[AusNOG] Going beyond ADSL in a non-NBN world

[Joseph Goldman]

Another option - find sites that have good connectivity close(ish) to 
the offices, and work out a deal with a building owner to have a 
Wireless PtP link out to your office.

It's relatively inexpensive to get a 5+km link stable with good LoS. For 
approaching building owners, it could be as simple as a small fee per 
month/year, or free services in contra for the building space. 
(J-bracket or similar sized brackets are big enough for many wireless 
devices, so its not a big fit-out).

On 24/03/14 22:16, Paul Gear wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> 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.)
>
> 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).
>
> What I'm looking for is (in rough order of importance):
>
>  1. better line reliability
>  2. better line monitoring (so that I can prove I'm getting better
>     reliability)
>  3. access to technical support which is more thorough, transparent,
>     communicative, and technical
>  4. better uplink speeds
>
> 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.
>
> So getting down to my actual questions:
>
>   * What technology is the most cost-effective step up from ADSL,
>     given the above parameters?
>   * 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?
>   * How relevant is OAM as part of this solution?
>
> 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.
>
> 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.)
>
> Thanks,
> Paul
>
>
>
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