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Bandwidth in Little Rock, AR?
ioctl asks: "My company needs a 45Mb link from mid-town Little Rock, AR (University exit, I-630) to North Little Rock, AR (Wildwood exit, I-167). Our telco doesn't have any glass in the area, and wants about $800K over the next 5 years to build it out. We looked at another local provider who has the buildout already done, but their tech didn't show for the initial meeting (My boss: "He forgot it?!?!"). We've also looked into doing wireless via TCBY Tower (Proxim Tsunami or Aeras Networks Wavelink), but they are > $80K, plus rooftop space. Does bandwidth have to be this expensive? Are there any other possible solutions?"
A van full of hard drives. OK, it's probably not applicable, but you didn't mention your latency requirements ;-) Might look good in your report as evidence of "thinking outside the box", though.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
Seriously, call the company, ask to talk to the president of the company, explain to them that his tech almost cost him a major deal, and asks if he still wants one.
:)
Oh, and if you get on good terms with that company, let them know there's at least one network engineer laid off from an international Tier 1 provider living in Dallas, Texas, who talked you into giving him another chance and would looove to move in and replace that tech
Get off my launchpad!
No kidding. How big is this company if they can't afford an $80k investment in hardware? I'd snap that up at the drop of a hat since you'll have no per-month fees to pay to a telco. Obviously they're big enough to justify 45Mbps worth of bandwidth so I'd think $80k up front would be a drop in the hat.
And if US$ 80K seems stiff, maybe you can sell off chunks of your BW to other business to help make the mortgage payment on it.
With the prime lending rate at 4%, that $80K is a little under $270/month, probably a lot less than what you're paying for space and other utilities already.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
The story submitter should call the local firm back. Don't get me wrong, I realize that the tech left a bad impression (i.e. is bad service going to dog them through their dealings with the company?), and the folks probably feel snubbed. However, as someone else pointed out, this is not a multimillion dollar deal. It's bad, but people also do occasionally forget things. Heck, I've made a couple of mistakes and oversights in my life, and I've been glad when people give me a chance to make good on it. Maybe the guy's wife just broke up with him, maybe some other company kept having emergencies that he had to handle and got overwhelmed, forgetting about the appointment. Maybe his PDA that he used to keep appointments with was stolen and he's been trying to adapt to using pen-and-paper. Who knows?
Giving folks a chance to make one mistake, unless you're in a situation where a particular mistake absolutely cannot happen is not a bad idea. It can't hurt (aside from a bit of the submitter's time) to bring the people in. He can always decide not to go with them. Given the amount of money on the line, it seems like worthwhile being gracious may be worthwhile.
Also, as others have pointed out, have you considered all possibilities? Do you really need a 45Mbps link? Can you get away with mirroring some fileservers on each side, or something along those lines? We don't really have any idea of what you're doing.
Just a thought -- It might also be worthwhile to hire a local network engineering consultant to give his advice as to what's best to do. He might know of worthwhile things that other local companies have done.
You might consider working a deal with any other businesses interested in doing the same thing and maybe even the city. If there are other businesses that desperately need network connectivity or could reduce their ISP fees by joining into such a thing, perhaps the people asking $800K could be made to give a better deal, or at least split costs.
If you decide to do rooftop links, remember that the failure conditions are different from lines. Depending upon the sort of system you decide upon, bad weather can negatively impact your link.
[Sigh] There's just so little information that it's hard to give more than very basic guesses as to what you want to do.
May we never see th
The question is why they are talking to a "tech" to begin with. Call the Sales Department -- those guys are on commission and won't forget to show up.
might it cost less than $80k to move the company to where the bandwidth you desire is available?
If the *only* high-bandwidth needs are for hot-backup, you may be able to, use colo or perhaps, cut a deal with another company's offices (one that could be reached more cheaply with high bandwidth) that also wants to run off-site hot-backup systems -- you supply hot-backup systems for them, they supply some for you. I don't know whether this is standard business practice.
May we never see th