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Non-Tech : CYBERTRADER -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: William W. Dwyer, Jr. who wrote (444)	4/29/1998 11:53:00 PM
From: Jay Fisk	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3216

For a comparison of various Frame Relay vendors, pick up a copy of "Boardwatch Quarterly" at your local CompUSA or Barnes n' Noble. Very good comparison of transcontinental backbones and ISPs primarily, but all service modes are detailed. I believe that Cyber uses WorldCom exclusively as their frame relay provider, so you may be able to save a few bucks, but you're not going to find a faster provider, as from your FastCom router (from Cyber) to their servers the connection is 100% WorldCom. As well, you'll have a single vendor to deal with in terms of problems. Whatever you pay, its a bargain compared to my rates. As I'm in Alaska, thats $250 for WorldCom (Austin to Seattle), $2200 for Seattle to Anchorage via ATT, and $85 for local loop. And that's with the annual discount ! The guaranteed, never to drop below, data rate is referred to the CIR, and comes in 16, 32, and 48K increments. Most advice is to go with the lowest, assess, and bump to a higher rate as required. Whichever frame flavor you choose, you'll find it an order of magnitude faster than ISDN or cable modem, as there's no ISP to deal with. Of course a virtual private circuit (VPC) to Cyber can't be used for web browsing, as its dedicated, so you'll wind up with something else for that. J

To: William W. Dwyer, Jr. who wrote (444)	4/30/1998 8:03:00 AM
From: Spots	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 3216

It looks like Jay gave you more and better info than I can on frame providers. I was referring to the possibility of using your existing ISDN line for the connection to the frame-relay entry point rather than a leased 56 kb line. In my area the price of 56kb dedicated works out to about the same as full time ISDN usage (I think, I've only done a quick check some time ago). ISDN is dialable so you CAN use it for other things, such as an ISP. It's also faster if you use both b channels, though that may not be a real concern. My real point was you already have ISDN, so it might be worth looking into using it rather than a leased line. I wouldn't recommend getting it for the purpose. Speed wouldn't affect response time much; it WOULD affect download time for large data blocks. I would presume most of the data you want to transmit is text (no graphics - surely graphics, such as updating charts, are generated locally). That would be a fairly small data flow so line speed doesn't matter a lot. 10 ms would be very fast response indeed. I get that on my local LAN (10 megabits). I get 100 ms to the closest entry point via 56k leased line + 64k frame relay through World Com (I'm connected to my corporate lan via frame relay). These are ping times--round trip. The thing about the frame connection is you don't depend on an ISP. That's where the real savings comes from (but I'd have to see 10 ms to believe it). Would your 56kb line really come from World Com? I have to get it from the local telco -- or I guess I have to, I haven't looked into alternatives, but as far as I know no one else can drop a loop to my house. Yet. When that day comes, a certain RBOC is going to get a VERY nasty letter from a brand new ex-customer <G>. Incidentally, with a frame relay hookup your pcs will be visible in the Cybertrader private network. Do you have passwords on your shared resources? If not, an outsider could potentially look at your files via that network. Print MB Trading commercials on your printer<G>. TCP/IP is a two-way street. This is a question for the CT techies; I expect they've thought of it.