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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
Dunno, 80k for a wireless link with just the minimal of support fees sounds good, especially for 45mbps. Considering the facts that theres no telco fees involved with a wireless point-to-point solutions (unless i'm being extremely dumb).
"What do you mean you have no ice? Do you expect me to drink this coffee hot?" - Random Customer, Clerks
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!
I'm not familiar with the area, but you can MUX a handful of Ts together I suppose. If your still in the 0-mile area of a provider, that might not be too horribly expensive. I don't know what Ts cost out there tho. If you don't need more'n about 10Mbps, this might work. I think the most I've ever seen MUX'd is 8 Ts.
I'm no expert, but DS3 lines (capable of up to 45Mbps) run over copper just fine. You're probably better off if you can get fibre, but copper will do in a pinch.
my company just recently switched from an OC-12 to a pair of gigabit fiber connections between our Conway and Little Rock offices... no idea how much we pay per month for it, but SBC *was* able to do it.
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
might it cost less than $80k to move the company to where the bandwidth you desire is available?
You City and County planers might know of an area in town that would be better suited to your needs.
You local Economic Development Commision might also be willing to help out. Tell them you are looking to move out of the Town, County, and maybe State. They might have grants and Tax incentives to help you.
Anything doing with computers is still considered high tech and usually clean. Planners love software development firms. Ask them for help to keep you there. That is what they get paid to do.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Pigeons...lots of pigeons...
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Have you checked into Time Warner?
They have Metro Area ethernet in a lot of major cities, and pricing is damn good. Here in Minneapolis, I can do gigabit Fibre Channel between offices. Now that's just damn cool. Not sure about little rock, but it may be worth looking into. Time Warner Telecom has the benefit of being able to use Time Warner Cable's right-of-way. Which means that when they run fiber, they don't have to get permits and go through as much hassle because in the early 80's cable companies were granted huge rights which allowed them to pretty much run cable wherever they pleased without having to get permits. And, if your location makes business sense to TW, they will finance the cost of the install (like if there are other large potential customers in your building).
Although, for the recurring monthly cost of a link like this, after 10 to 12 months, you could have just paid for that wireless solution you were looking at. Keep in mind 802.15.3 wireless is coming out soon too, which will drop costs dramatically.
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My company just went with a new isp that apears to also be in Kansas City (dont know if they are in your area or not).
www.cogentco.com
100Mb for $1000/month
Full Fiber Network
http://www.nuvox.com is a CLEC that has a presnece in Little Rock. We have customers in the Little Rock area and have solutions available to customers such as yourself. We have different options available to you regarding this solution and would be happy to speak with you regarding this. I am in Little Rock and I am available for a discussion with you. Shoot me an email to discuss. gphillips@nuvox.com.
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
Have you checked to see if there is any unused municipal dark fiber?
In some areas there may be fiber owned by the city/state/county that is not being used.
It might be possible to get the rights to some of that fiber if your company has any relationship with the local govt... If not, a good alternative might be to dedicate a vlan and ports on your switch to have for example a library located at each location interconnected. You essentially would be providing the backbone hardware for the library / local city office...
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Time is on my side