Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL)
ADSL (commonly known as Broadband) allows users to benefit from much higher upload and download speeds than standard dial up Internet connection. ADSL offers downstream line speeds up to 8Mbps, and upstream speeds up to 832kbps. As with all broadband services, the actual speed will depend on distance from the telephone exchange and line quality. Whilst ADSL offers the best price performance ratio available on the market today, it suffers from a lack of availability, strong support offerings and quality of service. Use ADSL when your budget is limited and Internet connectivity (including email and web surfing) is not critical to your business.

ISDN Failover
ISDN backup for ADSL offers seamless connectivity in the event of a failure of your ADSL service. The standard ADSL router is replaced with a higher spec router which has an ISDN interface in addition to the ADSL interface. The ISDN interface can connect to any ISDN2e line. The ISDN interface provides seamless automatic dial-backup in the event of your main ADSL connection being interrupted. No additional ISDN terminal adapter is required as the entire solution is integrated in a single combined ADSL/ISDN router.

Leased Lines
A leased line provides a guaranteed, un-contended (1:1) Internet connection circuit to connect your LAN directly to the Internet. A leased line provides a high capacity, & resilient Internet connectivity that is covered by industry leading service level guarantees.

Since the advent of broadband many businesses do not see the need for ‘expensive’ leased line. When you compare costs it certainly would raise the question why would you bother spending thousands on a leased line when an ADSL line appears to have similar offerings at a fraction of the cost. However ADSL circuits carry no guaranteed fix time, BT enhanced care is available to enhance this but this services BT will look at your fault within four hours of it being logged rather than 24 hours as per the standard contract, but there is still no guaranteed resolution time for either.

How long can your business survive without a link to the internet? Too often it takes an ADSL line failure for businesses to realise the true worth of this line and when you consider the SLA from BT (or lack of it!), it then becomes apparent that this is not a true business offering.

Circle IT always recommend that our customers run at least 2 ADSL circuits due to the reliability issues and we suggest these are sourced from separate providers to ensure there is a further level of failover, whilst these will be both commissioned from the same BT exchange, in general failures occur on individual lines or with a particular service provider.