Other Connectivity > Business Connectivity > Beginner needs T1 point-to-point advice/help

reply to JoelC707

Re: Beginner needs T1 point-to-point advice/help

If your DSL options are maxed out then it looks like cable is your only "cheap" option. What are you trying to get Comcast to do for improved service? All you really need to get them to do is give you service at the other two locations if it's available. If these locations are in office complexes or the like then cable service may not be available. They are starting to push their business side of the house though so hopefully that means they are expanding their footprint. Is there anything else wrong with the Comcast service at that one location? How are the speeds and latency to other sites? If you can surf without problems them your real issue would be with the interconnect to the backbone either at Comcast or the other ISP. Eliminating the other ISP and standardizing on one will eliminate that problem altogether.

Thanks again for your comments.

I agree that the major problem at the Comcast location appears to be related to getting on the public Internet before going to the final (DSL) ISP

We can get Comcast at the other two locations, but so far, I haven't been able to get them to commit to providing the same level of service at these two locations that we have at the existing Comcast location.

We are apparently getting more (better speeds) at the existing Comcast location than they generally offer.

I'll contact their regional office on Monday, and if I get the right kind of response, you will have saved my client a fair amount of cash and me a lot of aggrevation.

Comcast didn't respond to my e-mail(s) or voice-mail yesterday, so I had to call them again today.

They can install the 61/2 service within 7 days, but say that the traffic will not necessarily stay on their network.
This negates half the reason of choosing Comcast!

They have to say that because they can't guarantee with 100% certainty where your traffic will flow at any time. Are the other two sites in the same metro area? If so it is pretty much certain that traffic between them will never leave the city. If they are in other cities or even other states, it should flow over their interconnected network but any number of things could cause it to fall back to public backbone transit.

reply to JimPletcher

reply to JoelC707
Three towns involved.
Two MAY be considered in the same area, but the third is decidedly NOT.

A Comcast trace route between one of the local areas and the more remote site (which already has Comcast) involved four routers and went well past the intended destination before coming back to it. It's like we're trying to connect a stepchild.

The route it takes can vary depending on where in the city it's going. A trace route from Tucson to Atlanta (Decatur) involves 13 hops, all never leaving Comcast's network. The IP I did the trace to hits two routers in Atlanta, the headend and the hubsite it's hosted from (I traced to the CMTS, what many call the "node"). If I had traced to an actual PC it would have had one more hop to go though. Likewise if I do a trace to a PC on the north end of town say in Norcross, It will in one case go through 5-6 more hope before it gets there. If I can remember the IP I used, I'll post examples so you can better see what I'm talking about.

Edit: Can you post a screen shot of the traceroute you did? I could tell you pretty certainly from that if they are considered to be in the same area. Just block out the destination IP address.

Unable to provide a screen shot, because the test was conducted from another location.
All four routers were Comcast but I don't remember the IPs.

reply to JoelC707
We switched the two remote locations to ComCast last night.
All three locatins now on Comcast
WAN performance today appears acceptable with all locations having 2.5 upload