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Re: [LUG] lighthouse/resurrection day/386

 

Quoting Gordon Henderson <gordon+dcglug@xxxxxxxxxx>:

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.


That's pretty good, I'm sure speeds like that would be enough for them, I don't think the office side will be used that much, in fact I don't think the radio stream would be more than about 256kbit/sec.

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.

Yep, so I guess chances are if it is a line fault affecting a whole load of lines (or a cabinet?) then it would possibly take both lines down. I don't think the radio streaming will be mission critical, they are running as a charity anyway so it's not for instance a commercial station where not being on air costs lots of money, or at least I'm presuming not. I'm not sure if they may provide local advertising that is dependant on adverts going out okay, if this is the case then I guess they'll have to pay extra so they have peace of mind (the streaming they will be using might possibly be a free service anyway).

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.

Ok, I'll do a bit more looking into it. Presumably it'll be something along the lines of the Enta business connections?

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..

I was looking at putting in an IPCop box. Not sure how well it handles traffic shaping/QoS. I'm open to suggestions though if anyone else can suggest anything.

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...

Do you have any more details on this Gordon, such as a manufacturer or supplier?

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

Yep, they have got a limited budget though so I'm not sure how much they'd be able to spare. I guess if they were charging for the access then it wouldn't matter as much.

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

Possibly, maybe it would be better to do it along the lines of what the Shoreline have, enter a key to connect working on a trust basis. I gather that at least with IPCop it's possible to throttle the connection per machine, so maybe that might be the way to do it, and limit each machine connecting to say 512kbit/sec which should be enough for web browsing/light e-mail I'd say.

Rob




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