Redundant T1's

[NewbieCarol]

We currently have 3 voice t1's with one vendor and 1 data t1 with different vendor, and yet another data t1 with a 3rd vendor.

We have recently gotten a new boss who wants to consolidate all of our t1 lines with one vendor. Is it just me or does this seem to be a risky idea as far as outages are concerned? It would appear to me on the surface that if the one vendor experiences problems with their network, our voice and data both have the potential of going down.

What are other companies doing?

 

[randyb19]

Unfortunately, management tends to see consolidation as a means of saving dollars. Like you said, they do not understand the risk they take on by doing so. I will say that we do not use one specific vendor for services, whether it be voice or data.

We have a primary and secondary pipe to the internet. One day the primary vendor had major network issues and their pipe went dead. Luckily for the backup, no user or customer was impacted by the issue.

I would make a strong case for diversity of your lines by letting your manager know the potential impact that could occur by consolidating the lines. Yes, it may cost more money to do so, but how much will it cost if your one and only vendor has issues and your company has no connectivity?

 

[NewbieCarol]

Randy, that's what I thought but I'm hoping someone might post some horror stories about using one vendor for both voice and data connections.

Thanks for your input!

Carol

 

[NX01]

In LA, I have multiple vendors...whoever gives me a savings and reliabilty. BUT...the lines coming into the building are from Verizon..regardless of who the carrier is. If they go out...they all go out. The only way I have built in redundancy is bringing in differnt lines, at different points of access. i.e. Copper lines, Fiber Lines and so on. All from the same company....Verizon. My thought was that if Verizon lost their POTS, Fiber and the rest of their services....my busy would be in a world of hurt...not because there is not dial tone but because some huge catastrophy just took out LA. At that point...I would be jumping ship and taking care of my own...

So consilidating is not a bad thing, just as long as you do it correctly for your business.

In the future everything will work...

 

[bwilch]

I worked at a place where we had 6 T1's coming into a voicemail system (we were a voicemail provider). We then had an additional 4 T1's for the telemarketing department. They were all with the same vendor and over the course of 4 years that I managed that system, we never had any problems where we lost all the circuits. We did have individual problems, but here's something to consider...

Where I am, SBC is the primary carrier. Your CLECS are using the transport of the LEC. For instance, if we used Global Crossing for a circuit, it came across SBC's lines and out of their CO. So in theory, there is the same chance of all the lines going down no matter who "controls" or "bills" for them. Additionally the chance of losing all of your circuits is probably going to be more related to a fiber cut. If that happens, again it won't matter the carrier if you're being routed into the building that direction.

Just from my experiences, this is what I have found to be true.

 

[NewbieCarol]

As some of you have pointed out there is still a single point of failure because all of the lines coming into the building are all SBC. But, doesn't consolidating vendors beyond that point increase the risk of possible outages? I also agree that because the point of entry for those lines into our building is the same, it is a risk. We will be moving into a new building in a few years and i'm hoping that somehow we can separate the point of entries.

 

[Duaneness]

My last company moved into a building that had redundant Central Office service. They could get service from two different offices, so if one had a meltdown, the other would still be up. But I agree that in most situations, the "last mile" is the most likely to fail, and then it doesn't matter who the provider is, they all use the LEC for the last mile.

- Duane

 

[orypecos]

I like the idea of having a couple of non T-1 trunks as back up for t-1s. I have found that they are more reliable and less quirky, but many people that I have talked to don't agree. They are usually much more expensive and are really only good for emergency use because most people only use one non T-1 trunk for every 20 or 30 T-1 trunks.

 

[bwilch]

Duaneness, what it sounds like is you had a SONET ring going on. It's dual fiber that comes into the building from two different directions, terminating back to two different CO's. These are usually OC-xx's which the provider brings in all the T's over.

SONET is about as secure as you can get of service in ensuring no downtime, but you most definately pay for it.

I do also agree with Orypecos. Having a few POTS gives you something to work with just in case. They're not overly expensive and can even be used as dial in to equipment while everything is working properly.

 

[sm4lls]

i used to work for a major telco provider. just to make you aware on several large european sites, the company placed orders with different carriers for different services.
So far so good, unfortunately the other carriers then placed orders with my company as we were cheaper than they could supply it themselves. each order did not state that it had to be diverse from the other and hence both went down the same fibre. The owning / using company only found out when we pointed out failure points on their site.
So just because the order is placed with another carrier, doesnt mean that it is diverse. Its common practice within the Telco's.

 

[s8700user]

We have coverage from several vendor. There has recently been issues with sprint programmers changing translations where our service was down. We transferred all our traffic to another carrier. T1's are too cheap these days to risk a large outage.

 

[orypecos]

Has anyone tried using micro wave or fiber to another site that has t-1 s as a back up?
The biggest problem that I see in most cases is finding out WHERE the problem is. When I worked at the Avaya Denver call center, customer after customer would call in complaining about their T-1 down. We would dial into their system, test the T-1 and find no signal from the vendor. The customer would call the vendor and they would say it was the PBX problem. The poor owner of the PBX had to have someone come out and verify the problem, only to usually find that it was a problem in the network over 95% of the time. I am wondering if there is a way to get coverage of both the PBX and lines from the same vendor and avoid this problem. I am not talking about AVaya though. Avaya offers a complete coverage, but unless that has changed, their coverage only means that they send out a Avaya techician, and THEN the provider of the T-1 is contached. But this means a long delay while the Avaya tech gets out there.