Your opinions pls

[Mikethelever10]

Hi,

We are are in the middle of testing a solution and would like to get some feedback.

The setup: We have 3 offices in SA; Head office in Rivonia, 1 branch in Bryanston & 1 in CT. We had 3 x diginet lines, connecting us to Internet Solutions (256k), One to our Bryanston office and one to Cape Town.

Recently our IT specialist suggested a solution whereby we cancel all the diginet lines, terminate the IS connection and replaceall the lines with ADSL.

We then setup an isa firewall to replace our Linux firewall and moved our MX record to SAIX.

To date we have had endless problems with various excuses.

If anyone out there has heard of a simlair solution pls call me or if you have some advise.

Thanks,

Mike



Mike Lever

 

[loosecannon]

mike drop me a message ill come see you im in rivonia/braynston

...

 

[stoke]

We link to our CT offices via Diginet through IS on a 64 line. We used to run the line at 256 but the cost became exxtreme. We replaced the browsing need with 4x ADSL lines, and dropped the Diginet down to 64. It's cheaper because the throughput on the diginet line dropped to less than 200MB.

I can recommend the dropping of the Diginet line(s) down to 64, and utilising a Linux machine as the proxy for 2 ADSL lines at each site if your network utilisation is 85% browsing.

You'll have to cost it out. I don't know what percentage of your network throughput is browsing/downloading, and how much IS is charging you for usage.

But - getting rid of a dedicated ip address and not hosting your own mail was too risky for us.

 

[loosecannon]

if you do it right you can host mail on ADSL i have customers doing it at the moment some do have spooling setup at the ISP of there choice so they have a better service than with one MX on a diginet line ...

perfectly legit solution ....

 

[mbs]

Sorry guys, but with all due respect to the technical types, this is strictly a business decision, the way I see it - whatever solution you ultimately opt for, it _must_ fulfil the business requirement in the first place. Technical considerations are secondary, and should be based on working technology that is stable, not pie-in-the-sky like the SuckTech stuff. I would not switch to an alternative architecture unless there are definite business benefits to be gained, and it is proven to be workable. Say what you like, the Diginet scenario is at least stable, with the added advantage of an SLA. Hoever, the alternative offered by STOKE is perhaps relevant for your situation...

 

[Perdition]

Your IT specialist is not so special having recommended this move, unless there was a lot of pressure on them to cut costs. Diginet may be expensive but as previously mentioned you get an SLA and stability, which is critical in a business environment.