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Re: [LUG] lighthouse/resurrection day/386

 

On Tue, 26 Jan 2010, Rob Beard wrote:

They were looking at an SDSL line into the building, but as this is only up to 2 Meg up/down unless they bond a couple of lines (not to mention really expensive!) I suggested they look at Be.

Since they're on the Paignton exchange which not only has the up to 24 Meg broadband via BT (or other ISPs such as Enta) and some LLU providers (Be/O2, Sky/Easynet, Tiscalli, Talktalk, Orange) I was going to suggest they got two lines for redundancy, with one line from Be (which on BePro offer up to 24 Meg down and up to 2.5Meg up), and another line possibly with another provider (maybe via Enta?), or alternatively a second line with Be.

I have one (Entanet) ADSL customer in Paignton - probably not that far from where the Lighthouse is and they're getting 20Mb/sec in and 1.1Mb/sec out.

Redundancy with ADSL is a somewhat "intersting" proposition - since the cables from the premises are almost guaranteed to be in the same bundle from the premises to the exchange, so any local roadwoks which might take one out will take the other out... I'd also like to think that different (LLU) ISPs have cables coming out of the local exchange in different trunks to BT, but I've seen otherwise.

And personally, I'd suggest they go for a BT wholesale ISP rather than an LLU one - and go for a business package with "elevated service levels" (what they used to call the old 20:1 contention ratio). Read some reports recently about the Be network being a bit overloaded at times... But maybe they can use a cheaper ISP for the cafe side and a business quality one for the "office" side of things.

The idea of this is that the connection with the faster upload speed will be used for the internet radio, which will then be streamed onto a shoutcast server to redistribute the stream. It will also be used of their office network.

Make sure they get a good router too - especially if they're sharing the connection - one that has traffic shaping/QoS - unless you're planning on putting in a Linux box..

The other connection will be used for the internet cafe and also to provide wireless internet access for anyone who has laptops who wants to browse the internet. I got the impression they want to give away free wireless with a purchase, probably 30 minutes access with every purchase (to stop visitors buying a coffee and sitting there all day!). I've yet to really look into this, but I gather there are packages available for Linux to restrict access and give out tickets.

There is also dedicated hardware to do it too - which is much easier to use, if a little more in the capital cost department - although I did once write a package to do "ticketing" for access to community broadbands...

We know Linux can do everything, but somtimes just putting in a black box is easier...

Saying that, Endsleigh used to do the ticketing thing, but stopped recently and just made it free for all ... Maybe it's easier.

Gordon

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