Business Broadband - Fibre?

[feenster99]

Hi all,
I'm looking at options for replacing our work's broadband. I need it to be quick download and upload, and be reliable. We currently have 8MB ADSL which is fine for everyday use. However, we run a server from on the connection which is very heavy on bandwidth. Therefore, i'm looking at other options to get maximum download and upload speeds.

What options do I have?:
- Get a faster ADSL connection with a lower contention ratio
- Get a cable connection too, and load balance
- Get SDSL for the matched upload speed (slow download speed though - 2MB)

I'm also looking into how much a direct fibre optic link would cost. Does anyone have any thoughts on the above?

Cheers,
Matt

 

[feenster99]

Some excellent replies - thank you.

Whilst i'm not naive enough to think a fibre link would cost the same as ADSL, I wasn't expecting it to cost quite so much - that is out of our league at the moment.

Co-location isn't an option, as we need easy access to the server that is running (for various reasons I won't go into).

Is seems like our best option for the time being is to load balance. We currently have an 8MB ADSL connection, so perhaps a 20MB Virgin Media line would be a good second option. How does this work - do we end up with 2 IP addresses (i.e., one for ADSL, one for Cable)? What maikes/models of Routers should I be looking at? We currently use a Draytek 2800, which I really like. They produce a 3300V which load balances - we'd need an ADSL model for our existing connection though.

Thanks again for all the advice - it is much appreciated.

Matt

 

[feenster99]

Unfortunately, Virgin only do ADSL in our area it seems

I don't think co-location is an option as we need tight control over the hardware that is used in the server, and will be constantly upgrading it over time. Plus, we are an IT firm and have lots of bits to hand

I'm liking the look of the Be Pro connection - that would be a great starting point as the Upload speed can be notched up at the expense of the download speed, which would be fine.

So apart from the Draytek (which costs ~£350), what other load balancing routers should I look at? In terms of the setup, I guess each Internet connection would have it's own IP address, and i'd just have to setup an 'A' record on our domain name for each one?

Matt