Fractional T1?

I suggest setting up an appointment with someone at your local ISP. They're been doing this since Day One and can give you a quick education on the concept, methodology, the tools and the hardware.

Sounds like fun. Good luck.

Al Hedstrom

I agree with Answer 1's suggestion to meet with your ISP. They can help you with the selection of router/firewall appliances, TCP/IP setup/address, etc. You can also request them to monitor your traffic for certain period or time so you have benchmarks of your users Internet activities. Maybe a DSL would suffice!

You should also set up meeting with our phone system supplier. They should also advise you what would be the expected phone traffic on the T1. This will allow you how many channels out of the 24 x 64Kbps you can allot for your ISP.

Hope this helps.

ISP have in-house consultants that will be able to assist you. Or you can bringing in your own consultants.

As to where to get basic info on h/w, price..etc, check out

nwfusion.com
networkcomputing.com

hope this helps!

First of all:
A fractional T-1 or T-3 line is a T-1 or T-3 digital phone line...that is leased to a customer at a fraction of its data-carrying capacity and at a correspondingly lower cost. A T-1 line contains 24 channels, each with a data transfer capacity of 64 Kbps. The customer can rent some number of the 24 channels. The transmission method and speed of transfer remain the same.

2nd: your strategy at this point in time (that is, the beginning of this project) should read somethinglike this:
1. evaluate your current bandwidth through communication with whomever provides your internet access
2. determine if a T1 is necessary. refer to this as a "Cost-Benefits analysis". Do this by having a T1 provider assess the bandwidth evaluation.
3. if so, have the T1 provider give you a quote AND the ISP give you a quote. Between the two of them, you will have covered all aspects of the project.

Lastly, I would beef up the "plan", put it in writing, schedule some meetings, and, most important

Got cut off....
Lastly, I would beef up the "plan", put it in writing, schedule some meetings, and, most importantly, give the impression to the "big wigs" that you can handle this job, because this project will be 95% supervision on your part; the technical part is done by the other people. GOOD LUCK

Well, I know you would probably need mostly price for service, installation and hardware and a couple choices for providers, right?
Go to http://www.2wire.com/dsllookup/finddsl.asp

and checkout also

http://www.rhythms.com/index.html

Also, checkout your local phone company Web page for services and information.

You'll be a pro before you know it!

Good Luck!

If a vendor is already working on the telephone upgrade and the equipment has been specified, I would suggest them as a good source of information. A T-1 is just a data circuit that terminates in a device on your premises. It can carry 1.544 megabits of information and that can be divided into one big data pipe, 24 voice channels or some combination in between. How much is available to your Internet circuit depends on how many channels the voice equipment will use.

The last one I set up used a DSU with 3 cards. The first two were set for voice (16 lines) and that left 384k of bandwidth for data. The third card was an interface to the router.

Telco and data are converging and your telco vendor should be able to educate you on thedata side as well.

paul

The T1, is it from your local SWBELL Telephone company? Is the T1 to replace the existing incoming and outgoing telephone? or is this T1 point-to-point?

To me it sound like SWBELL will give you "T1" equivalent of telephone lines incoming and outgoing. (That 24 lines as you know) Everything is done at the TELCO. Tell them that you want 16 lines incoming and outgoing and the other 8 to go to your ISP. The lines that you care to use for data wil be broke off at your Telepone system dsu on your side. (You will need a router with T1 capabilities.) You will then tell your router to use XXXk on you wan port.(64k per channel used) Your isp will have to have the equipment to accept such a line. THIS IS AN EXPENSIVE WAY TO DO THINGS!!!!!!!

Try to convince them to use services like DSL or CABLE modems to connect to your ISP.
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However, if this T1 is a point-to-point circuit from one location (yours) to another(yours), it's easy! All you have to do is plug the incoming T1 into your dsu and