Who else is good for reliability, reliability, and reliability ?

One of my customers has a largeish (couple of hundred) group of
home-based workers VPNing back to the mothership. They use Zen ADSL
for these guys and are very happy with the reliability of the service.

Even so, about 40 of these home workers need/want redundant ADSL
connectivity. As in: get a second ADSL drop from a different provider,
just in case. The application concerned won't work across dial-up, so
that's not a viable back-up solution. Yes, I know, there would still
be plenty of common parts in the data paths and plenty of single points
of failure, but at £50/month per site it's cheap insurance.

Hence my question: Who else offers industrial-grade, VERY HIGHLY
RELIABLE ADSL provision? Cost isn't important, uptime is. Consumer
ISPs need not apply ;-)

Medallion Man <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> One of my customers has a largeish (couple of hundred) group of
> home-based workers VPNing back to the mothership. They use Zen ADSL
> for these guys and are very happy with the reliability of the service.

As I understand it, this is not possible.
BT won't let you set up two ISPs.
(It's completely technically possible)

One (expensive) way round it would be to become an ISP with two NOCs
that your employees could connect to.

On 29 Jan 2005 00:00:38 -0800, "Medallion Man"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>One of my customers has a largeish (couple of hundred) group of
>home-based workers VPNing back to the mothership. They use Zen ADSL
>for these guys and are very happy with the reliability of the service.
>
>Even so, about 40 of these home workers need/want redundant ADSL
>connectivity. As in: get a second ADSL drop from a different provider,
>just in case. The application concerned won't work across dial-up, so
>that's not a viable back-up solution. Yes, I know, there would still
>be plenty of common parts in the data paths and plenty of single points
>of failure, but at £50/month per site it's cheap insurance.
>
>Hence my question: Who else offers industrial-grade, VERY HIGHLY
>RELIABLE ADSL provision? Cost isn't important, uptime is. Consumer
>ISPs need not apply ;-)

I could name one, cos I work for one, but I don't believe this is the
right forum for self-interested promotion Unmung this address if
you want to discuss separately: (E-Mail Removed). Remove
mungbeans to reply.

Introducing a backup ADSL connection is a bit of a lottery. Remember
that the weakest link in the chain generally sits in the local
exchange, so any connections going through it are as likely to be
affected as each other, unless, by chance, you're connected to an
unaffected card in the DSLAM, or a different DSLAM if it's a larger
exchange.

I don't recall our BT Central / LNS farm ever causing a problem, and
I'm sure it's the same for other ISPs.

Jake

On 29 Jan 2005 09:17:38 GMT, Ian Stirling <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>Medallion Man <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>> One of my customers has a largeish (couple of hundred) group of
>> home-based workers VPNing back to the mothership. They use Zen ADSL
>> for these guys and are very happy with the reliability of the service.
>
>As I understand it, this is not possible.
>BT won't let you set up two ISPs.
>(It's completely technically possible)

I'm guessing he meant that they would install a second phone line for
the second ADSL connection.
--
Andy Norman (E-Mail Removed)
http://www.norman.cx/
Replace the fish with my first name to reply

On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 09:31:02 +0000, Muxton <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>Introducing a backup ADSL connection is a bit of a lottery. Remember
>that the weakest link in the chain generally sits in the local
>exchange, so any connections going through it are as likely to be
>affected as each other, unless, by chance, you're connected to an
>unaffected card in the DSLAM, or a different DSLAM if it's a larger
>exchange.
>
> I don't recall our BT Central / LNS farm ever causing a problem, and
>I'm sure it's the same for other ISPs.

That doesn't fit with my experience as a user of ADSL. I've used ADSL
since soon after it was launched with Easynet, PlusNet and A&A.

Almost every significant outage (excluding scheduled DSLAM
uppgrades/fixes) has been caused by a failure further up the chain
than the local exchange. Most of the outages at Easynet took out one
of their two BT Central pipes.

Since I have had two phone lines and two ADSL lines installed there
has never been a time when both lines have been out of action.

Perhaps I'm just lucky, perhaps our exchange gets a little better
looked after than most (the BBC's R&D department at Kingswood Warren
gets all its connectivity though it after all).
--
Andy Norman (E-Mail Removed)
http://www.norman.cx/
Replace the fish with my first name to reply

In article <(E-Mail Removed). com>,
"Medallion Man" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> Hence my question: Who else offers industrial-grade, VERY HIGHLY
> RELIABLE ADSL provision? Cost isn't important, uptime is. Consumer
> ISPs need not apply ;-)

Some suggestions would be Eclipse, AAISP and Metronet.

Not sure how you quantify "industrial grade" as they're all at the mercy
of BTs infrastructure.

Eclipse and Metronet do PAYG tariffs so you won't be paying lots of
money for the connection being unused.

cheers,
Paul
--
paul <at> spamcop <dot> net

On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 10:50:34 +0000, Andrew Norman <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 09:31:02 +0000, Muxton <(E-Mail Removed)>
>wrote:
>
>>Introducing a backup ADSL connection is a bit of a lottery. Remember
>>that the weakest link in the chain generally sits in the local
>>exchange, so any connections going through it are as likely to be
>>affected as each other, unless, by chance, you're connected to an
>>unaffected card in the DSLAM, or a different DSLAM if it's a larger
>>exchange.
>>
>> I don't recall our BT Central / LNS farm ever causing a problem, and
>>I'm sure it's the same for other ISPs.
>
>That doesn't fit with my experience as a user of ADSL. I've used ADSL
>since soon after it was launched with Easynet, PlusNet and A&A.

Unlucky!

>
>Almost every significant outage (excluding scheduled DSLAM
>uppgrades/fixes) has been caused by a failure further up the chain
>than the local exchange. Most of the outages at Easynet took out one
>of their two BT Central pipes.
>
>Since I have had two phone lines and two ADSL lines installed there
>has never been a time when both lines have been out of action.
>
>Perhaps I'm just lucky, perhaps our exchange gets a little better
>looked after than most (the BBC's R&D department at Kingswood Warren
>gets all its connectivity though it after all).

Hehe, you never know!

Jake

In message <41fb54b2$0$41726$(E-Mail Removed)>, Ian
Stirling <(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>As I understand it, this is not possible.
>BT won't let you set up two ISPs.
>(It's completely technically possible)

It is with a second line!
--
Pete Devlin
[{//////news03//////at\\\\\secondrow/////co\\\\\uk}]
"Mind the oranges Marlon!"

pete devlin <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> In message <41fb54b2$0$41726$(E-Mail Removed)>, Ian
> Stirling <(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>>As I understand it, this is not possible.
>>BT won't let you set up two ISPs.
>>(It's completely technically possible)
>
> It is with a second line!

Argh.
Sorry, that obvious solution flew right over my head.

"Paul Hutchings" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
newsaul-(E-Mail Removed)...
> In article <(E-Mail Removed). com>,
> "Medallion Man" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
> > Hence my question: Who else offers industrial-grade, VERY HIGHLY
> > RELIABLE ADSL provision? Cost isn't important, uptime is. Consumer
> > ISPs need not apply ;-)

there are plenty of business ISPs that use ADSL - but they all suffer from
the same problem if they use BT DSLAMs.

LLU based ISPs such as Bulldog where they have their own DSLAMs in the local
exchange might be able to do better - but since they all have the same price
pressure i doubt there would be a massive difference.

The "fix time" on ADSL from BT isnt a guarantee so much as a promise to look
at it. Corporate ADSL is better than baseline consumer but not by much.

Look at the BT online price guide if you wan the grisly detail
http://www.serviceview.bt.com/list/c...cs/maintoc.htm

If you need reliability then you would be better off with a different backup
technology

cable would be good if you can get it, since it is separate cables, and
doesnt use the BT exchange - lots of separacy

ISDN BRI is what my employer uses on corporate DSL connections - the link is
on 5 hour fix. Although ISDN probably will share the same wire bundle as the
DSL link, and the same exchange, all the electronics will be different.

So with ADSL / ISDN together you are vulnerable to a BT exchange fault, or a
cable route outage such as the recent manchester tunnel fire (or problems
with the central systems in your ISP) - but those are relatively rare
problems.
>
> Some suggestions would be Eclipse, AAISP and Metronet.
>
> Not sure how you quantify "industrial grade" as they're all at the mercy
> of BTs infrastructure.

SDSL might be a better bet - the ISP can set up alternate paths from the
DSLAM to their network, so avoiding any problem with backhaul. A lot more
pricy though
>
> Eclipse and Metronet do PAYG tariffs so you won't be paying lots of
> money for the connection being unused.
>
> cheers,
> Paul
> --
> paul <at> spamcop <dot> net
--
Regards

Stephen Hope - return address needs fewer xxs