[Semi OT] Redundant WAN Connections

Hi NG,

I have a situation I wanted to ask the pros about. I live in South
Florida and any carrier I wish to contract services through are going to
run through some of Bellsouth/AT&T network, that is giving me a single
point of failure at some point connecting to my carriers. I am wanting
to get suggestions on some way I could have redundant WAN links, through
multiple carriers but where I do not have the single point of failure at
the BS/AT&T facilities. We are a small shop so cost is an issue, but
after yesterday when there was an issue at BS/AT&T network that took our
carrier offline for hours, that costed us alot of money.

Also, with the increase of hurricanes down here, I do not want one
BS/AT&T CO to get destroyed and I am out of business for many weeks....

Sorry for the Semi OT post, but your responses will be appreciated!

Thanks,

Chad

 

Well the obvious alternative would be satellite.

 

Unfortunately, as it appears you have noticed, any time that you order
services through the existing cables into your facility, you will ultimately
have Bellsouth involved. Any of the other providers just lease the lines.
Times are changing and other provides will now run cables in, if it is
financially feasible. This usually means fiber and a fairly expensive
service, to help pay for the cost of construction.

There is a way that you possibly can get by without going that route. You
can request redundant services through Bellsouth, stipulating that you want
the second service to come from a different direction and a different CO.
This may turn out to be a little more expensive, especially if it is a
service that you pay for by the route mile. But, in the end, it is a
reasonable solution. Call your Bellsouth rep and discuss the options for
this.

Also, depending on your traffic volume, consider using vpn for backup (since
DSL would come from the telco, cable is probably a better choice - I like
cable better, anyway). Much less expensive than a secondary circuit. You
will most likely see a lesser service when the main connection is down, but
the vpn could be enough to keep you going. ISDN is another possible
solution. It all depends on what your usage, budget and expectations are.

Just keep in mind that to really be sure that you'd never be down could be
incredibly expensive. So, try to figure what the most reasonable
cost/benefit plan of back is, and sell your execs on that.

Hope that helps,

Jim

 

Thanks Jim, That was a great response...

 

Hi Rod,

Thanks for the reply, I would rather stay away from satellite, if I am
worried about a hurricane knocking out service, I would certainly be
worried about a rain shower knocking out connectivity.

Chad

 

are.

Another poster suggested satellite - you could use that as a 2nd service.
it is worth thinking about what you are protecting and relative risk.

1 way to evaluate resilience is to treat it as insurance - for a given
surcharge on my bills on comms then i get a reduction in risk and / or
increase in capacity, availability and so on.

That also gives you a start on cost benefit analysis - which you are going
to need anyway when someone asks how much and why.........

So - 2 diverse feeds protects your comms links (or those sections you choose
to pay for resilience)

but from the info in your post they are both going to feed into a single
site - maybe you should think about resilience against local problems such
as fire, power outages and flooding - typical ways to start are dual comms
romms, server resilience and so on.

the logical limit here is 2 sites, or a disaster recovery scheme that lets
you migrate to another location during a major problem

and if that is in a different telco footprint, then you may be able to solve
your comms resilience issue as well as a side effect - as long as you can
move services across easily.

 

I'd hazard a guess that the rain shower would end before the destroyed
CO was rebuilt.

 

Touche'

Thanks Rod.....

 

You may want to call fpl fibernet and see if they can offer a solution
for you. If they do have something, i'm sure it's going to cost an arm
and a leg.

 

Chad

I'am also from south florida, and let me tell you - redundant CO will
not help you. We had a redundant OC-3 from 2 Bellsouth CO's. and guess
what - both CO's were down during Wilma - BellSouth did not have a
enough generators. The best bet would be to put all the production
stuff to colo-site (just make sure they have a DIRECT REDUNDANT fibers
to other states/countries).

Roman

 

Three approaches come to mind:
--first, site the servers you use for testing customer facing
applications at your business continuity site with current production
instances of your applications, as a mirror or your production servers
--second, if you can have your customer facing servers elsewhere, site
them in some co-location space out of the path of natural disasters
(can be combined with first approach)
--third, if you *have* to have your customer facing servers on site,
then get a second, non-phone company, diverse path, perhaps from
someone like Level 3. Make sure you understand the diversity, from
the building service entrance on.

 

your faith in direct fibre is touching, but might be misplaced.

modern DWDM kit gives the most distance between PoP and powered devices like
amplifiers - but 100 to 150 Km is all that is usually practical.

Despite the way driver specs are given (ie 110 Km drive distance to quote
one Cisco GBIC datasheet), the limiting factor is usually loss.

You might get a bit more if you run the fibres slower than 10G, but it wont
be a big improvement.

even bleeding edge "tweaked" stuff (ie undersea / lake crossings where you
really dont want to put amps underwater if you can avoid it) only gives you
around 300 Km or so before you need amplification.

The flip side is that if you are in a disaster big enough that it wipes out
power and other facilities for 100 Km in 2 different directions - then you
probably have more important things to worry about than whether your users
can log in to get email.....

 

Hi Roman,

I was thinking about that, moving all the production equipment to
someplace like the NAP Of the Americas in Miami.

Thanks for the post!

Chad