The Argument for T1 in a DSL World
For the last 8 years or so DSL has been the obvious choice for the majority of small businesses (SB's) I've worked with. The cost/benefit ratio of having a relatively high bandwidth dedicated circuit (7Mbps/896K) for something south of $100 is a fairly easy sell, even to business owners who still don't equate internet access to water in terms of necessity. For general web browsing and e-mail applications it's a wonderful solution- as long as those continue to be your needs.
The issue of course, is feature creep. Let's talk about a particular scenario I recently worked with:
Company X has been a progressive DSL customer since moving off of 56K Frame Relay around 2000. First to 256Kbps, 640Kbps, 1.5Mbps, and most recently 7Mbps. As bandwidth grew, so did the number of internet applications- Basic POP3 mail clients gave way to an on-site Exchange Server, 3-4 small websites were hosted internally instead of at an ISP, remote users began accessing the office via VPN and FTP, and locally run database applications were shifted to an offsite Citrix ASP.
There was no specific day or project that tipped their configuration into a state of degraded performance, as much as the random "quirks" one might expect with any internet application began occurring more frequently, eventually to the point of causing user frustration- especially in the form of dropped Citrix connections.
Bandwidth usage is a difficult thing to assess as it's a constantly moving target- but aside from explainable outages (ie, the user who CC'd a 10MB PDF to 200+ receipients) not a single measurement indicated network congestion as a source of the Citrix disconnects.
My first move was to contact the line provider (in this case Qwest) to verify performance of the circuit. Next I replaced the DSL modem and Linksys router (cheap equipment, well known to fail)- but also to no avail. While I wasn't convinced the router was truly swamped, upgrading the client to a Cisco 871 where I could better monitor and regulate network traffic seemed a solid move.
The core issue however, was not the amount of bandwidth available, but the latency of it. Pinging Citrix servers resulted in 55-110ms trip times. With the T1 circuit, ping times dropped to 5ms! Number of user reported disconnects since the switch: zero- even though bandwidth dropped from 7Mbps/896Kbps to 1.5Mbps.
The fact that a T1 line offers higher reliability and lower latency isn't news. The issue in convincing a SB to switch is often financial, and this is where it's critical to step back out of the IT consultant role and put on the SB equivalant of the CFO hat. In this case that meant making a broader analysis of the customer's telco, long distance, and voicemail needs. Convincing a SB to spend $400-$600 MORE per month on a data line is an uphill battle to say the least, but start subtracting out the costs of POTS lines, user downtime, and the soft costs of IT staff responding to those users and you quickly begin to build a budget neutral solution.
Should all SB's switch to T1? Of course not- for most, DSL will remain the standard-barer. But it's helpful in a world where sales are ruled by Megapixels and Megabits to step back and look at how this alternative solution can serve the broader needs of the business in an affordable manner.
The issue of course, is feature creep. Let's talk about a particular scenario I recently worked with:
Company X has been a progressive DSL customer since moving off of 56K Frame Relay around 2000. First to 256Kbps, 640Kbps, 1.5Mbps, and most recently 7Mbps. As bandwidth grew, so did the number of internet applications- Basic POP3 mail clients gave way to an on-site Exchange Server, 3-4 small websites were hosted internally instead of at an ISP, remote users began accessing the office via VPN and FTP, and locally run database applications were shifted to an offsite Citrix ASP.
There was no specific day or project that tipped their configuration into a state of degraded performance, as much as the random "quirks" one might expect with any internet application began occurring more frequently, eventually to the point of causing user frustration- especially in the form of dropped Citrix connections.
Bandwidth usage is a difficult thing to assess as it's a constantly moving target- but aside from explainable outages (ie, the user who CC'd a 10MB PDF to 200+ receipients) not a single measurement indicated network congestion as a source of the Citrix disconnects.
My first move was to contact the line provider (in this case Qwest) to verify performance of the circuit. Next I replaced the DSL modem and Linksys router (cheap equipment, well known to fail)- but also to no avail. While I wasn't convinced the router was truly swamped, upgrading the client to a Cisco 871 where I could better monitor and regulate network traffic seemed a solid move.
The core issue however, was not the amount of bandwidth available, but the latency of it. Pinging Citrix servers resulted in 55-110ms trip times. With the T1 circuit, ping times dropped to 5ms! Number of user reported disconnects since the switch: zero- even though bandwidth dropped from 7Mbps/896Kbps to 1.5Mbps.
The fact that a T1 line offers higher reliability and lower latency isn't news. The issue in convincing a SB to switch is often financial, and this is where it's critical to step back out of the IT consultant role and put on the SB equivalant of the CFO hat. In this case that meant making a broader analysis of the customer's telco, long distance, and voicemail needs. Convincing a SB to spend $400-$600 MORE per month on a data line is an uphill battle to say the least, but start subtracting out the costs of POTS lines, user downtime, and the soft costs of IT staff responding to those users and you quickly begin to build a budget neutral solution.
Should all SB's switch to T1? Of course not- for most, DSL will remain the standard-barer. But it's helpful in a world where sales are ruled by Megapixels and Megabits to step back and look at how this alternative solution can serve the broader needs of the business in an affordable manner.
posted by Joshua West at
6:33 PM
1 Comments:
Great article - very insightful. It's amazing how difficult it can be sometimes to get a client to look past the "higher speed number must be better" mentality to get to the solution that's right for them.
Post a Comment
<< Home