DSL

Can a DSL Line Handle Web Hosting Traffic?

It's tempting to try to use a DSL line instead of a T1 to save money. The experts on the DSL list point out that there are significant differences between the two.

[February 29, 2000]

On the ISP-DSL list in December, JV posted a question about using DSL for web hosting:

"Has anyone used DSL for serious web hosting? I can get a 4mb circuit for well under $1000. I understand that DSL is shared by nature but if a company claims that it will give you 99.9% uptime and 99.9% of contracted bandwidth, it's hard to say no. I have only done hosting on full T-1s but this is just so much cheaper that I am tempted to give it a go. Any thoughts?"

One respondent reacted strongly to the claims concerning uptime and contracted bandwidth:

[WD fired off] "If the company guarantees 99.9% of contracted bandwidth, then they're lying to you. They must mean 99.9% of your contracted bandwidth to their network, not through to their Tier 1 uplink provider. Nobody can provide a T1 at that cost when they buy the service from a Tier 1 ISP that charges them 5-10 times that for a clear-channel T1. My local telco guarantees only 10% of the bandwidth from their CO to the ISP, though they do guarantee 100% of the contracted bandwidth to the CO. Meaning you get 100% of your speed to their ATM network, but are only guaranteed 10% of that speed to the ISP, from which you actually get [Internet] service.":

[TR added some detail about contracts] "The question you need to ask is what is the guaranteed minimum bandwidth? For many DSL offerings it is zero, which is more than enough for low traffic web sites, but can make it unsuitable for large or high-traffic businesses. That's why it is important to get the 'Quality of Service' detail and not just the price. Unless you have a special contract with the telco giving you a guaranteed CIR, then the CIR will be zero. There is no way I would host my own web site on a line with zero CIR - it is slow suicide."

[DP concurred, adding this point] "Your provider is going to resell access to his circuit in order to make money, so you will be one of many. If you try something that is dependent on real time, your mileage may vary. Read the fine print to see if there are rules on running services, or if your upstream does bandwidth management of any kind to average out spikes in usage."

Another respondent agreed that the market determines prices:

[CL wrote] "Whether it's delivered via SDSL, T1, Frame Relay, or smoke signal, the sellers are going to sell bandwidth for more than they pay for it, either by oversell or by markup, or they will soon be out of business. By selling to both producers and users of content (as most ISPs do in one form or another), we get economies of scale that let us make it cheaper for both than it would be if we sold only to one or the other."

Another SDSL provider weighed in:

[CL reported] "Probably 10% to 25% of our customers are web hosting companies of various sizes (including our own web hosting division, which gets its bandwidth via our SDSL lines). The biggest drawback of DSL for web hosting is that the speed available is location dependant -- you've got to be within a mile and change of the CO to get to 1.5 megabits, whereas you can run a T1 about as far as your pocketbook can afford."

However, another respondent reported success in running full-service web hosting business off a DSL connection:

[BS wrote] "DSL does not necessarily translate into second rate. Broadband is the wave of the future and we're riding the crest. The DSL modem on my end feeds the bandwidth into our perimeter/exterior router, which effectively isolates our network from the WAN. We have pretty much the same setup and capabilities as the major players do, including a dedicated machine which monitors all network traffic in real time."

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