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Question

Why not go to cable for this business?

Sep 4, 2013 3:55AM PDT

I recently took over as the sole IT person for a decent sized business of 17 convenience stores and a central office. Remote desktops and virtual desktops are the biggest things used in the central office, and each store has it's own internet. We have a bonded T1 for 3Mbps up and down. In my mind, T1 is supposed to be reliable and fast (not anymore by today's standards), and this is the reasoning I was given as to why the guy before me chose T1. However, in my first 2 weeks here, I have experienced days of downtime, which I'm under the assumption isn't supposed to happen with T1 business internet. Beyond that, if a single person is downloading anything, or if 2 people are using GoToAssist to remote into our stores, the internet slows to a crawl for everyone else and they cannot do their work on a virtual desktop. If just 1 person is doing it, the virtual desktops are still so slow it takes up to a minute for outlook to open. The price we pay is more than a 50Mbps down/8Mbps up from Suddenlink, for example. The guy at the place we get our T1 from says he can fix it by doubling us to 6Mbps, but I am highly doubting that is going to make much of a difference especially when it doubles the already high price. So my question, in case I am just missing some simple reason, is why would I not convince my company to switch to high speed Suddenlink? We do use VoIP phones, would it really make a noticeable difference on call quality? And wouldn't everyone still be able to work without a hiccup even if someone is downloading large files or multiple people are on GoToAssist?

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Nod.
Sep 4, 2013 6:21AM PDT

There's a lot to discuss here. The old plaid staid T1 line used to come with some 99.99% uptime but some confuse this to mean their network would be included with that service guarantee.

Nothing is farther from the truth. If you have gear such as routers and more that isn't from them (most of us do) then any trouble there is not their problem.

There are issues with cable as well and unless you get on a business plan you may be hopping from frying pan to another frying pan or the fire.

Days of downtime but so little detail.
Bob

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thanks
Sep 4, 2013 6:57AM PDT

The days of downtime were apparently caused by the vendor they lease the lines from, at least that is what I'm being told by our provider.

However, I also consider downtime to mean things like: updating windows? Other people work slower. Truck drivers updating GPS software? Other people work slower. If both of these people download their updates at the same time and anyone else on the network downloads anything at all or uses remote desktop the rest of the people in the office are better off tethering their smartphones and working from that.

I guess it is all moot, as we still have a little while on our contract. Upgrading to another bonded set of T1s to get 6Mb is our only option, but I don't think the monetary investment is worth the "possible" improvement.

Guess we are stuck in the slow cooking frying pan for now.

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All good questions and info.
Sep 4, 2013 7:24AM PDT

I don't have a great answer for this one. Part of why some companies have an IT staff with the iron fist (of control?) is because the internet connection is costly and is shared among a lot of folk. I you see folk watching videos and such that's sucking that connection and well, you as the IT lead have to either go with the iron fist, velvet glove or take your firewall up a notch to only allow authorized use.

Yes, those updates can hog the line but I've never seen it cause the system to fail.
Bob