When is a T1 no longer enough?
From Bandipedia
Since the mid 1990's, the T1 has been the standard Internet Access solution for small to medium-sized businesses across the United States. The T1, for many small businesses, was a symbol that a company had arrived. With fully 1.54 Mbps of dedicated Internet throughput, employees at these companies could surf at speeds that seemed to be infinitely faster than their home dial-up connections. Network administrators appreciated the reliability of these circuits. With faster speed and increased reliability, businesses in America felt more and more comfortable in relying on the web to support their business. A T1 was the circuit to have for the majority of businesses. Sure IBM, Ford] and the Fortune 1000 had already starting deploying T3s (and maybe OC3s) to have the super pipes required to allow their thousands of employees to send e-mail, but for the rest of us, the T1 was all we needed and more. A T1 was fast. A popular Internet Cafe located in airports advertised "peace, quiet and a T1 line." In this context, a T1 was presented as the be all and end all of Internet circuits.
Well, times have changed. The revolution of data communications that the T1 helped to launch has caused it, ironically, to be surpassed. Now that businesses can rely on Internet access for mission-critical applications such as sales, customer service, and marketing, not to mention outsourced data storage and CRM applications, more and more speed is required.
I once worked at Arthur Andersen (back when they were the standard for corporate integrity... wow, Internet pipe speeds aren't the only things that have changed). I remember the envy I felt when the Partner that ran our group got a new laptop with a 486 chip. 486 chip!! Now that was fast. Who could want anything faster???
It is claimed that Bill Gates once said that all the bandwidth anyone ever would need would be a 512k connection.
Well, a 486 chip is no longer fast enough for your kid's use at home, a 512k connection is agonizingly slow, and most businesses feel the same way about a T1 connection.
So what's next? Do I buy 2 T1s? A fractional T3? A full T3? A bonded NxT1... a balanced T1? And with balanced solutions (combining T1s from other carriers), the questions go beyond speed. Do I go with Cisco Express Forwarding (CEF), Multi-Link Point to Point Protocol (MLPPP)? Well, the answer to both sets of questions, as you might expect, is "it depends".
On what does "it" depend? Well, 3 sets of criteria. Your answers to each of the following sets of questions will go a long way toward pointing you in the right direction:
1. Speed: How much speed do you need now? How much do you think that you'll need in 12 months, 24 months?
2. Reliability: Are your applications mission-critical? Are you better off with route diversity across multiple backbones?
3. Technical Expertise: Can you program router tables? Do you have an ASN? Are you familiar with ARIN and AS numbers?
Speed: Just as you need more speed now than you did 12 months ago, the same is likely to hold true in another 12-24 months. If you have other things to do than to worry about upgrading your network every year, you might want to consider the 24 month outlook... if that leaves you with more than you need now, well, it's rare that someone has regretted having too much speed.
Some questions that will help you to forecast your need for speed (thank you, Tom Cruise) include the obvious... headcount plans... and the not so obvious, forecasted use of web-based apps, including outsourced CRM (like Salesforce.com), WebConferencing, Online Customer Service Portals, etc. A survey of other department heads for their planned use of these applications probably makes sense.
Reliability: What happens if your Internet Access is down? If the answer is chaos, despair and panic or job security, you may want to consider some diversity across carriers. In this case you purchase T1 lines or multi-meg lines from different carriers and then bond or load balance them to act as one large circuit. If one carrier's service goes down, well you've got the other as a back up. Be careful here... carrier backbone diversity is key (as evidenced in the famous MCI Baltimore train tunnel fire), but it does not ensure complete diversity. For that, you need to be mindful of a concept called route diversity. For companies that have extreme needs for diversity or redundancy, every component of the circuit needs to be different, not just the carrier. As such, these companies often insist on separate fiber entrances to the building... so that an errant backhoe in your parking lot can't take out all of your local loops in one fell swoop.
If you have some good confidence in your local backhoe operator, diversity across carrier backbones should suffice. Another benefit of going with multiple carriers includes optimizing your traffic to go across the ideal backbone provider... Qwest traffic can go across your Qwest line at greater speeds and less packet loss... same with MCI, ATT, Sprint and others. That, of course, brings up the need to program router tables... more on that in the next section.
Technical Expertise: All things being equal, purchasing circuits from different carriers to make a multi-meg solution makes a lot of sense for carrier diversifications and optimizing traffic. As you might imagine, though, such a solution isn't exactly plug and play. For starters, not all carriers play together nicely in the sandbox. Some carriers won't give up their router tables enabling solutions such as BGP4. You'll need to work with an experienced Account Exec and then you'll need to have smart and experienced technical assistance on your end of the network.
If you don't have the in-house talent to program router tables and get an ASN from ARINor if your network admin isn't familiar with CEF and BGP4, you'll need to contract to an Integrator to do so... and depending on the solution, this can get a bit pricey. Typical engagements to program router tables to enact BGP4 properly can run $3,000 - $4,000.
So as we depart the age of the sole T1, increasing options bring up increasing questions, but the choice and flexibility that multi-meg solutions afford will help you stay on top of your customers' needs and a step ahead of your competitors.
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