On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 9:21 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > I have also looked into leaving the P2P Ts as they are > but switching most of our dedicated Internet connections to Comcast Business > cable.
I can't comment on MPLS, but I can on Comcast Business/Workplace/whatever. We've got a feed through them. I'd call it "cheap, disposable bandwidth". Static IP address. Comcast claims 6 Mbit/sec down, 768 Kbit/sec up. Actual performance varies quite a bit. They also burst higher for initial traffic, then clamp down after 10 or 20 seconds, which makes it difficult to gauge performance. Their SLA isn't worth the bandwidth it takes to download the PDF. in addition to Comcast, we have a more expensive, slower, but more reliable feed from a local ISP. Important stuff -- mail, VPN -- goes through the other feed all the time. We send our outgoing HTTP client traffic through Comcast Comcast goes down on occasion. When that happens, we change everything to our other feed until it gets fixed. Comcast provided CPE that's basically an integrated cable modem, SOHO router, and 4-port Ethernet switch. It appears to be a halfheartedly re-badged SMC8014. (Halfheartedly because the front panel says "Comcast", but the top of the case still has a giant "SMC" molded into the plastic, and the P/N on the bottom sticker is the same.) The CPE came configured to do NAT, and assigned IP addresses via DHCP in the 10.1.10.0/24 subnet on the LAN switch ports. But the static IP address is also configured on the same Ethernet switch. In other words, the LAN side of the integrated router has multiple IP addresses. You can manage the LAN side by going to <http://10.1.10.1/> or the router address for the static feed. Default username is "cusadmin"; default password is "highspeed". I recommend changing the password. :) A few times a year, the CPE looses the upstream and needs to be power cycled to work again. I've found sending mail out through Comcast is more likely to get rejected. Some mail hosts apparently simply consider *everything* from a Comcast customer IP address to be spam. (And I'm not sure that's unreasonable.) This is why all outgoing mail goes through the local ISP feed. Comcast's has a separate phone number for business tech support. It's good for some things, not for others. With connectivity problems, unless it is a known widespread issue, they don't seem to be very motivated and/or capable. But when I called to have reverse DNS changed to be a subdomain of our corporate domain, they knew exactly what I was talking about, got the ticket in within ten minutes, and the change made within an hour or two. I recently had a weird DNS issue, where traffic to one of our DNS provider's servers would get dropped. DNS host said it wasn't them. We called Comcast, they said it wasn't them, but then everything magically started working shortly thereafter. DNS host says that's happened to them with Comcast before. I don't know who to believe, there. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
