I think the saying "you get what you pay for" applies here. Nothing against Comcast but you won't get the same QOS out of a cable line that you will from MPLS. That being said we have a Comcast business line for a remote warehouse and run an ASA there to hardware VPN back to our main office. It works great, speed is awesome. Yes it bounces up and down a lot but for us the connection isn't that critical and the price of any other type of line was cost prohibitive. So it's really up to you to decide if a little (or a lot of) down time here an there is worth the cost savings.
________________________________ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, October 09, 2009 8:21 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: MPLS We have three satellite offices in two states connected to our main office via point to point T1s. Each office has their own dedicated Internet connection. All data and email is centralized in our main office with each satellite office having their own phone switch. We use VOIP for inter office communication and voice mail. We do not do video conferencing yet but do make use of VPN and remote desktop services for folks working remotely. I have several vendors pushing me hard for changing all our circuits over to MPLS. It seems that the price of doing this may be more than what everything currently costs now. I have also looked into leaving the P2P Ts as they are but switching most of our dedicated Internet connections to Comcast Business cable. Doing this would multiply my Internet bandwidth by a factor of 6 but cut my monthly costs at our main office by more than 75%. I've read up on MPLS and it seems that the QOS is indeed better but it also sometimes has packet loss issues. I'd appreciate any opinions on the switch to MPLS and any hands on experience stories that you'd be willing to share. Thanks. Steve ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
