The reason why the NTC proposed this legislation is because International Long Distance is being used to subsidize the deployment of local exchange services in rural, (unprofitable areas).
The fee that goes to the telco is supposed to make up for that subsidy loss that VoIP will cause.
Whether the fee proposed is fair or not is a completely different issue.
You first need to figure out what the T1 was supposed to be used for and how the expense was justified. This can help you decide what needs to go on the pipe and what you are letting on because you are "nice". Next try to classify your traffic to see what is really going through it, you may just have just outgrown your pipe. You can do this by turning on logging on your router, putting a sniffer on the network in the appropriate place, or using a commercial product.
Next turn on the QOS features of your router. If you can, classify your traffic and drop it in a queue. Use WRR to prioritize what is important.
Utilize cache servers to help stretch your bandwidth and improve performance. Some people are able to get 30-50% hit rates on WWW, which means up to 30-50% more bandwidth depending upon what your original traffic patterns look like.
Educate your users about the impact their non-essential activities are having. Setup guidelines such as amount of traffic being used, hours of use, etc. Make sure you monitor it and enforce it. For example, try to block all napster traffic during the day and allow it only nights and weekends. Use RMON of flow accounting to see who your top talkers are and maybe send them an e-mail.
Most of these policies are going to need some nice pieces of hardware. Look at perhaps getting a traffic shaper, such as packeteer, or a nice switch router, such as Riverstone Networks. Make sure as your turn on features and implement policies you don't inadvertantly affect your router's performance.
This is called Private Peering. No big deal. What they are doing is bypassing PUBLIC peering sites and instead using private peering sites of their own.
ISP's do it all the time, it's just this is one of the first ISP's to sell their private peering arrangement to their customers.
If you are really serious about being a good manager, get a Techno-MBA. Alot of schools are now offering MBA's with a strong emphasis on Technology and Technology issues.
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The reason why the NTC proposed this legislation is because International Long Distance is being used to subsidize the deployment of local exchange services in rural, (unprofitable areas). The fee that goes to the telco is supposed to make up for that subsidy loss that VoIP will cause. Whether the fee proposed is fair or not is a completely different issue.
Next turn on the QOS features of your router. If you can, classify your traffic and drop it in a queue. Use WRR to prioritize what is important.
Utilize cache servers to help stretch your bandwidth and improve performance. Some people are able to get 30-50% hit rates on WWW, which means up to 30-50% more bandwidth depending upon what your original traffic patterns look like.
Educate your users about the impact their non-essential activities are having. Setup guidelines such as amount of traffic being used, hours of use, etc. Make sure you monitor it and enforce it. For example, try to block all napster traffic during the day and allow it only nights and weekends. Use RMON of flow accounting to see who your top talkers are and maybe send them an e-mail.
Most of these policies are going to need some nice pieces of hardware. Look at perhaps getting a traffic shaper, such as packeteer, or a nice switch router, such as Riverstone Networks. Make sure as your turn on features and implement policies you don't inadvertantly affect your router's performance.
ISP's do it all the time, it's just this is one of the first ISP's to sell their private peering arrangement to their customers.
It's worth the investment in time and effort.