T1 connections or more?

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alex.barylski
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T1 connections or more?

Post by alex.barylski »

Hey all, I'm tired of renting dedicated servers or connections when colocating...

I want to contact my local ISP (or other) and inquire about rental of a T1 line (preferably un-mtered).

My question is, assuming these contacts are major players in providing Internet backbones, what is the fastest or biggest line I can expect? T1 sounds pretty slow? It's what I connect to when using Limewire.

What kind of questions should I be asking when I contact the ISP, etc?

I plan on purchasing the servers, providing the OS'es, etc. Starting a mini-data center

Cheers,
Alex
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jaoudestudios
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Re: T1 connections or more?

Post by jaoudestudios »

Seriously?

That is going to cost big $$$$$ (or £££££ for us in the uk :) )

At least get a 100MB line. But you will only be connect to the internet by 1 provider, if that provider goes down temporarily you will loose your connectivity. What the big players do, like Rackspace/oneandone they have multiple connections with different providers so if one goes down they are still connected. Also what about power? What happens if you have a power cut? do you plan to have gens?

Best thing to do would be to rent space in a data-center. They will provide all the data lines, power and backups for each service. Plus fire prevention measures etc.
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VladSun
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Re: T1 connections or more?

Post by VladSun »

Keep in mind that most of the ISPs offer asymmetric links - the upload link bandwidth is often times smaller than the download link one. For your users that means that your server has a bad download speed. And it's not about your connection to your ISP - simply users' upload traffic is much bigger than the download one - one may blame torrent technology for that :) You should also check how many users share the same bandwidth and what is the minimum bandwidth guaranteed.

Also, some providers will limit the maximum number of TCP sessions you can open at a time - so if your server is heavily loaded some users may experience even a DoS. It's because a browser would typically open up to 15 simultaneous to download all of the site elements (images, JS files, CSS, etc.).

Other possible problems are related to DNS and IP assigning. First (it's obvious for you) you need a static public IP address. While it's relatively easy to get one, getting a reverse IP record is a PITA with some providers. And you need it for having a properly working mail server.
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alex.barylski
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Re: T1 connections or more?

Post by alex.barylski »

Best thing to do would be to rent space in a data-center. They will provide all the data lines, power and backups for each service. Plus fire prevention measures etc.
It was motly out of curiosity...I realize it's a HUGE investment...every venture starts somewhere though, right?

VladSun: That applies to a data center as well? Wouldn't a data center be in direct control of DNS, etc?

I was wondering more about major players, similar to RackSpace, ServerBeach, etc.

Mostly interested in the politics of getting a major connection(s) to internet backbones, etc. If I were to look into something like this, I'm not totally clear as to where I would start. There are several major ISP's available to me, apparently even Hydro has a connection...which I thought was weird but according to the city stats...

While I would not turn away from offering hosting services...the physical data center is what I am really interested in...
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jaoudestudios
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Re: T1 connections or more?

Post by jaoudestudios »

All you would be getting from a data center is power & a rack plus the security etc that comes with it. The connectivity you would have to sort yourself, but there will already be large data pipes coming into the data center building - you would have to get a contract from one or two of them.
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