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AT&T Business Fiber Overage Charges and Throttling

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AT&T Business Fiber Throttling

AT&T is America’s largest and oldest telecommunications company. It’s the company all others were birthed from or rely upon at some level. AT&T Business Fiber is one of many products they offer. It uses GPON to be rapidly distributed much like Verizon’s FiOS or CenturyLink’s Fiber+ and, unlike their Ethernet services, is also used in residential deployments.

 

Recently, AT&T Business Fiber customers have been seeing small print on their bill that warns them of overage charges and potential throttling. You won’t see these warning with products like EaMIS that are enterprise grade and come with SLAs that adhere to MEF (Metro Ethernet Forum) standards. For more information on the difference between Ethernet and GPON Internet Access, check out our Network Connectivity page. That fine print is in italics below:

 

Total 1TB (1,024GB) internet usage allowance

Your total internet usage allowance can consist of your 1 terabyte plan usage allowance plus any additional offers. Exceeding your total internet usage allowance will result in a charge of $10 for each additional 50 gigabytes of data even if less than 50 gigabytes is consumed up to a maximum overage charge of $100 a month.

 

This is affecting all AT&T Business Fiber customer’s nationwide. It started back in November and caps data at 1TB of transfer both up and down. After that point you’ll be charged up to $100 more for the billing cycle which is more than 25% of the cost for the service (depending on your speed and where the service is installed). The service typically works well and can be combined with static IP addresses so it’s easy to push a lot of data over these circuits.

Since this change took place around the time Net Neutrality was repealed, I have to assume that it’s based on that ruling. The product limits last mile cost for the carrier so the largest recurring expense for deployment is the associated NNIs with other carriers. Carriers pay each other fees for Network to Network Interfaces within Meet Me Rooms to make the internet work as a network of networks.

CloudOgre provide all telecommunications services including AT&T Business Fiber     Although the notice doesn’t indicate what happens after 1.1TB has been consumed, it’s safe to assume you’ll get a call about an upgrade, be throttled, or simply shut down until the next billing cycle. None of those are wanted by businesses who are pushing that much traffic. They’re obviously busy.

Once you pay the bill, its assumed that you read and accept that change so there’s little you can do about it if you don’t catch it. If you do, there are a few hoops you can jump through. If you’re considering moving to the platform you may first want to pull a bandwidth utilization report. It may simply be easier to contact us for a Telecom Audit and Expense Management. The way invoices are written, your accounting team may not understand the importance of the change or catch it at all.

 

The impact of an ISP throttling your service at a business can be huge. You may not be able to respond to a customer and suffer a hit in brand equity. Some ask, and rightfully so, how will this impact my VoIP and conferencing services? Both are good questions. For help with these and any other ISP related issues please contact CloudOgre here.

 

 

Automatic Wireless Failover Saves You From Frustrating Downtime

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automatic wireless failover

Your business depends on a stable internet connection. You need a backup plan that includes auto failover to a LTE wireless network.

If your business is like most, you depend on a reliable internet connection to effectively function. Do you have a backup plan for when your network goes down? What happens when you aren’t getting enough bandwidth with your existing internet connection? Both of these issues can be resolved when you have automatic failover to a wireless network setup. You get extra bandwidth when you need it, and you know that no matter what happens you can still be connected to the internet.

Don’t Let an Outage Set Your Business Back

You don’t have to be a tech business to be dependent on a robust internet connection. Imagine running a restaurant and having your internet connection go out. Suddenly, you can no longer process credit cards. You can still accept cash, but not being able to take credit cards will hit your revenues hard for the duration of the outage.

If you run a business that uses cloud based services or depends on staying in constant communication with clients and satellite offices, your internet connection is just as important to your day-to-day operations as electricity.

We help businesses like yours get setup with Cradlepoint routers that use automatic failover to AT&T wireless services. If your cable or DSL goes out, you can still run your business on a LTE cell connection until your landline can be restored.

The Cradlepoint router will automatically detect any issues with your internet connection and will reroute all your traffic onto a wireless network so that your business never has to miss a beat.

Do You Need More Bandwidth and a Faster Internet Connection?

Many businesses are limited by the type of high-speed internet they have access to. Not every business has access to a Metro-Ethernet or a T1 line. But, we can help you increase your bandwidth, even if you just have a regular DSL or cable connection, by using a Cradlepoint router and AT&T wireless network for out of band management. You get increased capacity when you need it.

The router monitors your connection and capacity. When you have used all of the bandwidth on your landline, the router gives you extra capacity by routing some traffic on a LTE wireless network. You never have to let a slow internet connection slow down your business again.

Use Automatic Failover as Part of Your Network Strategy

CloudOgre is committed to giving your business all the network management and support you need. We use strategic partnerships to limit your downtime, increase your network capacity, and to make sure you are always getting the most cost efficient solutions to all of your network issues.

The best way avoid the frustration of having your internet connection go down, is to invest in an automatic failover system. Your business shouldn’t have to run at the mercy of your ISP. Let CloudOgre help you take matters into your own hands.

Contact us to find out how we can help you with network connectivity, automatic failover, and network management.

Why is your Internet down?

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Woman at work frustrated by her internet is down

Is your internet down? The internet is pretty simple. If you want to know why or don’t want your internet down, there are only a handful of reasons. In fact, we’ll narrow them down to just three. The only other possibility is that you didn’t pay your bill.

The internet is composed of wires and switches. Wireless and cellular devices use wires to connect to the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) and to the Internet. Switches and routers need power. Here are your three reasons why your internet went down.

 

  1. There is a problem with your wires (or wireless)

Your internet may be out because you’re not connecting your LAN to the WAN. You can have an issue in your local area network like a bad wire or connector. Typically you’ll see a connector go bad because someone moves the equipment their plugged into too much and the connection goes bad.

If the problem is on the WAN, that means it’s the wires that your ISP or telephone company control then you have to wait for them to make the repair. FYI – Calling in more often won’t get the issue resolved any quicker. A fiber cut is a big deal and will take quite some time for service restoration. Here’s a post we did a while back on building out fiber, if you need high level network redundancy you may want to click here for more info.

Make sure wires, equipment & connections are working properly

  1. Broken or malfunctioning equipment

Again, it’s either on your side or the carrier’s side. You have a modem and/or a router and switches. Troubleshoot them and power cycle them as per my article on LinkedIn on what to do in the event of an outage.

Just like with your wires, if the problem isn’t on your side it is going to be in the carrier’s environment. You may be experiencing issues from a down GPON or Active Ethernet Router. IP Routers rarely go down without failover in place on the carrier side. You wouldn’t notice that. If a whole IP POP or data center goes down, this can cause a significant delay in service restoration.

  1. The long pole in the tent… Power

Power… are you plugged in and getting electricity?

This is the piece of the puzzle that is outside of your and your carrier’s hands. Many times it is also out of the power company’s hands and its governed by mother nature. A force majeur will take your internet down. Back-up generators are highly recommended, especially at high visibility, high profile settings and rural areas.

Typically, what we are seeing is a power outage in a certain area from a truck that hit a pole or some construction that cut the lines. Building management may also turn off power for maintenance which will also take your internet down. Many times they don’t alert tenants or the right folks within a company aren’t alerted.  Hopefully none of those are the case and it’s as simple as someone kicked the power cord out of a switch.

 

So that’s basically it, why is your internet out? It’s either your wires, equipment, or power. It’s as simple as that. Prolonged outages are very rare but there are only a few reasons to take your internet down. Always check with your neighbors to see if they’re connected and check blogs that monitor network performance.

Data Centers, Infrastructure Week, and Net Neutrality

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Coming off of the heels of last month’s Infrastructure Week we are looking at more and more consolidation in the industry. The core of today’s tech revolution and innovation is dependent upon telecommunications infrastructure and your data center. It remains obscure to many just how and how much of a role they’ll play. Data Center strategy allows companies to build their own cloud with closer proximity to core infrastructure.

Bandwidth and processing hogs like driverless cars will require more bandwidth, more data centers, and more connectivity in remote areas, whether wireless or wireline. That said, we’ll also need greater security woven into the fabric of the network.

Some of the largest acquisitions in the telecommunications and data center space include Digital Realty’s acquisition of TelX and DuPont Fabros, the purchase of Bight House and Time Warner Cable by Charter Communications, Windstream’s acquisition of Earthlink, Altice’s acquisition of Cablevision, and finally CenturyLink’s acquisition of Level3 who’d recently completed acquisitions of Global Crossing and TW Telecom. The above mergers all made sense by creating efficiencies in technology, human capital, and more.But what does that do for competition?

The telecommunications industry is tightly regulated but the move to ISP from Telco is a relatively immature move for regulators who have been at this since the 30’s. In 1984 when long haul and local traffic were broken up and even in ’96 when the RBOCs had to wholesale, regulations weren’t written to account for the architecture of the internet as a whole.

Net Neutrality was presented to the public by most media as stopping “the fast lane to the internet” but that’s not possible given the architecture of the world wide web.  The internet is like a series of highways and Telco providers pretty much control the flow of traffic via their toll booths, or IP routers, and highways or long haul fiber. The true “fast lane to the internet” is space in a data center sitting on top of a dedicated connection into a core IP router. The laws of physics govern the speed that light can travel through glass and a data packet can travel from point A to Z. That said, the data center gets you closer to the core, lowering your latency.

Lobbyist David Redl has recently been appointed to the NTIA National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Many are concluding that he, along with Ajit Pai the Chairman of the FCC, will continue along the road to increased mergers and acquisitions. Many were shocked when Comcast’s offer to buy Time Warner Cable was blocked by the FCC yet Charter’s offer was approved. Customers used to poor service were glad to see that it didn’t go through after having come off of winning Consumerist’s Golden Poo Award and having a viral YouTube video of a customer trying to cancel their service with a rogue Comcast rep.

Some critics say that the telecommunications industry is an inherent monopoly to be viewed in the same light as a utility company so consolidation is to be expected. Others think that less competition will lead to poor customer service and high prices like in the eighties and nineties. What is clear is that the acquisitions keep coming and network architecture is pretty static. Security being a concern that is hot right now really lends to the argument in favor of consolidation as a single network is not only easier to manage, it’s easier to secure and perhaps monitor.

Is SD-WAN marketing hype or next best thing in telecommunications?

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Is SD-WAN Hype or Huge?

SD-WAN or Software Defined Wide Area Networking is being touted by many carriers looking to move away from MPLS. It’s a pretty cool tool however its greatest value comes at the carrier network level. That said, AT&T seems to be the leader in comprehensive SD-WAN and Network Based Security development. Contact us for more info and watch the video below from AT&T.

https://youtu.be/sCXgvxcFKbI

Carriers like Comcast are advertising speeds greater than what coaxial cable is capable of carrying due to compression and Software Defined Networking. It is similar to compressing voice to push 46 voice calls over a T1 combined with a cache for static data sets. Not all traffic, unlike voice packets, have real-time, sequential requirements.

HBO’s Silicon Valley’s latest season has entrepreneur Richard looking to build ‘a new internet’ using SD-WAN. Quite apropos given that his compression algorithm enables Software Defined Networking across cell phones to create connectivity. Hence, a device to device ‘new internet’. Is it possible? Who cares??? The cool thing is there’s a popular comedy on HBO that has allows me to geek out on SD-WAN and networking technologies.

Today, end-users have tons of bandwidth available to them. If they don’t, SD-WAN is not going to help. The last mile is still the proverbial long pole in the tent. We’re not connecting cell phones to create a ‘new internet’ with Hooli’s founder. In this non-fiction reality, those cell phones connect to terrestrial wires on the world wide web.

SD-WAN Tech Diagram

How does Software Defined Wide Area Network actually work?

What’s more problematic, Layer 3 transport technologies will never be as secure as layer 2 or layer 1 transport. Contact us to debate that premise or hear us expand on it. What would be cool is to see carriers roll out network based security platforms with great complexity that will have functions like geographic traffic blocking and other advanced firewall capabilities. Security features will ultimately drive the growth in SD-WAN adoption.

In our opinion, bandwidth is cheap and using it more efficiently is not a huge cost saver. SD-WAN is cool but most aren’t rushing to adopt it, though its marketed well. Network based security and transmission technology is constantly being improved. There are much more vulnerable areas in network technology that need to be addressed but access is still key. Redirecting traffic through a dashboard still requires an ability to connect to a site to an IP router. Our customer’s concerns are typically around security at a network level but they’re certainly paying attention to the developments in Software Defined Wide Area Networking technology for enterprises. Contact us if you share the same concerns!

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