[SoCoSA/discuss] Consumer grade Internet in place of T1?

[Steve S.]

Hello, yet again!

We're looking at a move soon, and the possibility of a T1 circuit. 
Currently, we're using a wireless link (802.11b, I think; checking
that is on my "to do" list) to a shared T1.

Previously, I've been in network-heavy shops with multiple T1's that
were all active at the same time, such that if any one of them failed
we'd just loose an increment of bandwidth but mostly nobody noticed
except network Ops folks...

I'm thinking about building a similar architecture with
"consumer-grade" connections -- DSL, cable-modem, sat-modem, etc. 
Well, not so much "etc" -- those 3 are my current shortlist.

I would expect that no single "consumer-grade" service or provider
would be NEARLY as reliable as a T1, but if the routing protocol
detects a failure in a diverse mix, and reconfigures around the bad
one (and after all, that's what the whole DARPA project that turned
into the "Internet" was all about) ,it looks to me like we'd have (at
least) as reliable a connection, all in all... and MUCH more
bandwidth!  I expect we'd have to pay a slight "business" premium on
the service (e.g. business pricing; DSL-for-business is more $$$ for
similar features than DSL-for-home-users, etc), but that the overall
$$$-to-ISP costs would likely be less than a Telco T1 fee.

Obviously, we'd have to buy an in-house router to MUX the services,
and we'd need the in-house expertise (or a contractor) to set it all
up & maintain it.  I think I can do that, no contractor needed.

Other than the "it's not exactly bog-standard and you'll have to do
more stuff yourself" issue, I'm not seeing the downside...  Honestly,
it looks to me like a rather obvious approach, and with decent BGPish
skills, not too cost-prohibitive.

Can someone sanity-check me on this?  Google doesn't turn up a big
load of hits; it looks like this isn't something people *DO* much (or
at least they don't talk about it in ways that I'm Googleing (in my
rather sleepy state, I admit)), so I'm wondering if I've overlooked
something substantive, or if it's somehow more trouble than it's
worth, or...?



- S. Saunders