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T1 Bandwidth Questions Answered

This article explains the communications technology known as T1 and how it can provide a better and more stable Internet connection for your business to rely on. It covers how much bandwidth you get with a T1 and the benefits over a standard DSL service.

The Internet is the lifeblood of business in the 21^st century. Those of us born before the Internet became a fact of life often pause and wonder “How did we survive and do business at all without the Internet?”. I ran a translation agency for ten years, communicating with hundreds of translators all over the world, happily tapping away on their laptops wherever they were living – in a log cabin in Austria, a condo apartment in Japan, a house in the French countryside. It didn’t matter: we were all instantly in touch by email and messaging services, 24 hours a day.

Even though we take this miracle of communication for granted we still complain that our Internet services are not reliable enough, not fast enough, not robust enough. We always want more bandwidth.

What is Bandwidth?

We always want more of it, and T1 lines provide a large amount of it, but what exactly is bandwidth?

Bandwidth is the measure of how much data can pass down the wire in a given time. It is usually measured in bits per second (bps). A typical bandwidth for a dial-up connection is around 56kbps, or 56 thousand bits a second. A DSL line can be up to 10Mbps (10 million bits per second) and a T1 1.54 Mbps.

An analogy can be made between bandwidth and travelling down the freeway in your car. The number of lanes on the freeway is equivalent to the bandwidth. If you are the only vehicle on the road you can fly along at a high speed. If the other lanes are packed with cars you will find yourself crawling along at a snail’s pace. On the freeway this is a traffic-jam, on the wire it would be called a bandwidth bottleneck.

The Bandwidth problems of DSL

Many small to medium businesses have DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) connections as installed by the majority of domestic users. These lines are not always the best solution for the business user for the following reasons:

DSL is a shared service. The bandwidth of the line is shared among users. This is called a contention ratio and can be as high as 50: 1, i.e. 49 other users are sharing your connection.

Poor upload speeds. Most of these services are ADSL (Asynchronous DSL). The upload speed from your computer to the data center is much slower than the download speed. For business users this restriction can be serious.

Speed Issues: DSL services tout a “Theoretical Maximum Speed” up to, for example, 10Mbps. In the real world the speed we get is often much lower and will depend on the distance of your office from the telephone exchange, the contention ratio and other factors including the quality of your phone line.

What is a T1 line?

A T1 line is a copper wire or a fibre optic cable that can carry data for voice or Internet data at a much faster rate than a standard phone line. It has a bandwidth of 1.544 Mbps and can carry up to 24 digitized voice channels. It is a dedicated line to your business – there is no contention, no sharing with other users. It costs much more to install and the rental can be between $1,000 and $1,500 a month.

The bandwidth of a T1 is processed in a very different way to the bandwidth of a DSL line which makes it a much better choice for an Internet connection despite the fact that the 1.544 Mbps seems low in comparison to some of the higher DSL bandwidths.

The benefits of a T1 line

1) Being a dedicated line the bandwidth of a T1 can be distributed equally to as many as 100 simultaneous Internet browsers

2) The upload speed is much higher than DSL

3) It is a consistent and highly reliable service and speeds will not vary

4) Because T1 is a dedicated service providers will usually give a much better support service

If the life blood of your business is a reliable, fast and stable Internet connection, and you are not intimidated by the increased cost, a T1 connection would be the wise option.

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