Business connection

We're looking at improving our connection using the fibre no-one knew we had, sharing the costs with our neighbours. We've had a few quotes and they seem to be coming in at around £11k a year for 30Mb/s to the site then we share that between three companies. What isn't clear(*) is whether we also need to provision a link to our head office.

The BT quote says 'guaranteed internet bandwidth' but another one has a table that lists 'Ethernet Exchange' implying to me that the link terminates there.

Is it possible that the arrangement is for the provision of an internet connection to the site, a router to parcel out the bandwidth on-site and then we use a VPN link to our head office? Or would we also need to pay for a connection from our exchange to the head office?

(*)Sadly we can't talk to the companies direct due to company policy and before I involve our IT bods we need some idea of costs. Kind of a chicken-and-egg problem.

Edited by Andrue (Tue 08-May-12 11:10:15)

A leased line would be direct to the address (and location) you request, so if you was ordering one from us you would place the order for say IT room, ground floor, you address.
this would then have the router delivered and installed in your comms room (if thats were you want it|) and you would then split out the Ethernet however you want it
It would not be delivered to the exchange and then for you to order something else.
Any reason why you only looked at BT for your leased line?

In reply to a post by vivaciti:

Any reason why you only looked at BT for your leased line?

We've looked at another company as well. I think the landlord checked with BT and another company checked with EssentialNet. Unfortunately we're a small office of engineers with no control over budget or equipment provision. That rather hamstrings us. We have to be careful of asking for quotes because of that. The people that will decide are off-site. In fact the purse string holders are in the US and the people who will actually place orders are on the south coast.

What I'm trying to do is get an idea of price because as soon as I mention it to my boss in the US that's going to be his first question. I'm working on the assumption that their upper limit is £500pcm which is why we're thinking of sharing with our neighbours.

You can PM me if you want to discuss it further but you need to be aware that I have no power or authority to make decisions. All I can do is gather facts that make a suggestion to my boss :-/

Edited by Andrue (Tue 08-May-12 13:08:55)

I have sent you a PM, but re-reading your post and reading your PM, when you said about a link to your head office, have I read it wrong, do you mean from the exchange to your office as I put in the last reply, or do you mean once it gets setup there how do you link to another external office? If the later you could look at a VPN solution, if you are looking at multiple office in the future then you could look at some full MPLS type of setup but that may have implications if you are sharing out the internet connection with others.

In reply to a post by vivaciti:

when you said about a link to your head office, have I read it wrong, do you mean from the exchange to your office as I put in the last reply, or do you mean once it gets setup there how do you link to another external office?

Well that's where I'm not sure. At the moment we use a VPN over a standard business ISP ADSL connection. I assume that with a full leased line arrangement one logical end of the connection would be in our office and the other at the head office - like a very long Ethernet cable.

If we're sharing with our neighbours I don't see how that can be done. Would the quotes we've got just be from the office to the exchange and the rest is up to each company? Or would the quotes be for us to share an internet connection and we'd use a VPN as we do now?

Oh and just so we're clear:The fibre (if it is available) was apparently put in several years ago by this other company. They paid Opal for ISDN30. We're only assuming that there is dark fibre available and that it's owned by BTor. The quote from BT does state '0km from network access point' and there's no installation charge which tends to support the idea that we do have fibre here.

Edited by Andrue (Tue 08-May-12 13:35:58)

Quote depends on what exactly there were asked to quote on, without seeing the request for a quote hard to say

I would hazard a guess that the quote is for a BT 'BTnet' service, as there is no connection charge for 3 or 5 year contracts.

If so, this is similar to the DSL service you have now (in that it connects your site to the internet), but instead of using the telephone line, it is delivered via a dedicated circuit - which can be fibre or copper depending upon the service requested - so you can continue to use a VPN exactly as you do now.
With the exception of EFM, BTnet Ethernet services are delivered over a (Openreach EAD) fibre connection.

The '0km from network access point' simply means there is no 'main link' (a connection between exchanges) required, as an Ethernet node is located in your serving exchange.