There are lots of opinions about what type of internet is the best and what to use and why. I am going to share some basics here and hopefully they will help your decision process. The most popular "broadband" services now are DSL ( digital subscriber line) Cable and Fiber. The three choices all use different delivery methods. DSL uses the existing copper telephone line infrastructure created by the Ma Bell over 100 years ago. In essence DSL is a technology "retro-fitted" onto an old standby technology. Coaxial cable became popular in the late 70s to deliver TV services and when the Internet blew up in the late 90's they figured out how to use that network to transmit public and private internet. Fiber is the telephone companies attempt to compete with Cable for bandwidth customers. Of the three, DSL is usually the slowest option ( usually it is the cheapest as well). DSL is a distance sensitive product, meaning that the farther you are from the local phone companies central office building the less effective it will be. There are a number of factors that can slow down the speed of DSL service. Distance, copper quality and the time of day. Yes, you read that right, the time of day you use it will effect how fast it will be. This is the dirty little secret that no one really wants to talk about and it affects all three types. All 3 services are based on a "shared services" infrastructure. Simply put, each given area has a certain amount of bandwidth to use for both residential and commercial customers ( this is the other dirty secret they don't talk about) so the more people that subscribe to your service reduces the speeds available to you. We call this the "after school affect." I am sure you notice that around a certain time every afternoon the bandwidth seems to slow down. If you were to mark that time and make some phone calls, you would find it is right around the time that kids get out of school and get home. They are downloading itunes, streaming netflix and playing x-box live, all of which sucks up the bandwidth you need to run your business. Now the decrease is only a blip on Fiber solutions and is probably tolerable on cable. Fiber is so new that that market is not saturated but as time goes by you will start to see the effect here as well. Cable, while no longer new, is also not saturated. As more people switch to bundling in their phone service and using solutions like vonage, the demands for bandwidth increase but the bandwidth available does not. None of these speeds are guaranteed and are all considered "best effort." There is no promise of performance.
By comparison, Dedicated internet, is just that. You sign up for a specific bandwidth and you are given an SLA ( service level agreement) that guarantee's not only speed, but also up time and mean time to repair when there are service issues. The most common dedicated internet is called a T-1 ( there is also Ethernet, but for the purposes of this article we will just talk about T-1) a T-1 is a 4 wire circuit that generates a 1.5 mbps ( megabits per second) symmetrical internet connection. The two key words here are dedicated and symmetrical. So you always get your 1.5 mbps regardless of how many other people my be using the same service provider in your area. Also, with this product your upload and download speed are the same so it wont take ten times as long to send that big file as it did to receive it. T-1 service tends to be more expensive than the other options but for a business application, is also more reliable and gives the customer greater flexibility.
To be clear, there are plenty of companies that use shared broadband services for their day to day needs and it works great. But for the company that is going to really use: Telecommuting, VPN ( Virtual Private Network) and VOIP, T-1 based services really are the smart way to go, to assure a consistent user experience. T-1's can also be bonded together to meet increasing bandwidth requirements.
In summary, it is a good idea to review the multiple technologies and determine how each one can perform in your specific area. Also keep in mind, just because your office isn't near a residential area, don't think they aren't tapping into the same bandwidth as you.
Thanks for reading today
Mike S.
BTW follow me on twitter @mistertelecom
Thanks. Great article.
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