Hello folks -
My T1 is at times getting maxed out with about 50 customers on it. I was curious if anybody out there was using either DSL or cable access for some or all of their upstream connection.
Also, I have all of my customers on 1x, even though I have several that will support 2x. Should I change those over?
Just trying to get every little drop out of my T1 before having to upgrade.
1x will use more radio bandwidth, but less backbone.
Are you using bandwidth settings (under QOS in v8)? If not, that will help.
See page 389, section 23.2.1 for a description of how it works.
50 users is about it unless you implement QoS and bandwidth shaping. A well configured Mikrotik could stretch your T1 by as much as 50%.
I would analyze the traffic using Wireshark and act accordingly.
A second T1 is the way to go. DSL and Cable connections are risky as your provider may place restrictions on ports, utilization, and bw caps.
Jerry Richardson wrote: A second T1 is the way to go. DSL and Cable connections are risky as your provider may place restrictions on ports, utilization, and bw caps.
Also, a DSL is commonly asymmetric, meaning that you will have something like 4096k down / 512k up.
That could be a problem because many users can saturate the upload and slow down the web experience of all the others.
Before we got our DS3, we had 350 users on a 3XT1 link, thanks to a Mikrotik router shaping traffic, chokeing P2P, and Filtering viruses and worms.
When we first started having problems with bw limits , we tried a few DSL connection in areas near hotspots, hotels, mobile home parks, etc. . I will be the first to tell you don’t bother. The DSL routers seem to be the weak point, as they freeze or reboot when pp/s get around 700. We tested this over and over again, and it was just a time -consuming nightmare. Don’t be lured by the massive savings you will get, in the end, Jerry’s rec to get a dedicated circuit is the way to go.
oh, And Yes, BigTrumpet is absolutely right. We had to give 384/64k speeds to the users to defray the upload choke. Most were not impressed.