Changing Internet providers
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Like @garak0410 I've been considering my options for internet access.
Currently I pay $880 for a 10/10 dual ring, single entry point fiber connection. For the past 7.5 years we've only had 15 mins of unscheduled downtime.
Needless to say we are paying a fortune.
I've been digging into canceling the fiber connection and moving to two Best Effort Cable/DSL solutions.
Company1 offers 50/10 over cable for $180/month
Company2 can only offer 12/2 over DSL at my main location for $120/monthThis would lower my bill by more than $500/month. I anticipate that my likeliness of both being down as equal or less than my chances of downtime that I had on fiber (this is only a gut feeling though, no real way as the carries won't tell me about outages on their Best Effort systems).
I also need internet connectivity at my new location. Again I am considering dual ISPs, though with the new location, company2 can provide 100/100 for $250/month, this is overkill, but gives you an idea.
When originally approached, company2 offered fiber service in both locations, 20/20 for $900/month each. This was clearly not going to happen, that would double what I'm currently paying, and be the opposite of what I was trying to accomplish, and I told them so!
Now we have this morning. I come in to find an updated quote for 20/20 for $550/month/each for both locations.
Now sure, this is more that what I would be paying for the two Best Effort solutions, but I'm wondering if the fiber connection in this case might be worth it?
Thoughts?
Additionally, I asked for a quote for SIP trunks, company2 was double company1, and now they've changed their tune and are on pair with company1. Though another large difference, company2 is requiring that I provide my own border session gateway appliance (do I need this with FreePBX?)
I also don't know what my pricing will change to once my 36 month contract expires.
More thoughts?
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Don't get SIP Trunks from your ISP if you can help it. We only had to because they were the only ones providing numbers in our exchange.
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Using Cox was decided not by him to my understanding. In theory Cox should be able to fail over to another # so he can use a different service to catch any failures.
He can even tinker with the outbound calls and route them over another provider without letting the users know (but letting his boss know) and see if anyone notices or complains.
That could be enough over time to convince them to let the service completely switch out. Say at the end of the 3 year contract.
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@JaredBusch said:
Using Cox was decided not by him to my understanding. In theory Cox should be able to fail over to another # so he can use a different service to catch any failures.
He can even tinker with the outbound calls and route them over another provider without letting the users know (but letting his boss know) and see if anyone notices or complains.
That could be enough over time to convince them to let the service completely switch out. Say at the end of the 3 year contract.
Oh, I see, I am currently doing the second option (and saving some money) we are using a 3rd party SIP Trunk for outbound calls and our ISP SIP Trunk for inbound (for the reasons above). Our provider can even spoof our primary number which is nice.
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Why not approach the company that you are currently with and go hey, these other guys are offering me 20/20... offer me some incentive to stay.
Can the company you are with offer better rates now? If you don't ask for them, you won't get them. 8-)
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@coliver While I understand why you say that, even Network Nerd made mention that I will have better results from something like Cox's connection versus directly over the internet.
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@Dashrender said:
@coliver While I understand why you say that, even Network Nerd made mention that I will have better results from something like Cox's connection versus directly over the internet.
It's very dependent. Depends on how you define a better connection, depends on the quality of either. One is never just cleanly better than the other. Both sides have a "it depends."
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@Dashrender said:
@coliver While I understand why you say that, even Network Nerd made mention that I will have better results from something like Cox's connection versus directly over the internet.
Out of curiosity how is Cox's connection not directly over the internet? I'm assuming they are your provider (or would be)?
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@coliver said:
@Dashrender said:
@coliver While I understand why you say that, even Network Nerd made mention that I will have better results from something like Cox's connection versus directly over the internet.
Out of curiosity how is Cox's connection not directly over the internet? I'm assuming they are your provider (or would be)?
Cox's connection would be over a Metro Area connection between them and me. The big thing that I am wondering about.. on that separate connection, should I put a firewall - I'm thinking almost certainly.
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@dafyre said:
Why not approach the company that you are currently with and go hey, these other guys are offering me 20/20... offer me some incentive to stay.
Can the company you are with offer better rates now? If you don't ask for them, you won't get them. 8-)
Believe me, I'm considering this - frankly I'm very happy with company1 and their fiber service.. sad thing though.. they can't provide me fiber at my new location, only best effort.
And while it's true that one single provider can provide me with redundancy, I'm not sure which is really better
Fiber claiming to have SLA's ( I know - Scott's favorite misnomer
) where I've been lucky enough to only suffer 15 mins of downtime in 8 years at pretty high costs, or move to dual best effort setups. -
@Dashrender said:
@coliver said:
@Dashrender said:
@coliver While I understand why you say that, even Network Nerd made mention that I will have better results from something like Cox's connection versus directly over the internet.
Out of curiosity how is Cox's connection not directly over the internet? I'm assuming they are your provider (or would be)?
Cox's connection would be over a Metro Area connection between them and me. The big thing that I am wondering about.. on that separate connection, should I put a firewall - I'm thinking almost certainly.
Depends. Metro Area is usually L2 still with public IPs but physicall on the same switches, subnet and vlan at the local ISP. It's not truely on the internet until it gets routed (using L3 Gateway at the ISP). You can either use Static Routes with Firewall (or none if you don't need any for the type of business that doesn't have much confidential data, only the ISP could intercept it) or use a Lightweight vpn like TINC between the sites.
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@coliver said:
@Dashrender said:
@coliver While I understand why you say that, even Network Nerd made mention that I will have better results from something like Cox's connection versus directly over the internet.
Out of curiosity how is Cox's connection not directly over the internet? I'm assuming they are your provider (or would be)?
Cox does provide Internet. But the last mile is not Internet, it is just a WAN link. If they provide a service directly over that WAN link it is not over the public internet but over a private network. It is no more part of the Internet than your internal LAN is (which is to say that in some ways it is as everything connected to the Internet is the Internet, but it is still a private, controlled, "portion" of the Internet.)
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Wait, wait, wait...
You're over complicating it, I think.They have an internal network for their SIP switch, that network will be connected to my network over a MAN connection and terminate at a Edgemark where it will convert into an IP on my network (their proposal).
Now if their network is completely isolated from the internet (seems unlikely, but what do I know) then I don't need to worry about firewalling it. But in the off chance someone could breach that network and reach my network through that MAN, wouldn't I be safer just putting in a ERL that keeps that network only talking to my FPBX?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
@Dashrender said:
@coliver While I understand why you say that, even Network Nerd made mention that I will have better results from something like Cox's connection versus directly over the internet.
Out of curiosity how is Cox's connection not directly over the internet? I'm assuming they are your provider (or would be)?
Cox does provide Internet. But the last mile is not Internet, it is just a WAN link. If they provide a service directly over that WAN link it is not over the public internet but over a private network. It is no more part of the Internet than your internal LAN is (which is to say that in some ways it is as everything connected to the Internet is the Internet, but it is still a private, controlled, "portion" of the Internet.)
Good to know. That was the info I was looking for. So they can "guarantee" the speed/latency requirements to their end points/customers. I could see where considering them for your primary SIP Trunk then would make sense, especially if they can exchange to POTS from inside that network.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
@Dashrender said:
@coliver While I understand why you say that, even Network Nerd made mention that I will have better results from something like Cox's connection versus directly over the internet.
Out of curiosity how is Cox's connection not directly over the internet? I'm assuming they are your provider (or would be)?
Cox does provide Internet. But the last mile is not Internet, it is just a WAN link. If they provide a service directly over that WAN link it is not over the public internet but over a private network. It is no more part of the Internet than your internal LAN is (which is to say that in some ways it is as everything connected to the Internet is the Internet, but it is still a private, controlled, "portion" of the Internet.)
So if you were doing this, would you put a firewall on that connection?
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
@Dashrender said:
@coliver While I understand why you say that, even Network Nerd made mention that I will have better results from something like Cox's connection versus directly over the internet.
Out of curiosity how is Cox's connection not directly over the internet? I'm assuming they are your provider (or would be)?
Cox does provide Internet. But the last mile is not Internet, it is just a WAN link. If they provide a service directly over that WAN link it is not over the public internet but over a private network. It is no more part of the Internet than your internal LAN is (which is to say that in some ways it is as everything connected to the Internet is the Internet, but it is still a private, controlled, "portion" of the Internet.)
So if you were doing this, would you put a firewall on that connection?
Normally if you aren't using hub and spoke for internet (to route all internet traffic through one site) you'll be using this connection for your internet uplink as well so you will have some sort of firewall/router on it.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
Normally if you aren't using hub and spoke for internet (to route all internet traffic through one site) you'll be using this connection for your internet uplink as well so you will have some sort of firewall/router on it.
Not in this case. I will be presented with 2 connections, one that is real internet route able IPs, and a second that will have a preassigned IP on my network. Completely separate.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
@Dashrender said:
@coliver While I understand why you say that, even Network Nerd made mention that I will have better results from something like Cox's connection versus directly over the internet.
Out of curiosity how is Cox's connection not directly over the internet? I'm assuming they are your provider (or would be)?
Cox does provide Internet. But the last mile is not Internet, it is just a WAN link. If they provide a service directly over that WAN link it is not over the public internet but over a private network. It is no more part of the Internet than your internal LAN is (which is to say that in some ways it is as everything connected to the Internet is the Internet, but it is still a private, controlled, "portion" of the Internet.)
So if you were doing this, would you put a firewall on that connection?
Depends what it is exposed to on your end. What a lot of people do in a situation like this is having the phones on their own network with nothing exposed except the phones. If the PBX is the absolutely only thing on the connection and the phones are behind the PBX then the only real risk here is your PBX being compromised and if this is supposed to be a private network and any compromise would be legally the responsibility of the ISP then I'd skip the firewall because you aren't looking at company damage or loss of trade secrets that you cannot recoup, only financial costs that you could hold the ISP accountable for.
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The problem with this is putting the phones on it's own network mean (I assume) you can't run the PC's through the phones.
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@Dashrender said:
The problem with this is putting the phones on it's own network mean (I assume) you can't run the PC's through the phones.
Actually you can with Voice VLANs.
