[SPiNdustrious]

Hello,

We currently have a relatively pricey Covad 192kbps/192kbps SDSL line provided by DSL.net. We are running a pair of name and email servers on them; it works just fine.

There are some tempting ADSL offers out there with 5+ static IPs and the potential of 1.5Mbps/384kbps. While the price is right (about half of what we're currently paying), I am concerned about any possible reduction in service by going the ADSL route.

It would seem that the ADSL service being offered by many providers piggybacks off of an existing phone line while SDSL tends to use a non-numbered line dedicated to it.

I'm imagining that if we go with ADSL, it'll share the fax line to avoid our messy and outdated phone system. I don't imagine this should be a problem...

In short: should an ADSL line work as needed for server operation, or is it worth it to pay more for the theoretically more stable SDSL service?

Thanks,

Peter

[merlin]

I think the answer to your question has a lot to do with the ISP you decide to go with. I work for an ISP and I can tell you that we have many customers that run servers off their DSL with no complaints but the quality between ISPs is not consistent.

You might want to find out if your ISP does any rate limiting since they might become your bottle neck. If your network pumps out a lot of traffic, you might want to also find out if they meter your usage of if it's unlimited since that could be an added expense.

It might also be interesting to find out if your ISP has multiple backbone providers for redundancy. We do, which means we'll still have connectivity if one of or backbones goes down. An ISP with only 1 backbone connection is at the mercy of that 1 connection.

Hopes this helps.