Simon, I don't have load balancing as such, but we have implemented a strategy on our ADLS tails in our Private Network to have dial-up redundancy. While it is obviously a lot slower, services such as HIC-online could continue to work over that dialup connection, if the ADLS goes down for any reason. The Private network provider offers this service for no extra cost, and I suspect that most ISP's could potentially provide this. My philosophy was to have a different medium, such as ISDN or Dialup. Of course if the PSTN line goes out, we are up that creek, but paying for 2 ADSL tails (which wouldn't make sense on an MPLS network where you really couldn't be able to have 2 providers easily or cost effectively) would be a significant increase in costs to the end user, and ISDN was too expensive. I take the point though that we are becoming less concerned these days because ADSL being an "entertainment grade of service" doesn't make for a reliable transport, but it is certainly cost effective compared to the alternatives.
I see "Business Grade" on a lot of B4H plans from ISP's and it is in fact a pre-requisite for any Qualified Service Provider for the Broadband for Health program (that is ending June30), but these often just relate to a lower contention rate, and a better level of service as far as Support goes. It doesn't necessarily mean any better quality or reliability of the connection, in almost all cases. The equipment on our sites are an ADSL modem (Bridged Mode), Snapgear SG300 Router with failover, and a Dialup modem. Unfortunately the router is just a router and doesn't have a modem builtin, so I end up with 3 pieces of equipment. Of course for an internet connection alone, one probably wouldn't go to all this trouble, but as other services can be provided on the Private Network that might be critical, then connectivity may become an issue to us..depending on the service by the way. Unfortunately the SG300's have embedded linux....now if only I could find one with Embedded CE. Let's see how many bites I get with that one !! Regards Barry Lollo (The Microsoft Man) -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Simon James Sent: Wednesday, 28 February 2007 11:31 AM To: GPCG Talk Subject: [GPCG_TALK] Internet redundancy Have any list members deployed a load balancing router in their practice? What arrangements do practices have in place for the event that their DSL/Cable connection goes down? Thanks Simon _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
