T1 going to be enough?

Here at the dealership I work at we have a TimeWarner Business class internet connection. Its horrible, and shows nothing to "business class". We have a failover DSL connection that is considerably slower. Our dealer management application requires a VPN to work. Atleast three times a day the TimeWarner connection goes down and the router fails over to the DSL, when this happens our VPN gets re-established.. This causes a disconnect for the entire company costing us a few minutes. When the TimeWarner connection is back up and available we get another disconnect because the Router goes back to the primary Wan interface. The router log files show that its the TimeWarner connection becoming unresponsive causing connection failures. I want something more reliable for my company, a full T1. Doing a toast.net speed test I never get more than 1.5-1.7mbs anyways so I don't see the T1 slowing down internet performance at all. But! I would like some opinions on this from those of you who run a decently large company off of a T1. We have about 50 or so internet users here at the dealership most of which only use the internet for the dealer management software. What kind of performance are you experiencing? Is this a wise choice? I'll be installing a Proxy server when the T1 is installed to ward off the people who use the internet for things they are not supposed to

how many users concurrent on the T1? Oh I see 50.

Realize that many WILL be using the net for OTHER things as well. The T1 WILL be an improvement over TW as you are on a single not shared pipe BUT it is possible that there could be some lag but much less then the current connection.

If nothing else use the TW as a fallover and drop the DSL.

Well the majority of the people are the "whats this button do" type who don't care to even turn their PC's on in the morning. On the other hand we have several people who stream music and just browse all day long. The internet isn't slow as it is.. It just goes unresponsive a couple times a day.. If it wasn't for the VPN's we have then I wouldn't even worry about it. No matter where you are in town the general rule is TW sucks here. Not to mention they are not giving me my damn Buckeyes this year !!!! :freaking flaming madd!:

CougarSE said:

Well the majority of the people are the "whats this button do" type who don't care to even turn their PC's on in the morning. On the other hand we have several people who stream music and just browse all day long. The internet isn't slow as it is.. It just goes unresponsive a couple times a day.. If it wasn't for the VPN's we have then I wouldn't even worry about it. No matter where you are in town the general rule is TW sucks here. Not to mention they are not giving me my damn Buckeyes this year !!!! :freaking flaming madd!:

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ya i dropped timewarner like a bad habbit back in the day when fios was available... i would call them up if your only gettin 1.5-1.7 mbit/s theres something wrong.

Let me get this straight...


You have a Time Warner Cable connection....

You also have an ADSL connection.....


Your router performs WAN fail-over if the cable connection goes down, and goes to the ADSL line. When the cable connection comes back up, it resumes pushing traffic over the cable connection.

You have 50 users.

You utilize VPN.


Is this correct?

Do you know what your average traffic throughput is ?

What kind of router do you have?



In the ISP world, 50:1 oversubscription is pretty heavy. I aim for around 25:1, others aim for 30:1.


After you reply with some information, I can provide you with other options.

have you considered looking at the network traffic to see if there is someone stealing most of the bandwidth? certain programs can actually take all of the bandwidth if the proper tools are not in place to limit the bandwidth usage. i know that if i connect to dc++ on my cable connection and don't have any sort of limit, it can kill remote desktop connections coming into my network... found that one out the hard way when i was remoted in to try to find a video clip... lol

AMD Phreak said:

Let me get this straight...


You have a Time Warner Cable connection....

You also have an ADSL connection.....


Your router performs WAN fail-over if the cable connection goes down, and goes to the ADSL line. When the cable connection comes back up, it resumes pushing traffic over the cable connection.

You have 50 users.

You utilize VPN.


Is this correct?

Do you know what your average traffic throughput is ?

What kind of router do you have?



In the ISP world, 50:1 oversubscription is pretty heavy. I aim for around 25:1, others aim for 30:1.


After you reply with some information, I can provide you with other options.

Click to expand...

Pretty much... Other than we have 63 internet users here. I just did a head count. Less than half of these computers are used at any given time. Primarily there are 21 people that use their computers more than 50% of the day. Half of those use it 90% of the day. The router is some small device made by Secure Computing. It does have alot of features, but I want to upgrade it to a more trusted name.. as it needs rebooted once a week to once every two weeks. I have an Adtran 3448 in mind.

I am not sure of traffic usage as I've not implemented anything to monitor it. You have any suggestions?

I would lock down the usage frankly and go with a reliable T1 period, i am only 27 years old myself and grew up in the Inet generation, but you dont pay people to browse the web and crap not work related on work time, especially if it is potentially costing the company money.

Its funny, at one job I had it was the t1 service that was unreliable going out multiple times while in the same period of time (almost 1 year) I never lost my inet.

I would setup the proxy server that you mentioned you were going to do with the t1 anyway, and look into getting a business class switch/router. To make sure it is not a traffic problem on the network.

Best bet in the proxy is to block youtube as that is a bandwidth killer.

You know its ****ing me off to walk around the dealership and see groups of people standing around a single computer laughing..

I'd suggest getting an old spare PC like a P3 500 with a decent chunk of ram in it. Load it up with CactiEZ and configure it up to poll the router if you can. Usually you can get traffic dumps from it. Get the 95th percentile and the in/out unicast and non unicast traffic data too. You'll get to see how much you use, during what hours, and the PPS so you can see if any of the users are torrent users.


I don't have much experience with Adtrans, but if you asked me....



I'd call up Time Warner Telecom and see about a T-1. Pick your T providers carefully as not all are equal. Get a good SLA and get as close to the top tier provider that you can so as to ensure a quality link to the web.

T-1 gear that you get from the telecom provider put yourself in a Cisco 2800 series router with the appropriate WIC card for the T-1. These are integrated service routers (ISR) so you can run router and firewall all in one. Get the appropriate IOS image on the unit to do all of this plus QoS. I'd even suggest getting a 2950 Catalyst or other comperable access switch that can do QoS on it as well, so you can choke things there and on the edge (the router). This should help you out some on the usage issues. You might also look into installing a proxy to keep them from going to non-work related sites. Sounds like you have the typical obnoxious users that use their internet at work for whatever they want. Ruleing them with an iron fist probably will **** a lot of people off, but they have to be reminded that the network is to support the business, not their leisure......


See if you also can get the bosses to work with you on developing an IT usage policy. This will give management the needed backing to really mash the users when they start bucking the system.




Yeah........ I am a jerk.

The owners have pretty much told me to lock it down. So I can be a jerk too

The Adtran unit I have picked out is able to do all those things..

CougarSE said:

The owners have pretty much told me to lock it down. So I can be a jerk too

The Adtran unit I have picked out is able to do all those things..

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Excellent. I would proceed then as planned. Be sure to see if the owners will get things outlined in a policy so when it comes down to it and it is time to fire people they'll be completely warned......

Keep us posted as to how things work for you so we can troubleshoot it with you if needed.

t1 is garbage...

I called Time Warner.. they are going to monitor the connection. It went down again today. If need be they will send out a tech. I want to go to a T1 but I'm afraid the bandwidth wont be there.

PhysX said:

t1 is garbage...

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Would you mind explaining your logic behind this instead of expressing your personal opinion.

PhysX said:

t1 is garbage...

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Yeah.... Fill us in. Perhaps you know something that those of us in the WAN industry don't?








Oh yeah..... Last time I checked, my 256Kbps data channel off of one of our T-1's kicked the snot (as far as browsing 'feel') out of a 640Kbps and even 768Kbps ADSL line...... I even had a pair of T's channel bonded into a 3Mbps link and it was easily better than most residential broadband connections (1.5Mbps to 5Mbps).....

Bender said:

Would you mind explaining your logic behind this instead of expressing your personal opinion.

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t1? as in 1.54mbit connection down/up... Its slow, thus its garbage "to me" way to pricey.. from $350+ why pay that much if you could have... 3x25mbit connection for less than that with 75mbit down/ 3mbit up

PhysX said:

t1? as in 1.54mbit connection down/up... Its slow, thus its garbage "to me" way to pricey.. from $350+ why pay that much if you could have... 3x25mbit connection for less than that with 75mbit down/ 3mbit up

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Because my T-1's get priority repair before everyone elses ADSL or cable circuits, my network latencies are lower, I get top-tier support for help instead of some bozo reading a card/diagnostics sheet, etc etc.


If I want more bandwidth, I just buy more t-1's. For business applications that require constant, stabil, and reliable connections T-1's are the cheapest option.

PhysX said:

t1? as in 1.54mbit connection down/up... Its slow, thus its garbage "to me" way to pricey.. from $350+ why pay that much if you could have... 3x25mbit connection for less than that with 75mbit down/ 3mbit up

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because that T1 is a "buisness" connection, 99.99999999999999999999% uptimes type deal, and all things above you pay for a garunteed service not some 25mb line that is only 25MB to your ISP and if it sucks is not our problem and we wont fix it residential BS.