UPDATE 21/12/12
As enjoyable an experiment this has been the Bonded service really didn’t give any real significant improvements over what we had in place already, an extra cost implication as well as the addition of extra equipment to support/maintain, so in the New Year we’ll be sticking a pin in that and waiting for the “next big thing” which seems to be studiously doing it’s utmost to ignore any part of Cornwall that I require it to be in! I’m told that 2013 will be the year……we shall see!
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It’s been documented before, but I have some complicated issues in the current job! We have a heavy reliance on a solid, working, Internet connection, but also a limited amount of money with which to provide one. Of course not an unusual situation, but as I’m reminded on an almost daily basis, legal requirement, or lifeline service provision means that we _must_ have a working system!
My view is to get leased lines out there as the SLA levels match what our requirements are – I’ve looked at small scale stuff, like MPLS from BT, and large-scale stuff like a full leased line solution. All of these have been presented as business proposals but all have stalled for one reason or another. The last visit was a bonded solution that is in use elsewhere on St Mary’s, but even that proved to be cost-prohibitive!
All being well 2012 is the year that our various departments will take responsibility for their budgets from the top down – so I will be including the cost of reliable Internet connections as a minimum – in an effort to provide the company what it requires.
Then the latest offering from Eclipse appears and is finally a product that we might be able to take advantage of – it’s almost like it’s designed for businesses that are unable, for whatever reason, to stomach a proper connectivity solution. At what equates to £50 per line for the setup cost and £100 per month (f0r 50gb data transfer) the service costs a similar amount to a standard business ADSL service – intriguing.
I shall be firing out a couple of emails over the next couple of days to try to figure out if we can actually use it – it’s lucky that we have a dearth of extra phone lines on our sites isn’t it?
http://www.eclipse.net.uk/bonded-dsl/product-and-pricing
More on this one as it develops….