 T1 - Is it Right for You?
Written by: Patrick Oborn - Jun 18, 2006
Is it time to upgrade to a T1? There are several factors to consider when examining you current DSL connection and the possibility of replacing it. For many people the biggest factor is reliability and if reliability is critical to the applications you run over your connection you should seriously consider replacing your DSL connection with a T1. DSL is a quick and cost effective method of acquiring high speed bandwidth however it is not intended to support commercial applications or large numbers of users as is a T1 connections.
Reliability becomes critical when customers or employees depend on your connection for immediate responses. If your customers use your connection to access your databases or your server or the internet then reliability of your connection is critical. If your employees depend on your connections because you host the e-mail server in house or host web servers, your connections is considered critical. A critical connection can be viewed much like a life line, without which your business would be negatively impacted. Your monthly savings of having a sub-par connections will not make up for the loss in productivity of your employees or loss of customers when your DSL connections gets bogged down or cut off. To reiterate, critical connections should be supported with a T1.
Many customers are extremely price sensitive and cannot afford the cost of a Full Data T1 connection which can be as much as 20 times more expensive than a Basic DSL connection. Residential customers who are most sensitive to price should not consider a T1 circuit unless then have a business reason to pay for such a circuit and cannot access, nor rely on, DSL service. Most people don't realize that a DSL connection can be just as fast as a T1 at 1.5Mbps. The shortcoming of DSL is that it is oversubscribed. This means there is a finite amount of bandwidth available and a customer's speed can drop if other customers in the neighborhood decide to use their service. SDSL (Synchronous DSL) is a business class DSL service and is ranked as a higher priority than residential DSL, or ADSL (Asynchronous DSL), service. This means SDSL is not oversubscribed to the extent as ADSL is and is subject to fewer bandwidth restrictions. In short, if price is your critical factor, then go with business class DSL, or ADSL for residential service. If reliability is the critical factor purchase a dedicated T1 service.
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