Are all Internet T1 Lines the same?

No, not to the end user. Technically the T1 line is the connection between the Local Central Office and the Customer location and should all be the same. When you add services to the T1 line such as Internet Access then they differ greatly by providers.

T1 lines can provide a reliable connection between the customer building and the local central office, but that is all the T1 line does. From the local central office, the T1 is carried on a DS1 path to somewhere in the providers network.

Telecommunications providers have traditionally treated their IP networks as a secondary non-critical service. When they invested into their IP infrastructure they looked to save money and keep costs low. The problem they are now struggling with is that their IP networks perform poorly and the services that their customers are demanding will not work. By aggregating traffic into frame relay clouds they introduce latency fluctuations. It is very difficult to utilize these infrastructures to provide quality service for services such as Voice or MPLS services. An Internet T1 line on these networks is essentially “Reliable DSL Service”, high cost connection with cheap low quality bandwidth.

A high quality Internet T1 line will not have latency fluctuations. Since all T1 lines theoretically run at the same speed the bandwidth is not the issue. All T1 lines will give you 1.5Mb/s. In fact you can get more bandwidth out of a DSL line than on an Internet T1. But because DSL is unreliable and low cost they will not provide you quality bandwidth.

There are very few Telecommunications Providers that will give you a good quality Internet connection that will not experience large latency fluctuations. Their network designs are the key to performance and will usually cost a little more than your low cost Internet T1 providers. You will notice that when you add additional services such as voice or MPLS the costs for these services is less. It is easier to provide these services on a network that performs well.

Unfortunately the big names in the industry are the high priced service provider and are the biggest quality offenders. I would say you get what you pay for but that doesn’t seem to apply here. You just have to understand how the providers operate in order make an educated decision.

Carlos Barron