Switch to fiber or stay with coax?
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Currently we have coax cable internet service to our building with 200 x 12 service. We don't do a ton of upload, although that has gotten to be a little bit more with more people working remotely. We haven't had any big issues with service, speed, etc. to speak of. Potentially looking at switching to a 30x30 fiber connection which then comes with the enterprise level SLA. The fiber connection would run about $20 / month more than our current costs, and being that we haven't really had any issues to speak of I'm wondering if it's worth it to make the switch. I'm sure some of our remote folks may see some better file transfer speeds but I'm not sure how much of a difference that will make overall going from 12 mb to 30 mb. Opinions?
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For only $20/month more, I would switch if you can handle the 30mbps down.
The general quality of fiber based services are that much better.Yes, a generalization, but still.
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@Dragon3303 said in Switch to fiber or stay with coax?:
but I'm not sure how much of a difference that will make overall going from 12 mb to 30 mb
It will not make any real difference since you said you are not having any issues now at 12mbps up.
But 30 mbps down is a huge change from 200 mbps down.
A simple example: 5GB Windows 10 ISO file would take
30mbps = 24 minutes
200mbps = 4 minutes. -
Watching my network at home, I have noticed that my kids take about 2mbps each for their remote learning zoom calls. That means only 15 people on a 30mbps connection.
I am sure Teams and Jitsi are similar. For a business, that becomes important.
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@JaredBusch said in Switch to fiber or stay with coax?:
It will not make any real difference since you said you are not having any issues now at 12mbps up.
But 30 mbps down is a huge change from 200 mbps down.
A simple example: 5GB Windows 10 ISO file would take
30mbps = 24 minutes
200mbps = 4 minutes.That's my biggest concern. We used to be mostly all download as we would only have a few employees at a time out and traveling and everyone else was in the office. Now there's a some who work remote either 1/2 time or full time, but still a majority in the office.
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Yeah, you could really find yourself and your employees extremely unhappy cutting download from 200 to 30.
What kinds of things do you do on the internet? -
We did a similar move at one of our offices, in our case trading fiber reliability for coax's speed. We went from a 100/10 coax to 20/20 fiber for a modest increase (I think it was about the same as you $20 and no up front construction or NRC). Office has about 15-20 workers in it (pre Covid). Speed hit was noted by all the users, but I reminded them that in the first year we had no outages, no glitches, none of the "go over to (insert restaurant here) and work from there for the rest of the day".
With Covid, that office only having 1-2 rest are remote, I have not heard any complaints about local file access from the server there or any speed complaints from the 1-2 users who still frequent that office or form the remote users.
Is the carrier charging any NRC or build-out costs? Is the length of the contract excessive (We have one site on a fiber connected that a previous employee singed a 5 year contract on with a carrier I cant' stand we're stuck with it till 2021)? You need to weigh those in your decision as well.
So in your case where you've had no service issues you may want to wait it out. -
@Dashrender said in Switch to fiber or stay with coax?:
Yeah, you could really find yourself and your employees extremely unhappy cutting download from 200 to 30.
What kinds of things do you do on the internet?All the really important stuff like streaming music so we can work without the noise of the office bothering us. It's really general usage as of right now. File download from vendors or customers, WebEx/GoToMeeting/Zoom meetings, SIP trunks, site-to-site VPN with the branch offices, general web browsing, etc. Download would still appear to be the more important piece for our purposes as there's just not that much traffic going the other way as of now, but I wanted to see if others were trading speed for reliability and if it was worth it for them.
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We just recently brought in fiber 100/100 for about $20 a month more.
the upload will be loved by our medical records department, uploading into our EHR.
We moved from Coax 100/20.
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@Dashrender said in Switch to fiber or stay with coax?:
We just recently brought in fiber 100/100 for about $20 a month more.
the upload will be loved by our medical records department, uploading into our EHR.
We moved from Coax 100/20.
If we could get 100/100 for $20 a month more I would do that without hesitation. 50/50 for us on a 3 year term looks to be about $160 per month more than what we currently pay for our 200/12 coax connection.
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@Dragon3303
It all boils down to competition. If there's competition in the area, the prices will become more and more affordable, but when they have little to no competition - they really jack those rates up. -
@Dragon3303 said in Switch to fiber or stay with coax?:
@Dashrender said in Switch to fiber or stay with coax?:
We just recently brought in fiber 100/100 for about $20 a month more.
the upload will be loved by our medical records department, uploading into our EHR.
We moved from Coax 100/20.
If we could get 100/100 for $20 a month more I would do that without hesitation. 50/50 for us on a 3 year term looks to be about $160 per month more than what we currently pay for our 200/12 coax connection.
I guess it really depends on your needs... going from 200 to 30 is likely to be painful, to you if no one else.
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@Dragon3303 said in Switch to fiber or stay with coax?:
but I wanted to see if others were trading speed for reliability and if it was worth it for them.
I wouldn't want to pay anything for enterprise SLA but I'd pay for fiber. But I think 100/100 is the sweet spot and 30/30 is too low.
Problem with fiber is when they dig into it. Then enterprise SLA wont help a bit. Otherwise it's simple and reliable.
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@Pete-S said in Switch to fiber or stay with coax?:
@Dragon3303 said in Switch to fiber or stay with coax?:
but I wanted to see if others were trading speed for reliability and if it was worth it for them.
I wouldn't want to pay anything for enterprise SLA but I'd pay for fiber. But I think 100/100 is the sweet spot and 30/30 is too low.
Problem with fiber is when they dig into it. Then enterprise SLA wont help a bit. Otherwise it's simple and reliable.
The problem with any connection is having it severed.
Fiber or coax or phonelines. -
@krzykat said in Switch to fiber or stay with coax?:
@Dragon3303
It all boils down to competition. If there's competition in the area, the prices will become more and more affordable, but when they have little to no competition - they really jack those rates up.Not just competition.
AT&T will not offer their "shared fiber" service on a build out scenario. Even if there is no build out cost to you (just the contract).
But after the fiber is down and the contract is up, they will. That is a cheaper service. Not dedicated bandwidth. It is shared, oversold like normal "business" services. But still fiber.
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@Dragon3303 said in Switch to fiber or stay with coax?:
@JaredBusch said in Switch to fiber or stay with coax?:
It will not make any real difference since you said you are not having any issues now at 12mbps up.
But 30 mbps down is a huge change from 200 mbps down.
A simple example: 5GB Windows 10 ISO file would take
30mbps = 24 minutes
200mbps = 4 minutes.That's my biggest concern. We used to be mostly all download as we would only have a few employees at a time out and traveling and everyone else was in the office. Now there's a some who work remote either 1/2 time or full time, but still a majority in the office.
Then moving from "working" to "more expensive and might not work anymore" feels like a bad move.
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@Pete-S said in Switch to fiber or stay with coax?:
@Dragon3303 said in Switch to fiber or stay with coax?:
but I wanted to see if others were trading speed for reliability and if it was worth it for them.
I wouldn't want to pay anything for enterprise SLA but I'd pay for fiber. But I think 100/100 is the sweet spot and 30/30 is too low.
Problem with fiber is when they dig into it. Then enterprise SLA wont help a bit. Otherwise it's simple and reliable.
Exactly. In fact, SLA typically protects the ISP, not the customer. It sets a maximum damange number lower than you'd be able to get otherwise. I've seen businesses basically destroyed because the SLA functions as a crippling contractual agreement.
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@Dragon3303 said in Switch to fiber or stay with coax?:
We haven't had any big issues with service, speed, etc. to speak of. Potentially looking at switching to a 30x30
My takeaway from this is that you'd be paying more to go slower. If you're not having any real issues, why pay more to go slower?
@Dragon3303 said in Switch to fiber or stay with coax?:
I'm sure some of our remote folks may see some better file transfer speeds but I'm not sure how much of a difference that will make overall going from 12 mb to 30 mb.
For some folks, it will be noticeable, and others, not so much. It will largely depend on what kind of internet connection your remote users have outside of the office.
Have you considered talking to your current ISP to see if they can provide more upload speed?
