[aclug-L] Re: High-speed server access

[Jonathan Hall <jonhall@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > BTW, you mentioned that they get discount on their T3.... Why
> > do they have
> > a T3?  Or are they multi-homed?  If they have a T3 to SouthWind,
> > then that's
> > kinda dumb (unless it's cheaper than multiple T1s), because SouthWind
> > doesn't even have a full T3 worth of upstream bandwidth.
> 
> The situation is that for a while they were forwarding their local modem
> calls over a voice line to their connection center in Wichita. They have
> since moved their Clearwater service to the Clearwater office.  I'm still
> on the old system until they get the dedicated modems installed this week.
> At than time I'll be connected via Quest's backbone.  Connection through
> SouthWind has sucked for the last month or so, with excessive ping times
> coming off of SouthWind's backbone provider. As for T1 or T3, I was under

SouthWind is the best-connected ISP I know of in the area... But... there
are several ISPs that feed from SouthWind, and typically, they all saturate
their bandwidth, which is why SouthWind no longer sells connectivity to
ISPs.  ISPs are some of the most expensive customers to provide access to.

When you sell 128k ISDN to an office, they typically use the bandwidth
during business hours (9-5), and they rarely saturate it.

I saw a MRTG graph of a few burstable T1 customers SouthWind has, and their
usage shows about 1% utilization 99.9% of the time.  Very cheap customers to
provide for. :-)

With an ISP, you see usually 30% usage minimum, and 100% about 80% of the
time (at least the couple graphs I've seen at SouthWind).  And what's
worse... they're using the 100% of their T1 at the exact same time that OUR
dialup customers are needing it.  Not a very economical situation. :-)

Then on the other hand I know Feist and SouthWind never (or very rarely)
saturate their connections to UUNet, MCI WorldCom and Sprint.  In fact, at
peak times, it's usually around 50-60% saturated at most, IIRC.


> the impression that they were moving up from a T1, but that may have just
> been they are adding more T1's.

Going from a T1 to a T3 is a HUGE jump... Considering that a T3 is
equivolent to 29(?) T1's...


--
"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." -- Marechal
Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.
--
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  Jonathan Hall  *  jonhall@xxxxxxxxxxxx  *  PGP public key available
 Systems Admin, Future Internet Services; Goessel, KS * (316) 367-2487
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