The T1 Line And your Business
Wednesday, 14 February 2007
Knowing the T1 Business
T1 is another type of internet connection with a data rate transmission of 1.5 million bits per second. It uses two pairs of wires with each pair dedicated for receiving and transmitting data. For data and voice channels it has an interleave of 24 64-Kbps using time division multiplexing. It was developed mainly for Japan and North America by AT&T Bell Laboratories.
A T1 line is suitable for large and small businesses with heavy communications traffic. A T1 line is very expensive that it would be very costly just for home use. It can send and receive large chunks of data such as databases, audio & video files and large documents faster than any other internet connection out there. T1 is often times referred to as a leased line.
Here are some of the characteristics of T1.
1. It is capable of transmitting large amounts of data at very high speeds. The maximum speed of T1 is exactly 1.544 megabits per second which is 60 time faster than the conventional modem. The typical phone line can transmit voice and data at just about 30,000 bits per second with a dial-up modem.
2. There are 24 channels for data and voice in a single T1 line which can be either be dedicated to data transmission, to voice transmission or to both. One major advantage of a T1 line is that you will be able to split the channels and allocate it to what you need the most.
3. With cable internet or DSL, as you consume your bandwidth the speed of your internet drops. With T1 no matter how heavy and frequent your transmission traffic is your speed will still be consistent.
4. Each 24 channels of the T1 can transfer 64 kilobits of voice or data per second.
There is also another T1 line available called Fractional T1. By sharing the 24 channels to different users, a T1 line can be availed at the fraction of the cost – the more channels that a specific user has the higher the data transmission speed and the more expensive it will be.
Even though having a T1 line is expensive, its ever increasing demand allowed the emergence of various T1 providers at reasonable costs. The cost of having a T1 line installed in your office will depend on the distance between your location and the T1 server provider, called a loop. The wider the loop is the more expensive it is and vice versa.