* You can never have too much bandwidth
Over the past year, we’ve had two ongoing story lines about fast DSL and slow Ethernet services. The first one involved Steve’s conversion to “business DSL” services for his SOHO location. The second, more recently, involved metro Ethernet services in general, and in particular the introduction of mid-band metro Ethernet services.
The proverbial plot thickened a bit a few weeks ago when Steve got a phone call offering an upgrade (at a quite reasonable introductory rate) to 6Mbps business DSL. Of course, with the concept of “too much bandwidth” being one that doesn’t exist for Steve, he bit. A few days later, the upgrade was performed (without a site visit) and the promise seems to be holding true. This was confirmed using Speakeasy.net’s speed test program, with the advertised rates of 6Mbps downloads and 384Kbps uploading actually being slightly exceeded.
Flipping back to the metro Ethernet side, BellSouth, which provides Steve’s business DSL, also now offers mid-band services (in selected locations) at 2Mbps, 4Mbps and 8Mbps.
So which is “better” and how do you decide which to deploy – especially to branch office locations?
That’s a tough one. A first step, of course is pricing and availability. And while the pricing for 6Mbps DSL is straightforward, it’s a bit more difficult to compare for metro Ethernet. And the odds are pretty good that DSL availability is better than metro Ethernet.
There’s also the issue of asymmetrical (DSL) vs. symmetrical (Ethernet) service. Again, using the premise that you can never have too much bandwidth, Ethernet gets the nod. But, then again, whether you can use the additional bandwidth depends on your traffic patterns.
Yet another difference is that, while not an absolute, metro Ethernet tends to connect locations within the same general vicinity while DSL is a connection to the Internet.
From a marketing perspective (based on its Web site), BellSouth seems to position metro Ethernet services more for large businesses while business DSL seems to be an SMB offering. But that really has nothing to do with the technology.
So we’re curious. Do you have a preference for one vs. the other? How will you go about deciding between these services? We’d love to hear from both service providers and from customers. Let us know, and we’ll share the results.
