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We have a new community BB system.

2 Meg ADSL 20:1 contention backhaul from Zen.

Locust World wireless mesh.

80 users



Whilst we have been in discussion with communities who have similar networks
and performance is not reported to be a problem, we are looking at ways of
increasing the backhaul before users complain.



1) If we get another 2meg from the same exchange do we just
buy another share on our 20:1 contention and therefore not improve our
performance but increase our costs?

2) If we do get 4Meg from our two connections would bonding
(not supplied by our present SP) be better than bringing the extra 2meg in
at another location and letting the network look after load balancing?



Any help unravelling the complexity of backhaul supply at affordable costs
would be very welcome.



Thank you in advance.



Robert

On Mon, 22 Aug 2005 19:44:41 +0800, "Cmorgan" <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>We have a new community BB system.
>2 Meg ADSL 20:1 contention backhaul from Zen.
>Locust World wireless mesh.
>80 users

80 users on one 2M circuit - way to go ! What speed do you sell them ?
If its 2M the overall contention is 1600:1 :-)

>Whilst we have been in discussion with communities who have similar networks
>and performance is not reported to be a problem, we are looking at ways of
>increasing the backhaul before users complain.

a good move I feel.

>1) If we get another 2meg from the same exchange do we just
>buy another share on our 20:1 contention and therefore not improve our
>performance but increase our costs?

if you buy one more circuit BT aren't likely to upgrade the exchange
backhaul so if it gets congested both lines will suffer. You are in
effect cheating the BT planning rules by hanging 80 users onto what it
regards as a one user circuit (compared with 80 people buying their
own).

>2) If we do get 4Meg from our two connections would bonding
>(not supplied by our present SP) be better than bringing the extra 2meg in
>at another location and letting the network look after load balancing?

for resilience two feeds into different parts of the mesh from
different ISPs must surely be better. If this is 802.11b (?) one radio
will get fairly stressed with 4M of backhaul on it.

>Any help unravelling the complexity of backhaul supply at affordable costs
>would be very welcome.

you are paying about £1.10 per user currently. "affordable" needs to
be defined. 1:1 or 5:1 contention ADSL (or SDSL) is available at a
rate which when divided by 80 users would still be in line with the UK
broadband market.

Phil
--
Tiscali - dialup speeds at Broadband prices, see
http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/postlist...&Board=tiscali

AOL - the unlimited ISP of choice for heavy downloaders.

On Mon, 22 Aug 2005 19:44:41 +0800, "Cmorgan" <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:


>Any help unravelling the complexity of backhaul supply at affordable costs
>would be very welcome.
>
>Thank you in advance.
>
>Robert

Hi Robert

We (Entanet) can provide you with managed bonded ADSL. We'll supply
all the kit, you simply plug into the ethernet port on the router
(Cisco 1841 or Cisco 2811, depending on the number of channels being
bonded).

It uses Multilink PPP so presents a "true", not a load-balanced,
bonded connection. Bonding gives you better aggregation across
multiple links than load balancing can, it makes more efficient use of
the available bandwidth (think how much more efficiently traffic can
flow on a dual carriageway compared with 2 A roads - not the best
analogy, but helps illustrate the point).

Standard packages are 2, 3 or 4 bonded 20:1 2Mbps connections with no
caps, ideal as you get 512, 768 or 1024 Kbps up and 4, 6 or 8 Mbps
down.

We could look at >4 channels, but it would require some separate
costing due to hardware costs. One of our customers bonds 8 channels,
they supplied their own hardware.

Another customer uses 2 channels bonded to provide backhaul for a
wireless network for about 60 rural users and they are now considering
increasing it as they don't have enough to service that many customers
in their opinion.

See http://www.enta.net/index.php?id=145 for more info, then drop an
email to (E-Mail Removed) if it's of interest.

Cheers

Jake

On Mon, 22 Aug 2005 21:14:30 +0100, Phil Thompson <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> You are in effect cheating the BT planning rules by hanging 80 users onto
> what it regards as a one user circuit (compared with 80 people buying
> their own).

Do they base upgrade planning though on connections or utilisation ?

I have a feeling utilisation is part of the consideration, it can't really
not be - some exchanges serve a higher mixture of business and high use
residential users than others.

BT Wholesale have to take alsorts of considerations into account for a very
varied customer mix.

On 23 Aug 2005 18:29:44 GMT, Gareth Babb
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Do they base upgrade planning though on connections or utilisation ?

probably the latter, but I don't know to what extent they would keep
adding capacity to feed a handful of lines maxed out providing
backhaul to someone's community network, might be inclined to
segregate them on a VP of their own so they don't flatten everyone
else.

Phil
--
Tiscali - dialup speeds at Broadband prices, see
http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/postlist...&Board=tiscali

AOL - the unlimited ISP of choice for heavy downloaders.