What is the best business solution?

[gimp]

OK, advice needed here.

First of let me explain the situation, we are a publishing company with a web development department. We currently have a 256 diginet line with about 37 staff in the company.
Not all of the staff uses the internet at the same time but there is a lot of activity on the line so my download speed sometimes reaches a high of 5kb/s LOL.

So now the boss assigned an adsl noob to order a better service for us, so he called in IS, is suggested 2 x 512 lines Telkom screwed up as usual and now we are only getting 1 x 1024 line.

We have been waiting on our line for nearly 6 months. Also bare in mind that we as a web dev company needs lot of speed.

Question 1
Will the 1024 line be sufficient for a company with 37 staff members?

Question 2
If not, what would be a better solution? And where can I find more information about this.

Question 3
Is it normal for a business to wait 6 months for ADSL

Many thanks in advance; all advice will be greatly appreciated.

 

[dotcat]

Question 1
Will the 1024 line be sufficient for a company with 37 staff members? yes

Question 2
If not, what would be a better solution? And where can I find more information about this. - not qualified to answer

Question 3
Is it normal for a business to wait 6 months for ADSL - NO

 

[moklet]

1024 might even be upgraded to 4096 in telkoms trial

 

[damian24]

If you're doing ADSL install remember to keep at least some diginet bandwidth as ADSL uptime is not guaranteed and repair time associated can be days.

Having said that, I actually implement several solutions like this, keeping a small amount 64/128kb of diginet available and popping in ADSL 1024 for office sizes of 20 or so, larger and I put in 256kb diginet instead but your requirements / milage may vary.

I pipe EMail via diginet thereby maintaining the connectivity at reasonable levels on ADSL.

from a maintenance point of view, get a CISCO adsl router, as you can use it a policy based routing and policing of traffic. there are other ways of achieving this, but IMHO I'd prefer a simple single box solution, if you already have one of the modular cisco's get an ADSL card and let the router decide where the traffic must go.

D

 

[Mangoman20]

Yes there IS a solution

We were in a similar situation to you 2 years back.

We went ahead with an ADSL solution that has been fantastic (well the last year has, before that was all the groundwork)

PM me and I will gladly give you more info...

 

[bwana]

Question 1
Will the 1024 line be sufficient for a company with 37 staff members?

A publishing company implies heavy and/or frequent file transfers so 37 ppl sharing a single 1024/384 line is going to be problematic. You're going to look fondly back on those days of 5KB/s.

EDIT - whats the cost of your diginet line? Surely you can afford more than one adsl line and still save some shekels.

 

[gimp]

Well thanks for the input!

I think the plans are to scratch the diginet completely; we have being experiencing so much problems with it and it became a headache

We have a iBurst that I mainly uses so I get about 50kb/s and we will use this as a backup line if needed,

I’m really not convinced that 1024 will provide enough bandwidth for 37 ppl.
And yes the development department uses a lot of bandwidth on a daily basis.

Damian 24 you are right policing will be need here, stop all this p2p that’s we in the office like so much

Well I guess the proof will be in the pudding.

1024 might even be upgraded to 4096 in telkoms trial

Please tell me more about this

Thanks again

 

[RystiC]

I have a 1024k line here at work and its connection speed is 4096, so ja, not exactly sure what telkoms plans are, but i tested it, and i got download speeds of between 300-400kb/s.

I have a client that has about 60 computers on a 512k line, and dont want to go faster cause their cap will finish faster aswell. There is more to consider then just line speed, your ISP will come to affect to. I would recommend getting an Siax account and not a IS, ask the ISP what accounts they selling (IS or Siax) before just jumping in. I resell IS accounts to my clients, but after using it, i now rather would resell siax, but already sit with IS, so makes it kinda hard to switch, and siax is more stable. Then the account size you will be looking at. I recommend 5g as for 37 users, you can always top up if you need more, and after running for 3 months you will be able to see what account would be ideal.

Apart from the waiting time, that is definately a issue with telkom. But the thing is, what i have come to notice, call them 3 times a week give them your ref nr. and complain every time. it brings results faster

if you want more info, feel free to PM me. or mail me rystic@webmail.co.za / rystic@gmail.com

Good luck

 

[Antonio]

Please tell me more about this

Thanks again

People that had 1024 line got upgrated for free to 4 mbps line - we don't know if this is going to be premanent or its just a trial, and since I'm one of those lucky ones I must say that i don't realy see the difference, or should I say the difference is in the download speed of SOME of the downloads, browsing hasn't improved or deteriorated IMO.

 

[MrSmith]

Please tell me more about this
Thanks again

From the horses mouth http://www.telkom.co.za/athome/products/dsl/home_reduced.html