Business Fibre ISP

[William1102]

Hi All

In need of a Business Fibre ISP, have coverage via DFA, Link Africa and Frogfoot

Already Know of Websquad and Cool Ideas and have been in contact with them

Any ISPs besides these that provide good Business fibre service and any experience with them would be appreciated

Thanks

 

[lightpixel]

Hi All

In need of a Business Fibre ISP, have coverage via DFA, Link Africa and Frogfoot

Already Know of Websquad and Cool Ideas and have been in contact with them

Any ISPs besides these that provide good Business fibre service and any experience with them would be appreciated

Thanks

We've been with Bitco 2.5 years for one of our main sites.

Active ethernet. True 1:1 commercial grade Fibre. You get a fibre pair over DFA full duplex with a Cisco Switch on site. No router. Uptime is impressive. Price also. I searched about 20 ISP's and I don't know any other in South Africa that can do a true active e connection at this price. 1 downside is the contract. It's 12/24/36 and you cannot get out of it but that is normal when you play in this space.

We've had no major complaints. Minor niggles but my impression is that they really focus on business fibre and do it bloody well. Support is "Meh" try to avoid it.

Here's the links for the pricing. Top one is true 1:1 business fibre. Your link no one touches it but you, second one is contended. Think it's a DFA Magellan which could be GPON not sure.

Dedicated Fibre

Broadband Business Fibre

 

[William1102]

We've been with Bitco 2.5 years for one of our main sites.

Active ethernet. True 1:1 commercial grade Fibre. You get a fibre pair over DFA full duplex with a Cisco Switch on site. No router. Uptime is impressive. Price also. I searched about 20 ISP's and I don't know any other in South Africa that can do a true active e connection at this price. 1 downside is the contract. It's 12/24/36 and you cannot get out of it but that is normal when you play in this space.

We've had no major complaints. Minor niggles but my impression is that they really focus on business fibre and do it bloody well. Support is "Meh" try to avoid it.

Here's the links for the pricing. Top one is true 1:1 business fibre. Your link no one touches it but you, second one is contended. Think it's a DFA Magellan which could be GPON not sure.

Dedicated Fibre

Broadband Business Fibre

Yea definitely can’t afford the dedicated 1:1 link it is for an smme so will look at bitco broadband fibre

I mean support being meh is not good cause if we have downtime or packet loss or some issue need some good support

Also besides mikrotik if you’re familiar with routers that allow for failover wan when the fibre is down to switch to LTE

 

[CrypticZA]

We are sadly with RSAWEB in CT office and our warehouse in JHB is with Seacom and i would highly NOT recommend with of them, RSAWEB are useless they have no idea how to setup their own equipment properly, our international speeds are pathetic and their support just says "everything is fine"... Seacom we constantly have outages with and its not the fibre network going down, our phone system on both lines always has issues, sadly we locked in contracts with them or i'd leave tomorrow.

 

[lightpixel]

Yea definitely can’t afford the dedicated 1:1 link it is for an smme so will look at bitco broadband fibre

I mean support being meh is not good cause if we have downtime or packet loss or some issue need some good support

Also besides mikrotik if you’re familiar with routers that allow for failover wan when the fibre is down to switch to LTE

Unless you have a specific use case broadband fibre will be more than fine for most small medium enterprises.

When a ISP deploys a switch on active-e you just plug it into your router with a static IP. Its pretty straightforward. Then your Mik can handle the failover.

 

[William1102]

Unless you have a specific use case broadband fibre will be more than fine for most small medium enterprises.

When a ISP deploys a switch on active-e you just plug it into your router with a static IP. Its pretty straightforward. Then your Mik can handle the failover.

Not to clued up on miks that’s why I asked if there are other routers that can sort out a failover as I have an LTE router for failover

 

[lightpixel]

Yes there are many.

Install on own hardware or buy an appliance:

1. Pfsense if you are up to it. Can run their hardware or install on your own. Community edition is free here
2. Untangle. Now called Arista. Same deal as above. Very easy to deploy, runs Debian. See here.

Set for forget appliances:

1. Unify does some cool prosumer products that do wan failover: za store
2. TP link also has some really cool new products that are not too expensive. See here: TP Link Wan Failover and here for a model that supports it: TL-R470T+

There's a ton more out there. Most well known brands should be able to accommodate wan failover.
A Broadband fibre connection with LTE as failover is a great economical solution for 99% of SME use cases.

 

[William1102]

Thanks lightpixel

Will look at the options

 

[r00igev@@r]

I wrote about businesses last mile with resilient links here:
SD-WAN: Making an appropriate investment in secondary last mile connectivity links

SD-WAN: Making an appropriate investment in secondary last mile connectivity links

I have often observed a 1 gbs fibre service being backed up using a 20 mbs alternative fixed wireless service. When there is an outage the wireless link flat lines.

www.linkedin.com

It effectively comes down to your requirements and not putting all your eggs in one basket.