[Techtalk] High speed access question

[Raven, corporate courtesan]

Heya --

Quoth Kath (Wed, Oct 03, 2001 at 08:27:01PM -0400):
> If I had a line run from say a middle school to the high school, would it be
> direct between those locations, or would it first drop back into the CO and
> then back out to the high school?   I'm thinking the second.

	It depends on the length of the line and the LEC.  If it's a
very short haul, some of them may opt to do a direct connect, but that
deprives the telco of any monitoring or testing ability across the line
without dispatching.  So running it through the nearest CO is the common
thing to do, but occasionally you'll see one done the other way.
 
> What are your recommendations?  Two Cisco 2600s per school (one on each end
> of the line) but what kind of Cisco router should the router that connects
> to the DS3 to the internet?

	You should only need one 2600 per school -- the router on the
other end of that line will be your 7200 at the high school.  What kind
of router you need to connect up everything at the high school is going
to depend on how many lines, and what type of lines, you have.  You may
be able to get away with a 3640, but IMO you'll probably need a 7200.
Check Cisco.com for technical specs on each of these.
 
> You mentioned a Cisco 7200, but I think thats pushing the price range, as at
> an old ISP job I had, someone told me they were rather expensive (and were
> infact usually just leased from Cisco).  Maybe I'm thinking of another
> router.

	The 7200's are pretty pricey, but not so much as they used to
be.  (The technology for them is about 5 years old now.)  The 7200 VXR
models are more expensive than the plain 7200's -- you'd probably be
okay with a plain 7200.  (The difference is that 7200s can only handle
three high-speed interfaces on them at once [DS3 or faster, including
Fast Ethernet] whereas you can fill every slot in a VXR with high-speed
interfaces if you want.)

	I would recommend looking into the managed care product from
your ISP -- they usually lease equipment at a reasonable price, and that
way it doesn't have to come out of your capital budget.

Cheers,
Raven 
 
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 software in an anonymous forun so that others will be reminded of the
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