The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5) - Internet Access

Internet Access - whither the middle ground?

A T-1 is $800/month. (Fractionals are so close as to be not an issue)

"Pro" cable modems or DSL are $100/month but *very* often will catch hell if you're trying to use them as public access points or sublease.

Why is there nothing in between?

Philo

Philo
Monday, November 3, 2003

My personal T1, in Austin, TX, is $300/month (plus $35/GB if I exceed 10 GB downloaded, which has happened perhaps twice in three years). However, that deal is not available anymore. I signed up for it before the bubble burst.

My company has a "commercial" cable modem with 4 Mbps downstream and 2 Mbps upstream for about $500/month. However, the service is unreliable and we want to replace it. We just got a quote for a full, unlimited T1 for $400/month with a three year contract.

rob mayoff
Monday, November 3, 2003

Not sure where you are located. Shop around, I've seen as low as $400 and as high as $1500 for the same T1.

rz
Monday, November 3, 2003

If your locale is lucky enough, why not a combination of a Cable and DSL modem. This gives you the benefit of redundancy and spreading your bandwidth so your odds of it being an issue of burdening their network will be cut in half.

m
Monday, November 3, 2003

Not lucky enough - got a DLC between me and the CO, so no DSL for me.

Philo

Philo
Monday, November 3, 2003

What you're looking for is something called Business DSL. Around here it's around $200-$250 and includes static IP addresses and no restrictions on the way you use it.

What we actually have is a DSL fixed line that goes from our office to our colocation facility downtown. The DSL doesn't connect to the Internet; the colo does. So effectively we are our own ISP.

So far it seems like the DSL goes down about once a month for a period of hours; when we had a T1 it went down about once every six months for a period of hours. So it's less reliable but much faster and much cheaper. We are looking into what we can use as a hot backup.

Joel Spolsky
Monday, November 3, 2003

We have have 500kbs for $250/month over wireless.
Depending on your location this might work.

son of parnas
Monday, November 3, 2003

The ISP you use is often important.

One of the reasons why I love DSL so is because there is a lot of choice out there in ways that cable has never had. All of the cable modem providers are evil about what you do with the link. Only some of the DSL providers are evil about what you do with the link.

ISP's like http://www.speakeasy.net/ actually encourage you to share your connection and will even split the billing for you.

Flamebait Sr.
Monday, November 3, 2003

Most people quote SDSL as the "between". It's basically a leased line but with synchronous DSL running over it. Normally we are talking about 768Kbps to 1.6kbps up and down stream.

Usually about half the price of "normal T1" price and a little higher than business DSL (normal DSL is usually 1.3Mbps down stream and 640Kbps upstream, with the downstream going up while upstream staying relatively starved)

Another you might want to consider is microwave.

Satellite uplinks latency sucks and is starved... so don't even bother.

Li-fan Chen
Monday, November 3, 2003