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Hi all,<br>
<br>
I asked this on IRC today and after discussing it for a while with
various people I agreed that it needed a fuller expression here.
(It has also been posted to SAGE-AU - apologies to those on both
lists.)<br>
<br>
My biggest client has a growing network of about 30 branch offices
scattered around Queensland, mostly connected on ADSL, almost
exclusively through iiNet. We've had a number of poor support
experiences recently, particularly last week where I was flown in on
site to try to resolve some connectivity issues. I had logged a
fault on the line and was told a Telstra tech would visit site early
in the week. When the Telstra tech didn't show, I rang iiNet and
was told that Telstra had decided there were no problems with the
line (and so didn't bother coming on site), and was told the fault
was resolved, despite the fact that I was still experiencing 20%
packet loss on pings, and tens of thousands of receive CRC errors
every hour. When I pushed for more information, I was told that
there was a congestion issue on that DSLAM and it wouldn't be fixed
for another 2.5 months. (Somebody please tell me how congestion can
cause CRC errors!) So over the week, I got a lot more familiar with
ABC Jazz (iiNet's hold music), and came to the conclusion that we
need to investigate alternatives to ADSL (and iiNet).<br>
<br>
What I'm looking for is (in rough order of importance):<br>
<ol>
<li>better line reliability</li>
<li>better line monitoring (so that I can prove I'm getting better
reliability)<br>
</li>
<li>access to technical support which is more thorough,
transparent, communicative, and technical<br>
</li>
<li>better uplink speeds</li>
</ol>
<p>At the moment most of our sites use a standard consumer-grade
ADSL modem in bridging mode, and our Linux firewall runs the PPPoE
connection and an OpenVPN tunnel to our data centres. We could
get #2 simply by using a more advanced CPE (e.g. Cisco 88x series
has been recommended), but all this it would do is prove that we
have a bad line. Finding an ISP that is big enough to understand
how to deal with Telstra but small enough to talk technical with
us will solve #3, but #1 & #4 are problematic. Many of our
sites are regional, so Metro Ethernet will not likely be
available. Some of them are 6+ km from their local exchanges,
and, as a special bonus, get terrible 3G reception. MPLS doesn't
seem to solve the issue of line quality or monitoring - it works
with whatever L2 technology is there. Most ISPs EoC offerings
seem to be just bonded SHDSL, and there's no guarantee the ISP is
actually monitoring the pairs that make up the EoC bundle, and I'm
told that they generally don't monitor it until the customer
complains.<br>
</p>
<p>So getting down to my actual questions:<br>
</p>
<ul>
<li>What technology is the most cost-effective step up from ADSL,
given the above parameters?<br>
</li>
<li>What CPE would you recommend for getting useful quality
metrics about the line (exposed via SNMP or some other openly
standardised method) so that we can go straight to the ISP with
hard data when a line fails?</li>
<li>How relevant is OAM as part of this solution?<br>
</li>
</ul>
<p>My current thinking is tending towards SHDSL with low-end
Cisco/Juniper CPE. In the sites where it's viable, obviously we'd
go fibre in preference to copper if the cost difference were low.
Either way, this would be a big cost increase over our current
setup, so I need to convince management (and be convinced myself)
that this will actually be a cost-benefit win on the reliability,
monitoring, and support sides.<br>
</p>
<p>Any thoughts? I'm happy to take off-list plugs from relevant
service providers, as long as you're OK with the fact that you'll
be behind our existing suppliers in the queue. (Please, no offers
of fully managed network services. No offense, but I just don't
believe that you care about our connections enough to monitor them
well.)<br>
</p>
<p>Thanks,<br>
Paul<br>
<br>
</p>
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