I need the expert advice from all of you in this issue since my experience is insignificant compared to some of the members of this list. In your experience what is better in terms of connectivity to the Internet. My boss wants me to order 4 T1's (maybe 6) to different providers to be 'completely' sure that our NOC will 'always' be up & running. I've already got 2 T's right now, I really don't know how' 'wise' it is to add another 4 or 6 from 'different' providers. Would it be better for us to get them from the same 2 upstreams we've already got? Would it be better to get a Fractional T3? I need some convincing arguments for him to understand, can anyone help? -Victor
my biggest concerns would be the following: 1) Fiber Cuts that take out your t1's 2) Power Outages 3) Router Failures Getting a few t1's from different providers will help, yes, as it will provide you the ability to manage your network such that if one provider has a failure, you can use the others, assuming they are bgp4+ speakers and you can do proper automatic failover. Do you have LEC fiber on premise? is it properly protected? Do you have proper generators, batteries, etc.. to keep this alive? Do all your t1's come in on that, or on a similar lightspan unit? If you have (for example) MFS + (insert other LEC here) on premise and bring your t1's in on seperate carriers to providers who are on those carriers, (ie: saying on MFS/LEC fiber to other provider), you'll be in good shape barring a bomb threat, fire, or chemical spill. - Jared On Wed, Mar 24, 1999 at 10:59:26AM -0500, Victor Alba wrote:
I need the expert advice from all of you in this issue since my experience is insignificant compared to some of the members of this list. In your experience what is better in terms of connectivity to the Internet. My boss wants me to order 4 T1's (maybe 6) to different providers to be 'completely' sure that our NOC will 'always' be up & running. I've already got 2 T's right now, I really don't know how' 'wise' it is to add another 4 or 6 from 'different' providers. Would it be better for us to get them from the same 2 upstreams we've already got? Would it be better to get a Fractional T3? I need some convincing arguments for him to understand, can anyone help?
-Victor
-- Jared Mauch | pgp key available via finger from jared@puck.nether.net clue++; | http://puck.nether.net/~jared/ My statements are only mine.
On Wed, Mar 24, 1999 at 11:08:39AM -0500, Jared Mauch babbled:
my biggest concerns would be the following:
1) Fiber Cuts that take out your t1's 2) Power Outages 3) Router Failures
even simpler than that. you need to make sure your ds1 is coming from differnt physical entry points of the facility from different CO's. one drunk running into the telephone pole outside your place, or a flood in the utilities under the streets can wipe you out if there aren't multiple paths. an absolute fallback would then be a uhf/microwave link to another facility which now a days can do 10Mb/s for not too much $$. -r -- finger ravi@happy.cow.org for pgp key "Sometimes I think the surest way to know that there's intellegent life out there is the fact they haven't contacted us." -- Unknown
I think you have the wrong idea on this T-1 thing. If a fiber cut is taking out your T-1's, as Mr. Mauch was saying. Then you would have a SONET entrance facility from the LEC into your building. Having the LEC build the entrance as a bidirectional ring with diverse physical entry points into the building is the way to go. The only way a T-1 can be dropped due to a fiber cut is if the build is Linear or the transport provider built a single physical entry point (which is shady to say the least!). Jody Craft At 12:31 PM 3/24/99 -0500, Ravi Pina wrote:
On Wed, Mar 24, 1999 at 11:08:39AM -0500, Jared Mauch babbled:
my biggest concerns would be the following:
1) Fiber Cuts that take out your t1's 2) Power Outages 3) Router Failures
even simpler than that. you need to make sure your ds1 is coming from differnt physical entry points of the facility from different CO's. one drunk running into the telephone pole outside your place, or a flood in the utilities under the streets can wipe you out if there aren't multiple paths.
an absolute fallback would then be a uhf/microwave link to another facility which now a days can do 10Mb/s for not too much $$.
-r
-- finger ravi@happy.cow.org for pgp key "Sometimes I think the surest way to know that there's intellegent life out there is the fact they haven't contacted us." -- Unknown
the biggest danger to the internet is not the backhoe but rather incompetence. a stupid upstream provider can screw _you_ up bad. (can you say route flap & damp?) finding six competent upstream providers would be astronomically improbable. focus your efforts. you'll be happier. our second biggest problem is the power outage (combine with #1 and you get providers who don't test their UPSs, &c.) rant off. -h : my biggest concerns would be the following: : 1) Fiber Cuts that take out your t1's : 2) Power Outages : 3) Router Failures
From there you have two options. The first is to add additional T1's to different providers. At this point, the law of diminishing returns has
Here's my take on this. A lot of this is from personal experience. In the beginning, a lot of smaller ISP's/hosting companies (at least in our neck of the woods) start out with a single T1 to the internet. This seems to be up most of the time. However, you are dependent on the reliability of your upstream provider. Which may be good or not. Also, during backhoe season this is definately not good. The next logical step is to go to a pair of T1's to two different upstreams, taking pains to insure that the path is geographically diverse, so that a fiber cut or some "disaster" in one part of the country shouldn't affect both connections. probably taken effect and any minor benefit to having 3 T1's is probably outweighed by trying to semi-balance traffic between all three providers. In fact, you'll probably find that it's almost impossible to get 3 T1's to not be significantly unbalanced. In addition, you chew more router memory and cpu by having the router deal with 3 (or more) views instead of just 2. I realize memory and CPU is cheap nowadays, but I seem to always be able to find some knob which I'd rather use than another BGP view. The other option is to get thicker Pipes to your 2 upstreams. This can either be muxed T1's to get 3.0 or 4.5 or more mb/s or some sort of FT3, depending on cost. My opinion is that this seems to be the more beneficial of the two options. You can scale each pipe up as the bandwidth on that pipe grows. This is also better internet wise as you end up being able to just say to the router "pick the optimum path" instead of saying "prefer a sub-optimum path so that things are well-balanced here". In addition, it permits flows greater than a single T1 would permit. There is one exception to my "only 2 upstream" opinion. That is that there comes a point where you find that a significant part of your bandwith is going through one of your upstreams to another provider. At that point, it may pay to get a pipe directly to that provider and either take only customer routes from them or accept some subset of routes such as those which must travel through them to get to their destination. This exception also applies when it becomes cost effective to just "peer" with those providers who will peer with you. If you'd like to discuss this further not-on-list, feel free to e-mail me directly. - Forrest W. Christian (forrestc@imach.com) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iMach, Ltd., P.O. Box 5749, Helena, MT 59604 http://www.imach.com Solutions for your high-tech problems. (406)-442-6648 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
I need the expert advice from all of you in this issue since my experience is insignificant compared to some of the members of this list. In your experience what is better in terms of connectivity to the Internet. My boss wants me to order 4 T1's (maybe 6) to different providers to be 'completely' sure that our NOC will 'always' be up & running. I've already got 2 T's right now, I really don't know how' 'wise' it is to add another 4 or 6 from 'different' providers. Would it be better for us to get them from the same 2 upstreams we've already got? Would it be better to get a Fractional T3? I need some convincing arguments for him to understand, can anyone help?
-Victor
Diversity is a good thing. A bit harder to manage but often worth the effort. --bill
participants (8)
-
bmanning＠vacation.karoshi.com -
Forrest W. Christian -
hhui＠arcfour.com -
Jared Mauch -
Jody Craft -
jzeeff＠whs.verio.net -
Ravi Pina -
Victor Alba