[SC.LUG]Connectivity

[Jonathan Dwerryhouse]

Hi

SDSL roll out is coming along quite nicely.  It is not only available in
central London- certainly the highest concentration of SDSL exchanges is
based there with many wholesale providers putting their kit in- BT, Bulldog,
Fibrenet, Easynet.  Outside of London, BT and Fibrenet have done a nice job
at rolling out in most of the metropolitan central exchanges- Manchester,
Birmingham, Leeds, York, Sheffield, Edinburgh, Glasgow, etc.  Sadly, SDSL
take up is so poor that I don't expect to see more roll out for the next
year. 

With regards to whether you get the full 256k upstream and whatever
downstream on DSL lines is a question that depends very much on your service
providers traffic contention policies.  Our products for example are
'exactly what it says on the tin'.  2Mb/256k DSL is just that.  Other
providers will engineer IP contention to match the ATM contention, so you
are guaranteed to get an immediately contented service which effects
latency.  This is how many providers are justifying cheapy 'rip-off-Britain'
prices by not costing in bandwidth.  Their argument is that the majority of
DSL users do not use their bandwidth to it's full potential, so what's the
use in costing in 2Mb worth of bandwidth to match the 2Mb BT DSL tail
circuit.  As our client base is strictly business users, we expect them to
use the potential bandwidth, cost it in, provide it and hence our prices
look inflated to other providers.  

To the question of 'why bother with SDSL when it's cheaper to have bonded
ADSL lines'?  It depends on how much common sense you're lacking when
running mission critical business services over DSL lines.  I personally
think SDSL is a nice service for intersite VPN traffic, but sadly still
dogged by BT's unreliable ATM network.  I question why anyone would want to
spend that much money on DSL circuits when the cost of a highly reliable
leased line or collocation is in that price range.  For example, Nildram's
2Mb services (without the hidden extras costed in) costs £78.73 per 2Mb so
for an 8Mb/1Mb connection we're talking about £314.92 per month plus line
rental.  For that costing, we could do in excess of 1Mb dedicated IP transit
in a secure facility.  I'd personally put my money on the 1Mb dedicated
provided over a highly stable circuit full of resilience rather than
notoriously unstable ADSL.  

I think people forget that BT only ever intended ADSL to be an 'always-on'
replacement for ISDN speeds.  

Jonathan Dwerryhouse
Senior Account Manager
C2 Internet Ltd
Alvaston House
Alvaston Business Park
Nantwich
Cheshire
CW5 6PF
0845 658 0020
www.c2internet.net
 
All quotes & services from C2 are bound by our standard terms and conditions
which are available on our website at:

http://www.c2internet.net/legal/main.htm#tandc


-----Original Message-----
From: Ewan Leith [mailto:ewan at longwords.org] 
Sent: 21 November 2003 22:43
To: South Cheshire GNU/Linux Users
Subject: Re: [SC.LUG]Connectivity

nildram are now offering bonded adsls, so you get the full 256k per adsl 
up, instead of the 8mb down 256k up you get on most of them.

http://www.getadsl.co.uk/bonded_adsl.htm

Ewan


Seth Kneller wrote:

> Ian Molton said:
> 
>>dunno. but four ADSL lines probably costs less and you'd have
>>8Mbit/sec down...
> 
> 
> Could you bond them together to give that kind of bandwidth (if you
> had a ISP that wanted to play ball)? I know you can do this with
> Virtual LANs and Cisco Switches...
> 


_______________________________________________
SC mailing list
SC at mailman.lug.org.uk
http://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/sc