common Questions on T1 Bandwidth - With Practical Answers

Confused about T1 bandwidth? No need to be any longer. Here's some of the most ordinarily asked questions .... With practical answers to set you level and on your way to confidently utilizing this backbone of company voice and data networks.

1. If T1 data rate is 1.5 Mb, why isn't a cable assistance "equal or better" which offers 6Mb down/768 Kb up? What are the fundamental differences between T1 and Cable?

High Bandwidth

Basically T1's are company connections. Cable/Dsl services are ordinarily residential.

T1's ordinarily have:

* unlimited throughput

* a guaranteed uptime per month

* no port blocking, allowing servers

* upload 2-5x as high as cable/Dsl

* faster mend times, as in the company will most likely take priority repairing them

* a dedicated line

Cable/Dsl ordinarily has an Aup or Tos that disallows servers, and may have high downtimes. Plus when there is no internet, there might be no company either.

Cable/Dsl have high download speeds, but in a company setting, you might only be checking email/browsing the web/updating database records, so you don't need so much download. However you may be running a server that uploads a lot, or you might be updating a website and need to send files often. The upload of a T1 helps in this setting.

Raw peak speed it not all there is to a connection. T1 is marketed as a company class service. That means it is symmetrical, production is easy to run servers and comes with a assistance level business agreement that warrant minimal proper performance and mean time to mend (Mttr). These are requisite components in the marketing of separate services. If you are a company the cost of a network outage could be dramatic.

That being said the full, availability of highly low cost residential services is putting substantial price pressure on original company class services. With that you see the cost of T1 lines (as well as Ds3 even Oc3) dropping steadily over the last year.

2. Is T1 more than just raw bandwidth? Is voice T1 fundamentally separate than data T1 for Internet access or "integrated T1" for voice and Internet access? If you need voice, do you have to go with a telco-type T1 provider who can supply you Dids and local and long-distance service, etc? When people talk about "integrated T1" which can be used for Internet access (data) and telephone assistance (voice), how does the provider cope data side and voice side?

Simply put T1 is a point-to-point link. T1 was developed in the late early 1960's to carry 24 digitized phone calls between telephone switching offices. Think of T1 as a straightforward pipe, between you and the assistance provider. That assistance provider may be the phone company delivering voice assistance over the T1 pipe, or an Isp delivering Internet access. To the T1 line how the bits are used does not matter, bit-is-bits. If you want Did trunks you need to make sure the remote end of the T1 connects to a assistance provider capable of delivering them.

Remember the history of T1.

It was designed to carry digital phone calls. Total capacity is divided into 64 kbps channels. That is ideal for voice but is makes no sense for data, so data uses unchannalized T1. In the middle is that ability to mix and match data and voice. Thus the birth of "integrated T1" lines.

3. In "integrated T1", voice calls get priority. In the absence of any voice calls, all the bandwidth is ready for Internet access. How is "dynamic and automatic" bandwidth allocation done? Do you need special edge equipment to do this?

T1 is just a pipe. It is a straightforward matter to have equipment at each end of the T1 dynamically allocate voice as high priority and data on a best exertion basis over a single T1 pipe, the common term is Integrated access gadget (Iad).

There you go. You're now armed with the basic knowledge needed to make the first educated decisions on installing a T1 line for your company voice/data network. For more complex applications I strongly advise using the services of a no-cost advisor to guide your company through any potential minefields.

common Questions on T1 Bandwidth - With Practical Answers