to get.

Priority disptach vs "best effort" even with business class DSL,

You can even do this with a single T1, use part of it for Internet, part for Voice.
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^^ Those.
For me, DEDICATED was a key word. Dedicated support, dedicated bandwidth. Our contract guarantees 4 hour fix 24 hours a day, whereas DSL is only 8-5, and could take a couple days.

The "flexibility" is also nifty. Granted you could do it yourself, but if you have a T1 at each location, ATT even has the ability to join them all together as a huge network- transparent to you.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Compared to a HUGE amount of clients on business grade broadband....I really don't see "downtime", the ISPs have gotten their act together when it comes to business grade broadband. Usually 5 or 6 static IPs, no blocked ports, no monthly caps...it's wide open for your use.
Click to expand...

QFT. My Comcast business-class broadband is incredibly reliable and unrestricted. Their default gateway blows, but that's not really a Comcast issue.
 
Blitzrommel said:
QFT. My Comcast business-class broadband is incredibly reliable and unrestricted. Their default gateway blows, but that's not really a Comcast issue.
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Yeah I have a few clients on their package. The SMC gateway isn't bad...I always ipmap their 2nd public IP to the WAN interface of whatever router I'm using at the particular client..that way I'm not behind the NAT of the SMC HAG.

Their biz support is great too.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Yeah I have a few clients on their package. The SMC gateway isn't bad...I always ipmap their 2nd public IP to the WAN interface of whatever router I'm using at the particular client..that way I'm not behind the NAT of the SMC HAG.

Their biz support is great too.
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I really need to do that. I'm not even using all of my IPs.

kumquat said:
Ultimate, the IT department/person is simply support.
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I really need to disagree with this.

IT is far more than just fixing computers, though most techs would not want to believe that. There is a lot of administration involved, ranging from reporting and metrics (I spend the majority of my day dealing with this, although I'm a manager) to asset management, to leveraging new techologies to add functionality to an organization.

And to add to that all, if you're a consultant (as most folks here seem to be), you also have to sell your equipment and services.
 
We have a business 5.0Mb DSL line here @ work... and I bet I can count on one hand the amount of hours it's been down since we installed it last year. There is no need for a T1 for what we do.
 
/me hugs optonline

best business cable around. sure if it goes down, and it rarely does you have to wait 4 hours for a tech to come, but what small biz cant survive for 4 hours?
 
Blitzrommel said:
IT is far more than just fixing computers, though most techs would not want to believe that. There is a lot of administration involved, ranging from reporting and metrics (I spend the majority of my day dealing with this, although I'm a manager) to asset management, to leveraging new techologies to add functionality to an organization.
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Yep, it's a shame that there is a large misconception that fixing computers is IT, even among computer techs. I am the IT guy in my company and I do all that plus be a technical liason to 3rd parties, being the compliance officer, being a project manager and be the overall visionary of the information infrastructure.
 
Keiichi said:
Yep, it's a shame that there is a large misconception that fixing computers is IT, even among computer techs. I am the IT guy in my company and I do all that plus be a technical liason to 3rd parties, being the compliance officer, being a project manager and be the overall visionary of the information infrastructure.
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and that doesn't overlap MIS?
 
criccio said:
Wow, this thread blew up. So what Im seeing so far, is that nowadays, a 30/30 FiOS connection would be great for business's? Phones and Video can be carried in over the line aswell.
Click to expand...
Oh, ah...well, that depends.

I would never put phones over my ISP *unless* that was the only hop. For instance, vonage may be good for home use, but it's just like any other internet host out there; at least 10 hops away from me. Any one of those hops go down, I might lose connectivity to my phone provider. Now, had I ATT and I had ATT VoIP service, then I might consider dropping my voip traffic over the ISP link. *think* about it. I probably still wouldn't do it.

Phones are so critical to a business. I'd just go copper and call it a day. However, if you are going to put voip traffic over the ISP line, then I'd want a 5 9 SLA to cover my ass.
 
Funny story... my entire Best Buy store operates off of a T1. This includes registers, Geek Squad (with all of those Windows Updates... it sucks), and all other computers in the store.

It's a complete disaster most of the time.
 
UncleDavid218 said:
Funny story... my entire Best Buy store operates off of a T1. This includes registers, Geek Squad (with all of those Windows Updates... it sucks), and all other computers in the store.

It's a complete disaster most of the time.
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You mean that Geek Squad manually downloads Windows Updates every single time they work on a system? Why don't they have this shit on discs somewhere in the store?
 
UncleDavid218 said:
Funny story... my entire Best Buy store operates off of a T1. This includes registers, Geek Squad (with all of those Windows Updates... it sucks), and all other computers in the store.

It's a complete disaster most of the time.
Click to expand...

Wow...my store was running a DS3... with a T1 for voice. . . We're only a 45k store.


And yes... Geek Squad has a lot of shit they do that is ass backwards. One of the reasons I decided to stay the hell away from it... even though the pay wasn't bad.
 
ryan_975 said:
You mean that Geek Squad manually downloads Windows Updates every single time they work on a system? Why don't they have this shit on discs somewhere in the store?
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We have SOME, but not all. Even small 20MB updates spanned over 20 computers kills it. Plus, when we restore or update a machine from 2003 that's been stuck on dial-up all its life, most things are found through Windows Update.
 
FiOS. Yup. You're a lucky dog and you should love it forever and ever until it's old.

Credit of 1/3 of the bill for a 24 outage?!? If I'm offline for 24 hours that's a credit of one month's bill.
 
I have a client that has had 0 downtime in 7 years on 2 t-1s and 0 downtime in 4 years on the third that was due to the t-1. (We upgraded the routers a couple times)
2 are data(7 years/4years) and one is voice(7years).
They just work.
You can't say that for dsl or cable.
 
UncleDavid218 said:
We have SOME, but not all. Even small 20MB updates spanned over 20 computers kills it. Plus, when we restore or update a machine from 2003 that's been stuck on dial-up all its life, most things are found through Windows Update.
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Cache proxy ftw?
 
I'm currently a Fios Network Tech and word is 20/5 is going to be the new "slowest" speed Verizon will offer and I believe 20/20 will only be $5-$10 more a month. It's a shame I can't get FiOS where I live, yet I work with it all day long :(.
 
TechieSooner said:
It's not just access...
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Read my post, it was about uptime, so yes, just access.

TechieSooner said:
Your IP addresses are big, when folks connect in using them (vendors, etc).
Click to expand...

Big? lol

TechieSooner said:
Two modem then would be fantastic if all you did was surf or have outgoing traffic.
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You can manage incoming connections too depending on your configurations. Besides, I was referring to uptime, not line performance.


TechieSooner said:
For me, DEDICATED was a key word. Dedicated support, dedicated bandwidth. Our contract guarantees 4 hour fix 24 hours a day, whereas DSL is only 8-5, and could take a couple days.
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Buisness DSL can provide the same support and SLA's.
 
Ockie said:
Read my post, it was about uptime, so yes, just access.



Big? lol



You can manage incoming connections too depending on your configurations. Besides, I was referring to uptime, not line performance.




Buisness DSL can provide the same support and SLA's.
Click to expand...


You are correct.... my DSL provider has a 24hr line for the BUSINESS customers.... you call them, give them your #, and if the first level tech can't help you.... the second level calls you back on whatever number you want them to(even your own personal cell) usually within an hour. I am quite happy with my business DSL line.
 
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