It has long been a challenge to provide true T1 redundancy for reliable connectivity to the outside world from your business without having to involve expensive resources in the event of the failure of a T1 line.
Even if you had a secondary T1 connection available from a separate internet provider available, you would still have to deal with the fact that you have an entirely separate and different IP address range than your primary T1 line. In addition you are still limited to the bandwidth 1.5Mb/s of a single T1 line even though you are paying for two T1 lines.
Cutting over to the secondary T1 line involves reconfiguring numerous network components and application servers in your enterprise. This process is time consuming, costly and prone to failure.
California Telecom is the first ISP to provide Small, Medium and Enterprise businesses the benefit of redundancy without the complexity of managing two ISPs. California Telecom has partnered with XO communications and Telepacific to provide the first Dual Path T1. This allows businesses to have two separate backbones to the Internet improving reliability.
Consider the diagram below:
Through unique relationships developed over the years; California Telecom now offers a service that allows for the bonding of T1 lines from two different backbone sources. Both lines act as a single circuit and you can burst up to the full bandwidth of the T1’s bundled together. This configuration is available from 3Mb/s up to 9Mb/s by bonding up to 6 T1 Lines. By purchasing multiple T1 Lines from California Telecom you will also qualify for a discounted bulk T1 line rate. In addition you will not be paying for a T1 Line that you are not able to use until a failure occurs. This translates into a cost effective method of keeping your valuable network resource online.
California Telecom has made this process easy since the customer is provided a single IP address block that will traverse both backbones without the need for complicated protocols such as BGP. With this simple and easy solution, customers can protect themselves against backbone failures, and yet it is as simple to deploy as a bonded T1 service. Many of our customers are deploying this technology to protect their VOIP investment.
When you look at what is involved with providing connectivity to the internet there are basically three points of failure that affect the traversal of data to the outside world. The first being the long haul fiber connections back from the central office (CO) to internet backbones of the providers. Second is the provider’s MDF/IDF equipment housed inside of the central office. Lastly is the local loop from the central office to the business location also known as the “last mile”.
In the diagram above the three red X’s represent the possible failure points. With Dual Path T1 you are protected along the long haul fiber connection back to the internet with redundant fiber backbone providers. Should anything happen to the fiber connection or any of the related transport equipment along the way the other fiber line will still provide transport without any reconfiguration to your network infrastructure because the bonded circuit is a single IP address range. There also will not be any outage duration and the only thing that you may not even notice will be a reduction of bandwidth while California Telecom works with the transport provider to repair the failed fiber connection.
Equipment housed at the central office is owned and managed by the provider and each has their own IDFs. Should equipment fail with one provider the other providers IDF will provide the redundancy which will again be transparent to the user.
Although we cannot fully manage the last mile loop, most failures happen deeper in the network at the backbone level but to help protect the last mile California Telecom will run two physical local loops from the central office to your place of business.
To learn more about this unique service offered by California Telecom, call us and ask to speak with one of our network consultants about Dual Path T1. |
