Comments | sierra_nevada: This is Why I want to Multihome

sierra_nevada

This is Why I want to Multihome

Sep 27, 2007 12:00

We're in a dispute with our ISP. They've consistently screwed up one of two T1 links. We're disputing the billing of that one of them, but they cut off both, despite assurances from one of their VPs that they would do no such thing.

I must call the local cable company, and negotiate with them for fiber service with a decent SLA and direct access to ( Read more... )

Comments 6

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sierra_nevada September 27 2007, 22:49:46 UTC

Your hardware, or theirs?

Colos make me nervous, too. I suppose if I stuck a Sun in one with enough bandwidth ...

octal September 27 2007, 19:43:17 UTC

I like using colocated servers and then being less worried about how bits get to me. Satellite is decent for being independent of all local stupidity, and dsl+cablemodem seems like a better tradeoff than 2xT1 through a single company, unless you just are looking for 3Mbps uplink.

sierra_nevada September 27 2007, 22:48:21 UTC

The T1s are in different states, serving different locations, but from the same CLEC. The CLEC is actually doing OK on the unreliable line (except when they're not getting paid) because they're renting from AT&T at some fixed price. Trying to keep that old copper working is costing AT&T a mint (well beyond what they're getting in rental); they should just install fiber on the run and be done with it, but they're too stupid to do that ( ... )

redarius September 27 2007, 20:19:11 UTC

Bleh. That's incredibly frustrating. I assume this affects all of your clock.org people?

I don't know, though. If I'm a corporation, and I'm providing service to lots of folks, I wouldn't sign on for SLAs with teeth in them at the consumer, small home office, or even medium sized installation. People just won't pay for it, because they're used to cheap mostly reliable service and balk at paying what a few nines of reliability really costs.

It doesn't help that most of the providers that were willing to risk many nines of reliability at rates that approached discount rates lost their bets and either had to change their costs, get acquired by bigger companies that changed their rates, or went flat out tits up.

I've heard some decent things from friends about these "business class" services local cable companies are offering, but I'm not sure the environment up there is the same as it'd be down here.

sierra_nevada September 27 2007, 23:17:20 UTC

Right now, DNS servers aside (I've got secondaries for that on the US east coast, and overseas (Sweden)), all of clock.org is right here at home, save for my laptoy when I travel.

I'm negotiating for business class service, and prepared to pay the price for it; I've been paying for a T1 (not an xDSL with 1.5 Mb/s, but a real, honest to tariff, T1) since I moved here. It's expensive, but the reliability of the circuit itself (and the tariff guarantees behind that) can't be beat. The trouble is the company on the other end of that T1. They're idiots, and we need to stop doing business with them.

Our local Cable TV company is Charter Communications which is 60% owned by Paul Allen, turns over $9bn/year, and is $20bn in debt. The debt is slowly crushing them; in order to survive, they must sell more services on the existing plant to as many homes (and businesses) as are currently passed, with as little money spent to do that as possible. I have no problem helping, provided that their offerings are reliable, competitively priced, and ( ... )

volt34 September 28 2007, 03:32:18 UTC

I'm not sure that customer service and service quality of TV and residential internet offerings are reflective of commercial internet service offerings for many Cable Companies ( ... )