Leased Line Providers

howler

howler

howler

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Joined
5 Oct 2004
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1,647
Looking into leased lines for our company and would like some recommendations

Already in talks with Zen, are there anhy other big players I should be talking to?
 
Easynet? They're the backbone behind Sky and UK Online and have masses of capacity. Easynet itself focuses solely on business customers. Cable (VM) have business solutions too (up to 1gbps).
 
I know some will laugh at this and others just think im crazy but have you approched BT? I know they may not be the cheapest but its their network everybody elese uses at the end of the day. Their business stuff is usually pretty good and you dont have a middle man when dealing with them.

Alternatively look into VPN technology and route via the net, its a lot cheaper but does carry some security and QoS implications.

Regards

BS
 
bcsbcs said:
I know some will laugh at this and others just think im crazy but have you approched BT? I know they may not be the cheapest but its their network everybody elese uses at the end of the day. Their business stuff is usually pretty good and you dont have a middle man when dealing with them.

Alternatively look into VPN technology and route via the net, its a lot cheaper but does carry some security and QoS implications.

Regards

BS
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Nope, we provide leased lines and we never use BTs backbone network in any way. We occassionally use BT LES circuits as tails to get to the customer site but these are 100% dedicated fibre so are a completely different beast.

I don't know any serious business ISPs that use BTs network, except for ADSL/SDSL
 
howler said:
Can you give me some companies to look at?
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As mentioned, easynet are a big player and for every horror story abut them I think there are plenty of satisfied customers. We provide leased lines as well but it seems a little off to tout for business on the forums.

As somebody said, where are you and how much bandwidth, if the answer is London and lots then we're worth a look and probably quite price competitive. If you want a 4MB leased line in Glasgow though, we can do it but we're expensive.
 
You also need to elaborate on what you require from a leased line. Do you just need a "big fat pipe" for Internet access or do you want a P2P between office locations?

If your in a major city then you will have a few providors to look into. If you more remote then you may have to stick with BT. As bigredshark said, stay away from consumer ISP's, they will have to use BT's network so you might just as well go direct if the options are limited.

I'm actually working on a network extention now and we will offering ethernet services in Manchester, Slough, Birmingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dublin in the next few months. There is hope out there for those trying to get away from BT or COLT.
 
pdw8 said:
You also need to elaborate on what you require from a leased line. Do you just need a "big fat pipe" for Internet access or do you want a P2P between office locations?

If your in a major city then you will have a few providors to look into. If you more remote then you may have to stick with BT. As bigredshark said, stay away from consumer ISP's, they will have to use BT's network so you might just as well go direct if the options are limited.

I'm actually working on a network extention now and we will offering ethernet services in Manchester, Slough, Birmingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dublin in the next few months. There is hope out there for those trying to get away from BT or COLT.
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Plenty of others about in those locations too...

Fibrenet (though being taken over by global crossing has done nothing for their customer service), Neos, NTL (whose ethernet services are actually very good) and a few others...
 
We are based in Somerset, looking at a minimum of 10Mb at the hub site probably 100mb.

The connection needs to be used to transfer A LOT of business critical data between two sites throughout the working day with a view of more remote sites coming on board at later dates

Have already spoken with BT and they were shocklingly expensive
 
howler said:
We are based in Somerset, looking at a minimum of 10Mb at the hub site probably 100mb.

The connection needs to be used to transfer A LOT of business critical data between two sites throughout the working day with a view of more remote sites coming on board at later dates

Have already spoken with BT and they were shocklingly expensive
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Speak to someone who'll design you a custom WAN would be my advice (unless you really have a lot of networking expertise in house). From your brief summary of requirements though, I'd expect what you want to be expensive.

We can do this sort of thing but aren't cheap generally...www.hso.uk.com if you want to take a glance.
 
I wasn't expecting it to be cheap but BT's prices were a bit ridiculous

When you say getting someone to design a custom WAN wouldn't every service provider do that to an extent seeing as we would just be buying a pipe onto their network the only bits we would have any real control over would be the routers at either site

Or am I barking up the wrong tree there?
 
howler said:
I wasn't expecting it to be cheap but BT's prices were a bit ridiculous

When you say getting someone to design a custom WAN wouldn't every service provider do that to an extent seeing as we would just be buying a pipe onto their network the only bits we would have any real control over would be the routers at either site

Or am I barking up the wrong tree there?
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Well, what we'd do is put managed routers on each site (gives us more control over the line and means we notice when it goes down). Given you're looking at multiple sites there may be some mileage in a solution with the central router being in the ISPs core rather than at your main site (means remote sites can still talk to each other if the main site goes down for any reason).

Most business ISPs will make some effort to meet your needs here but too many of them will try and sell you a predesigned solution they've prepared for this type of requirement. Which is sometimes OK but you'll do better with somebody who's prepared to look at your needs and come up with a bespoke solution.

It might cost a little more but it'll probably work better and you'll likely find the ISP better too (more willing to help you out if you have a sudden requirement)
 
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