enjay Posted February 6, 2012 Posted February 6, 2012 One other point in the home-vs-business connection debate which no-one has mentioned is that home services are capped, business services are either not capped or have much higher caps on them. You do need to look at what you are getting for your money and compare one business provider against another, as it does seem like you're paying slightly more than necessary, however comparing home to business products isn't really fair. Do evaluate the options and requirements though - yes, a more expensive service will include filtering, etc, but could you get a cheaper unfiltered service and filter it yourselves (Bloxx, Smoothwall, RM ot whatever) and still save money?
SchoolsBroadband Posted June 10, 2012 Posted June 10, 2012 In my opinion it's not just about the raw speed you get from a line. It's also the service level and the people behind the service. Yes I'm aware that cable modem home connections for example can be unbelievably fast but what happens when there is a problem? I know of a few occasions where whole towns have been knocked offline for more than 24 hours or slow speeds have occured for similar times. For a service from a specialist educational ISP or the LA depending on the technology used you should get guaranteed speeds, immediate support and a guaranteed service level. Could you imagine having a fault and having to go to a virtual call centre in another country? Not good. On another note specialist education ISP's should give help on other areas inc filtering, general security etc. I'm not trying to sterotype but many schools and technicians don't have the skills to do this properly (even though some say they do!). It's important to be accredited so the engineers / technicians at the ISP know exactly what they are doing and have gone through rigourous training to do so. It's not hard to set a firewall / fitlering up basically. But in my opinion really knowing exactly what you are doing is a massive value add and should not be under estimated. It's also well worth pointing out that contention ratio's on BT's wholesale 21CN network for DSL and FTTC services don't really exist as a 20:1 or 50:1 anymore. I was never convinced those contention ratios did actually exist int he first place. Broadband over BT's 21CN network for DSL and FTTC works generally one of two ways. Either Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) or Wholesale Broadband Managed Connect (WMBC). WMBC gives an ISP a connection into BT's network (normally bought as a 10GIG interconnect). BT then give you a guaranteed rate which I believe is 2Mbit download on ADSL and 12Mbit download on FTTC back to the ISP's 10GIG interconnect. You can pay additionally for BT's Elevated Best Efforts (EBE) which we do on all circuits as standard. This then guarantees 3Mbit download on ADSL and 16Mbit on FTTC. Contention as such can happen in two places. Firstly at the BT exchange. e.g. you have a 37Mbit BRAS (A BRAS profile is the definite speed you will get and is lower than the actual sync speed normally by 3 to 4%). The second place is at the ISP's interconnect into BT. The below example is for WMBC. e.g you have a 30Mbit BRAS profile, the ISP has gigs of spare capacity on its interconnect into BT. Yet the end user only downloads at 20Mbit. Here there will be contention / issues between BT's network and delivering it to the ISP. e.g. 2 you have 30Mbit BRAS profile, the ISP is running at 100% capacity but BT's network is not. The custer then wouldn't get his full 30Mbit. Specialist ISP's should never hit capacity and should manage this. You'll find the cheaper ones over subscribe their interconnects into BT. There is the WBC. This is only done by a very small handful of ISP's who actually have their own network around the UK. This option is much more flexible than WMBC but you need lots of users to make it worth while in specific locations. BT has a number of nodes on their 21CN network around the country (18 I think). An ISP can take an Interconnect into any or all of these nodes. The ISP then buys a different amount of bandwidth into each node. This allows the ISP to have the correct amount of capacity at each node rather than a 10GIG single interconnect into BT. BT then hands off bandwidth at each node / interconnect and passes it onto the ISP's network. This is generally how we provide our DSL and FTTC services. e.g. we are doing a lot of business in Northampton at the moment which goes on BT's Peterborough node so this is where additional bandwidth is purchased. Leased line circuits on BT's 21CN network cast iron guarantee bandwidth all the way from the customers site through the exchange and to the node / interconnect. Here endeth the lesson! I hope you found it useful! 1
SimpleSi Posted June 10, 2012 Posted June 10, 2012 I was going to query your re-raising a dead post but your stuff was very good info Si
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