My company is moving and I'm wanting to check to see what other internet service providers offer business class service. We currently have Basic RR Business Class but we have had a so-so experience with them. Someone recommended DSL but in my past experience DSL just wasn't up to par but this seems to have changed.

Anyways, are there any other options out there? I guess BellSouth DSL is my only choice and their Extreme Service is $110p/mo (which seems reasonable) however how accurate are their service numbers? 6.0Mbps/512Kbps...I think RR is 4Mbps/2Mbps right? We have about 8 VOIP phones on the network so the DSL upstream will probably hurt us. We are also budget Conscious so a dedicated T1 is probably out of the question depending on the price.

I wish Verizon's FIOS service was in our area...that seems like a sweet option but I called and they said they don't have any plans in offering this in our area.

Your thoughts and opinions are value.

Regards,

Justin

[Edited on April 10, 2006 at 9:44 AM. Reason : p]

4/10/2006 9:43:49 AM

Quote :

" 8 VOIP phones on the network so the DSL upstream will probably hurt us."

Depending on which VoIP codec you are using, even 512k up should be fine. G.729 for example requires 24kbps per channel.

Of course this all assumes that you implement your VoIP correctly, with end to end QoS.

However, if you transmit a lot of data out of your network, it could certainly become a bottleneck. I've definitely had better experiences with cable than DSL.

4/10/2006 10:58:16 AM

^ therein being the problem.

most small companies that are going to go the cheap route for their internet service aren't going to be able to deal with QoS at all and won't pony up to have Cisco or whatever other network/voip comany come in and set it up correctly.

not saying that's true for ^^, but it's my experience anyway.

4/10/2006 11:01:10 AM

True, which is why VoIP on a small scale is generally more costly than a standard office POTS system.

4/10/2006 11:06:49 AM

unless you are doing a lot of outofstate calling.

I put in a raggedy, makeshift voip setup year ago for a virtual company, it saved them so much damn money it was crazy.

4/10/2006 11:08:33 AM

What did you use for PSTN access?

4/10/2006 11:20:02 AM

G.729 is 8kbps.

G.726 is 16/24/32/64

G.711 is 64

4/10/2006 11:25:53 AM

^ that doesn't factor in overhead.

Using G.729 as an example, each packet will have an IP, UDP, and RTP header. An IP header is 20 bytes; a UDP header is 8 bytes and an RTP header is 12 bytes. So each packet will have an additional 40 bytes or 320 bits of header information. G.729 samples at 50 packets per second, so adding all that up, you'd add 16kbps in overhead for a total of 24kbps.

4/10/2006 11:32:44 AM

^Oh not even that much, it was just a bunch of damn vonage accounts. at 24 bucks a line, for the 40 or so lines they had, they reduced their telco bills by like 70%

4/10/2006 11:45:46 AM

oh my bad.


good article here
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk652/tk698/technologies_tech_note09186a0080094ae2.shtml

4/10/2006 11:45:48 AM

Yea that is what we have about 6 vonage lines and 2 packet8 lines. We get decent performance from them but QoS is where it hurts us. We also run a email server from here locally so you can definately tell when we are hitting the limit on our RR line. It does seem a bit better lately. I have thought about a QoS device and set our network up a better but that would require time which I don't have currently. LOL

Thanks for the help!

4/10/2006 1:18:00 PM