How do you explain the price difference between DSL and a dedicated T1 connection

[RallyTech]

I'm trying to explain the difference of a simple aDSL connection vs. a dedicated bonded T1 (E1 in the UK?) connection to administration. They don't understand why a 3Mb down 768Kb up connection that costs less than a $100 a month but a 4.5Mb bonded T1 connection costs nearly $1400 - $1800 a month.

I try to make it practical to them as with a T1 we will have symmetrical outbound speeds so email attachments and remote connections to the school network will be faster. I also explain that we will have a SLA with support and we won't have as much connectivity issues as we do with our current DSL line. The general speed for the school will also improve as there won't be a huge slow down when multiple laptop carts are checked out.

I think they understand that it's better but they're skeptical because of the price difference. Why such a huge price difference is essentially what they're asking and I explain to them the difference of a dedicated T1 line but I guess I'm not being clear enough. I show them quotes and say this is industry standard pricing.

I have looked into alternatives such as cable or metro ethernet and the like but our location is not great. We have no existing cable line to our school or even to the servers. Fiber is astronomically expensive and from what I understand after talking to multiple vendors T1s are our best bet for the kind of speed we're looking for.

[nephilim]

holy jebus....4.5mb costs $1400 a month?! we get a dedicated 100mb line into my school (8 fibre connections), and it costs us £5000 a year! (roughly $7000 a year). Me thinks some suppliers in the US are ripping you off!

As for the difference, why not get 2x 3MB connections, have double the capacity, and much less of the cost?

[RallyTech]

holy jebus....4.5mb costs $1400 a month?! we get a dedicated 100mb line into my school (8 fibre connections), and it costs us £5000 a year! (roughly $7000 a year). Me thinks some suppliers in the US are ripping you off!

As for the difference, why not get 2x 3MB connections, have double the capacity, and much less of the cost?

We don't have an existing fiber node at our school so from what I understand the vendor didn't even give me a specific # because fiber is on another order of magnitude to even get that to our school.

As for x2 DSL, we actually have that but we're on the highest plan and the upload speed won't go any faster than 768Kb. That is insane how you only pay roughly $7000 a year for a 100Mb line. I would give an arm for that. Are you in a new area with existing fiber everywhere?

[torledo]

holy jebus....4.5mb costs $1400 a month?! we get a dedicated 100mb line into my school (8 fibre connections), and it costs us £5000 a year! (roughly $7000 a year). Me thinks some suppliers in the US are ripping you off!

As for the difference, why not get 2x 3MB connections, have double the capacity, and much less of the cost?

So how much is an equivalent connection in the UK ? Say a 2mbps/E1 speed internet leased line ? Add another one. Does that 4.5m bonded connection [which unless i'm mistaken is 3x T1's] still look like a ripoff ?

[RallyTech]

So how much is an equivalent connection in the UK ? Say a 2mbps/E1 speed internet leased line ? Add another one. Does that 4.5m bonded connection [which unless i'm mistaken is 3x T1's] still look like a ripoff ?

Yes, it's a x3 T1 bonded connection and according to Google $1400 is about 1024 Euros. From the multiple quotes I received, it seems like the pricing I'm getting is within the norm.

[Jamman960]

The cost of proper E1 connections (multiple ISDN channels) is similar if not more expensive over here however there are often cheaper alternatives available such as MPLS lines or fibre.

We're more or less in the same boat, we finally have decent ADSL2+ lines in place but the uplink is still sub 1mbit we just can't justify the cost of a decent connection.

[glennda]

We don't have an existing fiber node at our school so from what I understand the vendor didn't even give me a specific # because fiber is on another order of magnitude to even get that to our school.

As for x2 DSL, we actually have that but we're on the highest plan and the upload speed won't go any faster than 768Kb. That is insane how you only pay roughly $7000 a year for a 100Mb line. I would give an arm for that. Are you in a new area with existing fiber everywhere?

most of the 100mb connections are done through the local authority at a subsidised cost, who supply every single building they own with it, apart from my la who have only done have of the county, so we are still on the 10mb ring.

This may not tbe the case in nephillium, but it is certinally the case in my la.

Toby

[RallyTech]

The cost of proper E1 connections (multiple ISDN channels) is similar if not more expensive over here however there are often cheaper alternatives available such as MPLS lines or fibre.

We're more or less in the same boat, we finally have decent ADSL2+ lines in place but the uplink is still sub 1mbit we just can't justify the cost of a decent connection.

I wish we could get MPLS or fiber. I'm not familiar with all the technology involved but I believe in our area there is no significant existing infrastructure for fiber or MPLS so costs for such technology are not reasonable for our small school.

[tmcd35]

I found this the other day, looks quiet interesting

Welcome to Sharedband - Choose your country

4 bonded lines come out at around £94 per month on top off the actual ISP line fees. You can use separate ISP for failover redundancy.

Maybe using business class ADSL2+ or SDSL lines could get a solution thats got good download, reasonable upload, redundance and cheaper than the traditional leased line route.

[Dos_Box]

*pats 10Mbps fibre conection and thanks God for it!

In Lancashire, and CLEO many schools now have 100Mbps (1Gbps in a few lucky cases!) connections for very little cash.

[spc-rocket]

*pats 10Mbps fibre conection and thanks God for it!

In Lancashire, and CLEO many schools now have 100Mbps (1Gbps in a few lucky cases!) connections for very little cash.

Hi,

Can i ask what connection to the internet does CLEO have? i.e. as CLEO provides connection to various schools so the fact the lines are 100mb or 1Gb does not really mean they are getting 1Gb of raw internet, this is to the termination point which is obviously helpful in accessing solutions based centrally but the main feed to CLEO and other RBCs will be shared by all schools even though they have 100mb connection.

Ash.

[Ric_]

Hi,

Can i ask what connection to the internet does CLEO have? i.e. as CLEO provides connection to various schools so the fact the lines are 100mb or 1Gb does not really mean they are getting 1Gb of raw internet, this is to the termination point which is obviously helpful in accessing solutions based centrally but the main feed to CLEO and other RBCs will be shared by all schools even though they have 100mb connection.

Ash.

AFAIK CLEO jumps onto SuperJANET at Lancaster Uni - SuperJANET is 10Gbps last time I checked.

@RallyTech: Have you looked into SDSL? Perhaps two 2Mbps SDSL lines load managed by something like a Smoothwall UTM would be a better bet - you could even use different providers for resilience.

As for justification, you could describe the scenario of users accessing your remote services and explain how the upload speed is shared acros these. 10 users would mean 70-odd Kbps each which would be crippling for RDP or even access to a basic web site!

[m25man]

Surely the justification comes out of need does it not?

In the UK State Schools are represented by Local Authorities, this association has some benifits (not always) one of those are the RBC's (Regional Broadband Consortiums)

These alliances have formed WAN connections and MPLS networks that provide high speed connectivity at many schools across the UK.

At one of our sites we have 2 x 100Mb connections (Split Site School) and this link allows us to share files, servers, home directories, Voip Telephone systems through IP routing courtesy of the RBC provider in this case Synetrix.

The cost however is not as cheap as has been stated elswhere here with a per site cost of around £18,000 GBP per annum

However it is still deemed essential and fiscally worth it according to the schools finance team.

Having 100mb fully Syncronous is fine when you are hosting a lot of services internally but with so much of what the kids need access to out of school hours nowadays there is more need to look at hosting this content externally.
That being the case surely there is less need to have a fully syncrounous solution so bonded DSL becomes a more sensible solution.

Before arguing the case for a T1 Leased Line I would appraise the inbound bandwidth requirements and see if you can offload any of your internal resources to an externally hosted server.

Then do a cost comparison between a dedicated T1 and internally hosted resources against a bonded DSL + External Hosting costs and Bandwidth charges.

We currently host everything in house just because we can and the 100mb lines are almost compulsory through the LEA requirements, if that were not the case I would be following my own advice.

In all of my private school clients the choice is DSL/SDSL primarily due to lower running costs although for many it is actually the initial Fiber Installation costs that is the real problem.

[somabc]

Well basically with Adsl, upload will be poor (asynchronous) and you are sharing the upstream bandwidth. Key point is nothing is guaranteed with ADSL, not bandwidth, not uptime, nothing! SDSL addresses the upload speed but a leased allows you dedicated bandwidth with an SLA (and a high price)

[nephilim]

*pats 10Mbps fibre conection and thanks God for it!

In Lancashire, and CLEO many schools now have 100Mbps (1Gbps in a few lucky cases!) connections for very little cash.

Our school will be the first school in Bedfordshire to jump to 1Gbps in September. We have 8x 12.5mb fibres coming in now, which will soon be put up to 10x 100mb fibres . Happy days!

Although being with E2BN, there is always massive downtime, and that downtime is a PITA!