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T1 vs. Roadrunner Business Class?

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by txcwgrl229

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We currently have Time Warner Business Class. We are being talked into a T1 for our phones with a separate T1 for our data lines. I have someone else telling me that the T1 would not be worth it because of the speed up and down is slower than cable. I am trying to find pros and cons but I am inundated with too much "technical" information that it is driving me crazy!!! Can anyone tell me why one is better than the other? Thanks!

6 replies

by tward

Our deparment had Roadrunner business class and it was blazing fast. The village governement also had 3-4 different phone services, so the mayor got a bundle deal from At&t with a T1 internet, and air cards for laptops.
Internet speed now is about as fast a dial up! we only changed the ISP, but they are checking OUR equipment for problems. (BS)
We use an internet based Records Management system and sometimes it takes 4 minuets for a page to appear, this T1 is terrible!
Being just west of Columbus Ohio, 3G air cards access was not avaiable so the air cards were returned.

by michelle

We are currently using a shared phone and data T1 line through Nuvox and while we are very happy with Nuvox service and support I believe the data portion is very slow. When we have large files (over 100 meg) that we need to download it is faster for me to do it at home (using RoadRunner) than at work and save it to a flash drive. I wish I could give you specific speeds but I don't have that information currently other than my downloads from home take about 1/4 the time than they do at work. Because of this we are currently having Time Warner quote. I believe the T1 is slower because it shares the bandwidth with the voice (we have 8 phone lines) and what's ever left over goes to data.

by rkuhn040172

T-1's historically have offered higher quality, same up and down speeds, and in some cases guaranteed uptime.

If uptime is critical, go T-1.

A "full" T-1 is 1.54 Mbs. A "partial" can be any portion thereof usually in 256 Kps increments.

Our service is two T-1's that are esentially bonded together so that when no one is on the phone we have 3 Mbs service. That decreases as phone usuage increases.

And by the way, phone usuage is minimal. A typical phone call is only about 64 Kb. So, that other person mentioning a slow connection with 8 phones...wow, that's only 512 Kb phone usuage...sounds like a QoS issue or equipment problem.

Cable services are historically not been as reliable as T-1 service. That is changing though.

Cable is typically much faster for the price. It's a quality vs quantity issue really although that's grossly over simplifying it.

A real T-1 of say 1.54 Mbs is 1.54 up and 1.54 down. Cable usually is something like 10 Mbs down and only 1 up.

So, it depends on what you need. Quality/Uptime go T-1. Speed/Price and go cable.

Cable is probably good enough for most smaller companies.

by lalalnx

I think you should be a bit more specific about the speed differences.

A T1 is 1.54Mb/s sure, but what does that really mean? It means you can ONLY download/upload at about 190 KB/s (1540/8) (this is the max number you will see when downloading, not 1.54 or 1540)

That being said, RRs current business class cable is 6/6, which is 750KB/s both up and down. Pretty impressive, and quite the speed difference.

Not only that, but its only ~$70 a month, which T1 last I checked was ~$500-$1000 a month.

What about reliability? Doesn't cable suck? Doesn't it get bogged down all the time? I hate how you use the world "quality" to describe T1 over business class cable, implying that cable doesn't have great quality.

We have moved on from the days when broadband first surfaced. Cable rarely gets bogged down (I've never seen it happen), and even if it did, you would more than likely be faster than T1's max speed. RR even guarantees 99.9% uptime, and they have phone (VOIP) packages.

There are REAL drawbacks to cable though. A T1 line is dedicated, and usually runs direct from your place to the ISP. Cable on the other hand shares a lot of data between clients. Someone with a lot of time on their hands, and on the same node, could look at your data being sent in and out of the internet. The most important things (website logins) are all encrypted, so it would be almost impossible for him to actually decode it. Since your everyday user has to deal with this, computers them selves are more and more secure. I honestly don't see this as a problem, but something you may want to think about/do more research about and find out if the extra $$ and very low speeds are worth it.

To me, its a no brainer. Better speed AND about the same reliability. Can't beat the price either.

by shover

I would say you need to go with at least a partial T1.
There is something different about the T1 that makes it more reliable for phones. We have tried with Roadrunner only and have had occasional problems, generally when it starts the person on the other end cannot hear you.
We have implemented a few small VOIP systems and require that they have some type of T1 or similar.

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