Question on Diversity options on low budget

[news2010a]

Hi, just  I want to hear your opinion about the following:

Imagine organization has 2xT1 with access to MPLS. Then organization suffers outage due to a fiber cut near the Central Office. Customer now wants protection mainly against fiber cuts and also other circuit outages.

Proposal:

Install a second circuit (in this case, DSL) which can let customer IPSec to service provider network and access MPLS - OK.

Question:

How sure can I be that a fiber cut won't take the main circuit to MPLS and backup DSL circuit down at the same time?

Even if I order such DSL circuit from a different service provider, do you know any type of tool to let me analyze and verify diversity and paths both circuits are taking to reach a CO?

I am aware I could accomplish diversity with a SONET ring and diverse entry into the organization, but money is not avaiable for that.

[spremkumar]

Hi

You can avail the similar kinda MPLS services from another service provider to have diversity also you can think of going on for a IPSEC point to point vpn tunnels between your locations.I am suggesting the same since you are concerned about getting onto VRF aware IPSEC again onto the same MPLS service provider cloud.

regds

[jperz]

Hi,

there is no tool or technology to find out which physical way a network packet is taking, i.e. which fiber it actually travels on.

The only way to be sure to have redundancy is to get in touch with all DSL vendors which are present at this CO and ask them for details about their backbone.

Another alternative would be to use a wireless backup uplink, like UMTS, WIMAX or even 802.11* based solutions. They too have their merits

regard,

jakob

[Leo Laohoo]

xDSL is a cheaper alternative.