How Do You Choose a WAN Carrier & Technology?

Giger51 asks: "I'm trying to get a better idea of how a business goes about choosing a carrier & technology for their Wide Area Network. For the last little while, it's been difficult for a lot of the carriers out there. Those difficulties have resulted in questionable accounting practices and bankruptcies. When trying to make the decision, what are the key points that are considered? What technology (IP, Frame Relay, ATM...) are you avoiding or looking for?"

Comments

The number one consideration

[Mordant]

should be whether they'll be in business next week, heh.

reliability of the company

[stonebeat.org]

actually reliability of the company must be considered first. what good is a high-end technology, if it will last due to monetary problems.

Re:I perfer dealing with CLECs

[biafra]

IPSEC over cheap connections works fine until you have a setup that cannot go down. I did some consulting for a company that had 5+ tills in 9 locations. If the connection went down, the tills didn't function, and they might as well close the doors and kick everyone out. 56k Frame Relay was more expensive than a bunch of cable modems and OBSD boxes, but the fact that he didn't have to put a AS/400, an admin at each location, and could centralize his costs made up for it.

Last mile, just one choice

[jayrtfm]

Unless your buildings are wired by a company like Intellispace, your last mile connection is going to be physically connected by whomever has the local monopoly (like Verizon in NYC).
So, if you go with any other company, and installation/troubleshooting needs to be done, you *still* will be dealing with the local monopoly. When they have to prioritze serviceing one of their customers, or a 3rd party's customer, guess who wins? 4 months of T-1 hell made that point very clear to me.