Fusion for Business and Uptime/Support

[DSL User]

My company is currently using a 3rd party for DSL and we ran into an issue yesterday that brought our DSL down for a day and a half. This turned out to be a pretty big issue as our employees now rely on internet access/email for pretty much everything, and we host a server with public facing websites. We're a small business and can do OK without internet for minutes or an hour, but a day and a half without email was painful. I wanted to describe the problems we ran into and see how sonic fusion might provide a different experience in a similar scenario.

What got this all started was we had AT&T change our DSL line to use a cheaper phone plan, but somehow they managed to disconnect our DSL service in the process. When the DSL went down, the AT&T sales rep that had made the phone plan changes denied that she disconnected our DSL, even though our service had been running without problem for 8 years until this point. We called AT&T support and they were pretty unhelpful, saying that there was no way they could revert the changes, that they could do nothing on their end, and that we had to work through our ISP provider to get DSL going again. AT&T could not say exactly what happened; just that our service was "disconnected". I was not allowed to speak to anyone else because "I checked with my higher up and everyone in the office will say the same thing to you". I should have pushed more on this in retrospect but I'm just personally not that aggressive on these things.

Our ISP provider uses Convad for DSL, and our ISP was on the phone with them yesterday to work things out. After talking to our ISP a couple of times yesterday and this morning the best I got was that they were making phone calls and would provide us with updates. Finally looks like things got worked out because our DSL is back up a day and a half later.

It seems like the main problem is (1) AT&T just has poor support and (2) our DSL runs through our ISP, Covad, and AT&T that all have to talk with each other to get things fixed, which causes delays.

Knowing that sonic runs their own hardware in the CO, and that fusion has no complexity with phone plans, should we not have to worry about something like this happening?

Thanks.

[dane]

With your line-shared Covad/ATT service, changes to the ATT voice plan can disrupt the data service, as you found. This happens sometimes to our own ATT line shared service, pre-Fusion. For example, a customer disconnects phone service or forgets to pay a phone bill, and data goes away, resulting in days of down time.

Fusion is end to end our equipment and processes, we only lease the copper line itself from the incumbent. So, this particular situation could not occur.

But, other problems could - for example a tech in the field could take your copper pair and give it to another customer, resulting in an outage. Or, we could have an equipment failure, for example a bad port in our DSLAM. Outages can happen, and Fusion is a consumer / "very small business" product with a simple "best effort" service level agreement.

We offer enterprise products which assure four-hour response, a strong SLA, and which offer QoS for VoIP, available redundancy, etc - but they're pricey by comparison; $249 monthly to thousands, depending upon speed required. To provide a specific example, the 10Mbps/10Mbps symmetric (note, ten times the upstream speed of standard Fusion) Carrier Ethernet product goes for $599/mo. It is delivered on redundant pairs, offers carrier-class CPE, port redundancy in the CO, plus the four-hour priority repair.

For someone with 20 staff who won't be earning if they're not working, this is a worthwhile investment. It's all a balance between the expense, the reliability, and the speed requirements.

[DSL User]

Thanks for the reply, Dane.

That's our issue. We aren't big enough to justify very large ISP expenses, but we'd like as reliable as we can get in the sub $100 price range. The rare minutes or an hour are OK, but a day or more starts to hurt. Definitely understand that with DSL you're not getting a guaranteed uptime, and accidents can happen. But it does sound like you at least have more control over the pieces from end to end, so determining problems and fixing them should be more straightforward and quicker than in the situation we are now.

BTW, we're actually contemplating getting a mobile broadband hotspot as a fallback, as some providers like Verizon now offers pay as you go plans.

[dane]

Sounds good - there are even broadband aggregation routers that will let you connect multiple wired and wireless connections to assure up-time. Lots of limitations though, for example if you have servers on static IPs, those are tied to one link. Syswan makes some of these units, you might check them out. (Heads up, we wouldn't be able to provide any support or assistance with this sort of thing!)

-Dane

[Able]

Dear Dan:

Please check to see if www.syswan.com is still active and/or provide supports.
We're their competitor, and offer similar products:

http://www.edimax.us/html/english/produ ... router.htm

Best regards

[Guest]

Webfusion limits individual downloads to 3mbps. (315KB/sec) I can run five simultaneous downloads at 3mbps for a combined 15mbps, but I cannot expect visitors of my site to use download accelerators.

I use my Webfusion to host photos and short videos I've shot with a pocket camera on various online forums. This host cannot serve up high resolution photos, animated GIFs, or even SD video due to this cap. I asked Webfusion to allow me to upgrade my account and they said that wouldn't be possible.

Nowhere on their site do they mention the incredibly caps they place on individual connections. Also, their hosting has terrible latency for US customers since Webfusion's data center is located in Europe.

After submitting my request to cancel my hosting subion, Webfusion took over a week to respond. And when they canceled my subion, they immediately charged my account for the next month telling me they automatically charge for the next thirty days of service at cancelation.

I lack the vocabulary to express my distaste for Webfusion.

[dane]

I think you are confusing us with another firm. Sonic.net is a Caliornia based Internet access provider, offering an ADSL2+ service called Fusion Broadband+Phone. "Webfusion" is not us.