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

[Tony]

Ok, so I'll bite.

On Mon, 24 Mar 2014 21:16:08 +1000, Paul Gear <ausnog at libertysys.com.au>
wrote:


>
> What I'm looking for is (in rough order of importance):
>
>  1. better line reliability

You won't get that on DSL. Unless your problems are related to the gear you
have in place the only way to get better line reliability is to get a
better line. Doesn't matter who you buy your DSL from it's all on the same
copper pair.

This is where I feel the big issue is with moving away from a Fibre NBN.  
The higher speeds will be nice in the coming years, but being able to get  
rid of the copper CAN would be a massive bonus in terms of reliability of  
services. I really feel for our customers (and ones like yours) who are  
stuck with crap DSL and no real options for anything much better.


>  2. better line monitoring (so that I can prove I'm getting better
>     reliability)

You've given the answer yourself and others have said the same. Chuck a
Cisco 877 router in and it will resolve this issue. You don't have to buy
new if budget is tight, you can pick them up 2nd hand for around the $100
mark. Ship two (so that you have an onsite spare) for your remote location.


>  3. access to technical support which is more thorough, transparent,
>     communicative, and technical

You don't want much, do you ? On a residential service budget ?


>  4. better uplink speeds

You need to look at non-DSL options. Apart from the "wireless from a
closer location" your options will be limited to what you want to pay
Telstra to supply you. If you're out in the middle of nowhere this is your
only option (You've said 3G isn't usable).


> MPLS doesn't seem to solve the issue of line quality or monitoring - it  
> works with whatever L2 technology is there.

That's correct, MPLS has nothing to do with your problem.


> 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.

All the carriers I've dealt with that is correct, if a pair out of the
bundle drops you don't know it until you check the speed. One recently
that customer complained was running slow we logged to the carrier and
they said that 3/5 pairs were faulty. We have no visibility at that level,
carrier doesn't monitor and customer only noticed that speed was crap
(service was still working fine, just slow).


>
> So getting down to my actual questions:
>
>   * What technology is the most cost-effective step up from ADSL, given
>     the above parameters?

If you're comparing to residential prices, nothing. Here is a clue from
the iiNet website:

Business Broadband - from $69.95/mon
Business SHDSL - from $400/mon

I have no idea how current those prices are, but assuming they are
correct, it will provide you with a starting point, especially in regional
locations. The "from $400" seems a little too high for my thoughts, but
they perhaps haven't updated that section of the site for a while.

You typically don't get "residential SHDSL" so you won't get it at
"residential" price levels.

If you are "regional" then chances are that the only DSLAM gear (or  
otherwise) in the exchange is Telstra, so you are limited to Telstra  
products and what other people can/will resell them for. An example is  
Optus SHDSL, it is only available from an Optus DSLAM.


>   * 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?

You would need to check with your chosen ISP that they know/care about the
line data. I'm fairly sure Telstra don't (for customer supplied data on
DSL services). Otherwise it's just useful for your own troubleshooting  
purposes. Cisco routers will help you out with this data quite easily. I  
graph the SNR, throughput, CRC's, etc for my DSL at home on my Cisco 877.


>   * How relevant is OAM as part of this solution?

OAM is more for Ethernet based solutions. Not relevant in a DSL world. On
any other kind of "better" service the handoff will be ETH from the
carrier NTU, so the carrier has all of the detail they need from the NTU
and in this case OAM would only help you to manage it.


>
> My current thinking is tending towards SHDSL with low-end Cisco/Juniper  
> CPE.

A lot of carriers will provide an NTU on SHDSL (or above) services so you
may not be plugging into the SHDSL and getting line stats.


> 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.

So plug some rough number into your equations and work it out. If all of
your links were 4x more expensive would that fly, what about 10x ? If not,
then walk away and start thinking about better ways to support crappy DSL.


> Any thoughts?

Good luck ;)


> (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.)

You're right, you won't find an SP that will monitor your SNR and tell you
when it changes by 2dB. Part of that is because Telstra don't care about
that. You can't log a fault just because your SNR gets worse or your sync
drops from 3000kbps to 2800kbps. Typically if you wanted such a high level
of service, you would need to pay for it and be on links that would make
it worthwhile paying for - DSL doesn't come under this category. Then when  
you had a better quality link DSL stats wouldn't really matter because the  
carrier hands off to you as ETH so the only "stats" you can monitor are  
throughput and packet loss to "something" on the other end of the link.


regards,
Tony.