T1 Line Bandwidth: The Benefits For My Business | The Communication Blog

Monday, November 1, 2010

T1 Line Bandwidth: The Benefits For My Business

By Terrence Thomas

Your business may be looking into a technology known as T1 to increase the bandwidth of your business. You may not understand what this means, but it sounds cool. Unfortunately, it is an outdated technology. That is why T1 line bandwidth is too slow now.

To begin, T1 (also known as digital signal 1 or DS1) is comprised of 24 channels that have a throughput of 64 kilobits (not kilobytes) per second each. Multiply the 24 channels by 64 kilobits per second and you a transfer rate of slightly over 1.5 megabits per second. A key note is that 64 kilobits is the standard transfer rate of a phone line, so a T1 would support up to 24 telephone calls simultaneously.

That is very slow compared to the speeds that DSL and cable providers offer, typically about 16 megabits per second down (downloading) in the U. S. And over 100 megabits down in some foreign countries. They also offer up to 2 megabits per second up (uploading) in the U. S. And over 20 megabits per second in foreign countries.

And with phone service, many companies are switching to, or have already switched to, voice over internet protocol, or VOIP. Compression technology has allowed for more voice data to be transferred over the internet than what traditional phone lines can offer. This saves companies considerable amounts of money.

Years ago, T1 offered greater bandwidth and reliability over cable and DSL, but that is not the case today. Even as recently as a few years ago, the T1 offered higher upload speeds; but even they have been surpasses by DSL and cable.

The only potential advantage that T1 has over cable and DSL is that a T1 line is a dedicated circuit. But even that advantage does not hold much weight. With DSL or cable, you share your bandwidth the multiple other customers. During peak times, you may lose considerable amounts of speed. With T1 the circuit is only for you. However, with DSL and cable speeds being as fast as they are, even when they are running slowly, their speeds still exceed those of T1.

One solution that some businesses use is to purchase multiple T1 lines. You are only limited to the number of T1 lines that you can afford and how many are available to you. But this option is very expensive and is usually only affordable for large businesses. For smaller businesses, DSL and cable are much more cost effective. If they need more bandwidth, bonding the cable or DSL can increase bandwidth.

T1 line bandwidth sounds like a cool technology, and it was about 10 years ago. Now, it is a legacy technology that is worth the money in only a few special circumstances. Simply put, there is much better technology available today.

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