Hey,

I’m sort of new to the web hosting world and have a few questions. Right now our main companies’ servers are dedicated servers but I have been thinking about purchasing our own servers and a dedicated T1 connection. How many customers could potentially fit on one server with a T1 connection? Since, I do not have a “data center” but business office would I need to use high-speed fiber optic cables, or could I just connect straight to the T1 connection? I’m curious to know how server farms are linked together, too. Any insights would be awesome!

Thanks!

A T1 is not that fast anymore. It tops out around 1.5Mbps... my cable modem at home is faster than that (at least on downloads). I'd definitely recommend avoiding putting your business on a single T1. You may not use 1.5Mbps sustained transfer, but you could easily burst beyond that, and a T1 wouldn't be able to handle it.

I'd definitely stick to using a data center. If you want your own equipment, then just do colocation.

Plus, running it all yourself brings up a number of other things you would almost have to address if you want to take your business seriously. Power? What if the power goes out? What if the connection goes down? Cooling is huge. Dust is huge.

The burstable capacity of a T1 is not something that would be attractive to customers - especially when you are competing in the same market as the big hosting companies that are essentially offering the same level of service.

Roj

You should only look at this option if you are already spending upwards of 10k a month on your backbone connection. A single t1 is slow and does not have any redundancy. BGP or MLppp is a must for any type of backbone connection.