2016-01-30

Terabyte services launch

We have to update all of the web pages yet, but I have linked in the new ordering system and a page about the new terabyte services today so customers can order.

The ordering system has had a month of development and testing, but the real proof is letting it loose on real customers.

The service itself does seem to work, and the operations team at A&A are monitoring carefully - we have plans to upgrade the core network and have already started with additional routers. Will be setting up our 40Gb/s ring soon and new LNS links over the next few months to increase capacity.

Exciting times. It is nice to see how we have grown from dialup services which managed 64k on ISDN lines back in the last millennium to services where people bond multiple 80Mb/s circuits and have terabytes of download allowance. I have to wonder where the next 18 years will take us.

15 comments:

  1. can you bond these terabyte services? if so is there additional cost over two 1tb lines?

    I assume this would give you up to 160/40 and 2tb usage....

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    Replies
    1. Two lines at twice the cost for twice the speed and twice the bandwidth.

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    2. Oh, and line speed depends on your line so may not reach the 80/20 caps set obviously. .

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    3. Is there a hardware cost attached to bonding them, or an additional fee from AA for doing it?

      I'm actually tempted by that idea, I load balance two 80/20 lines now, and 2TB a month would be enough, especially as I assume this would mean a slowdown to 6mbit if I went over, which is slow but manageable.

      Although, if you can bond two 1TB lines for the same cost as a 2TB line, what's the advantage of the SoHo:2T tarriff? ;)

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    4. We handle the downlink side but you probably need some kit to handle it at your end as two ppp links with same IP (not mlppp) and to bond uplink. It can be done but obviously we would recommend a FireBrick as we know how that works. Indeed SoHo::1 is same price. Home::1 is only available to non VAT registered customers at residential premises though.

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    5. Also each line would reach 1TB and slow to 3Mb/s but that would simply skew the bonding to the other line and continue until it reaches its 1TB the the two 3Mb/s lines would be effectively 6Mb/s total. differences in line rate and latency can mean the lines would not reach the 1TB at exactly the same time basically.

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    6. Sorry for asking so many questions :)

      So I could have a pair of HG612 modems, a Firebrick behind them doing PPPoE and the bonding, and then put my usual router (an Asus RT-AC87u) behind that, with the public IP you assign me hitting the WAN side of my Asus router, without cascaded NAT?

      Completely understand reference them not hitting 1TB at the exact same time, but the likelyhood is it would be close to the same time correct? And if I had two lines, one synced at say, 78mbit, and one at 75mbit, you could rate cap them both to say, 72mbit for me, so they would be as even as possible?

      This is sounding like an awesome solution as I'm rather sick of the hassle of load balancing, and at £120 a month including line rental it's actually reasonable, if a bit more than I'm paying now.

      I wonder if I can get wife signoff and/or sneak it past her without her noticing...

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    7. Not hitting at same time won't be an issue, just means you'd have 83Mb/s for a bit then 6Mb/s in effect. The bonding would send almost all package on the one not yet clamped down. Latency is a factor in bonding as well as speed - it works well.

      The FireBrick routing the WAN address to your router should be possible - unusual - but it is very flexible. They are £750+VAT though for one that does bonding.

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    8. I believe people have managed to do the bonding using linux and even mikrotik boxes, but we would not really be much help with the set up on that. Somewhat cheaper than a FireBrick.

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    9. Do check what line rates you can get though.

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    10. I done exactly this with a mikrotik router many times. The downlink bonding "just works", the uplink requires a small config change to send each alternate packet down each like, round robin style

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    11. Have bond two 80/20 FTTC on AAISP using a Juniper SRX in the past, downstream works fine. Upstream is load balancing only however as is it per Layer 4 (IP/Port hash) which I understand is a limitation of JunOS (cant per packet round robin the same session). A suitable device is £100 on eBay if lines are driven by external VDSL modems like a HG612.

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  2. Do you know when Migrations are going to be possible Adrian?

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    1. There are three things, SMPF (allowing PSTN part to be handled separately), PCP only (allowing non engineer visit so cheaper), and migrate VDSL/FTTC. The first two soon, maybe this month. The latter is a logical extension of SMPF, but not definitive word on that yet. Will chase.

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  3. Got this last week and it works really well, as well as being £50 a month cheaper than we were paying on home::1!

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