SDSL vs Diginet vs Fibre?

Electron1

Electron1

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I have a client in Honeydew with 3 load balanced 8mb ADSL lines. Their core system is hosted at a Tier 1 ISP in JHB. They continually experience slowdowns on ADSL due to the contention ratio and uplink speed from their local DSLAM. Telkom don't care as long as lines are up.

Suggestion from their ISP is to install a 1Mb Diginet line to replace 2 ADSL lines. I am not sure if this will handle all the sessions they need to their hosted system, but it will at least be dedicated bandwidth with guaranteed service.

SDSL seems like a good option as mentioned on this thread : http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/333224-ADSL-vs-Diginet
Does anyone have experience with SDSL and how do I get more info?
Is it only available from ISP's or Telkom also?

Is Fibre an option through Neotel or any other service provider and what is the cost vs Diginet?
MTN, Vodacom, Telkom etc offer Metro ethernet - has anyone had experience with this?

Is Diginet an option considering the (supposedly) imminent availability of Fibre.

I do believe Wireless is a good option, however I would keep it as a backup as my customer needs guaranteed service, this is why I am considering a direct connection as the primary option.
 
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To be technically correct there are no tier1 ISP's based in SA.

Fibre has rather prohibitive installation costs last time I heard, and if you inquire about SDSL the first thing I would ask would be if there is an SLA on it.
 
ISP is IS in Bryanston. Not sure of distance, probably about 15 to 20 km.

I was hoping that someone has had experience with ADSL alternatives, seems like the most viable is Diginet, but it has been around a long time and is expensive. There is a lot of talk about things like Metro Ethernet and Fibre, yet is it viable for smaller businesses at the moment?
 
You can't go wrong with Diginet.

The alternative is to talk to a wireless company to get up a point to point link using Ubiquiti's equipment. But best discuss that with the ISP first as it'll mean putting an antenna on their roof and they may not like the idea that much.
 
h0ll0w said:
Fibre has rather prohibitive installation costs last time I heard, and if you inquire about SDSL the first thing I would ask would be if there is an SLA on it.
Click to expand...

Seeing Telkom is trying to get it's diginet customers onto SDSL (which is just as reliable) they should be offering SLA's on it.
 
When you talk about wireless you need to be specific. Most people refer to WiFi based services in ISM frequency bands that can provide good performance but generally don't have good reliability. However - if you're talking about a dedicated microwave link then you can have service that is as good as a fibre link.

What kind of bandwidth do you require? There are also fibre based services that are very well priced.
 
If you were to apply to ICASA for a frequency just above or just below the 5GHz ISM band, chances are that you would get it, if it's available.

You can then use relatively cheap, off the shelf equipment that will handle your required committed information rate.
 
ambo said:
What kind of bandwidth do you require? There are also fibre based services that are very well priced.
Click to expand...

We are looking for about 2Meg bandwidth, obviously the more the better, the problem is cost.
The concern I have with wireless is we need a service with SLA's as the company is mostly a call centre. Are there Wireless service providers able to provide that class of service?

I am going to call Telkom / Vodacom / MTN / Neotel to see what options they all have.
 
It all depends how quick you want it? I think the easiest would be to have a point to point wireless link to IS, and a backup to saix? Redundancy meaning separate mounting poles, separate hardware and cabling. See too many wisps having a redundant link on one pole, one routerboard and two antenna...thats not redundancy. We have this at our company in Cape town and are getting 30mb up and down. Do you have LOS to IS? Otherwise you might need to rent space on a highsite.

Alternatively check with Neotel if fibre already runs past your building?
 
paul5186 said:
Do you have LOS to IS? Otherwise you might need to rent space on a highsite.

Alternatively check with Neotel if fibre already runs past your building?
Click to expand...
I will check on this to see. Will be calling the telcos as well. Thanks for the feedback.
 
Electron1 said:
I am going to call Telkom / Vodacom / MTN / Neotel to see what options they all have.
Click to expand...
Have a chat with Arc Telecoms. They'll probably be able to put together a solution with SLAs based on the best provider for your specific requirements.
 
ambo said:
Have a chat with Arc Telecoms. They'll probably be able to put together a solution with SLAs based on the best provider for your specific requirements.
Click to expand...

paul5186 said:
It all depends how quick you want it? I think the easiest would be to have a point to point wireless link to IS, and a backup to saix? Redundancy meaning separate mounting poles, separate hardware and cabling. See too many wisps having a redundant link on one pole, one routerboard and two antenna...thats not redundancy. We have this at our company in Cape town and are getting 30mb up and down. Do you have LOS to IS? Otherwise you might need to rent space on a highsite.

Alternatively check with Neotel if fibre already runs past your building?
Click to expand...

Thanks for all the feedback. Good idea to set up a full redundant wireless solution and running costs will be lower.
Just need to find time to make all the calls and I will post some feedback on it for future reference.
 
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