T1 Bandwidth
A standard T1 line will give you 1.5 Mbps bandwidth. This is often plenty for PBX phone, audio transport, business Internet access, and small email and web servers. But what if you need more bandwidth? The next readily available service is a T3 line at 45 Mbps. Fortunately, there are a couple of ways to combine the capacities of T1 lines to effectively make a bigger digital line. Some routers offer a feature called load sharing or load balancing. They act as if they were traffic cops to keep two or more T1 lines equally loaded with packets.
A more standardized approach is called inverse multiplexing or loop bonding. In multiplexing, the bit streams from a number of different sources are combined into one transmission line. Inverse multiplexing, or IMUX, divides traffic from a single bit stream among multiple transmission lines.
Bonding sounds a bit like gluing a bunch of T1 lines together, which effectively it is. You can get dual bonded or x2 T1, which gives you three Mbps, triple, bonded or x3 T1 which is 4.5 Mbps, quad bonded or x4 T1 for 6 Mbps, and sextuple or x6 bonded T1 for 9 Mbps. An octal or bonded T1 gives you 12 Mbps. Above 6 or 8 bonded T1 lines it often becomes cost effective to order a full T3 circuit. You might start out with a single T1 line as an Internet service backbone until there are enough subscribers to require, and pay for, additional bandwidth. Then you can bond in a second T1 for growth. Another good use for bonded T1 lines is transmission of very high quality audio or video signals that exceed the 1.5 Mbps bandwidth of a single T1 line but do not justify ordering T3 service.
The beauty of bonding T1 lines is that you do not have to pay for more bandwidth than you need at a particular time. If business expands, add another T1 line or two.
Rural or even some subdivisions in metro areas are not wired for fiber optic service and it may be unlikely that anyone is going to bear that expense anytime soon. Copper wire based T1 lines are available just about anywhere you can get plain old telephone service.
Since T1 was designed to be provisioned on two copper pairs of regular telephone wire, it is available in smaller towns; out in the country and just about any place you would want to put a business. The majority of businesses already have multi-pair phone cable provisioned. Use some of these to bring in bonded T1 service up to 12 Mbps. In some remote locations, you may even be able to justify additional T1 bonded bandwidth. How about call centers and enterprises that are converging voice and data networks. The single T1 line that might have been adequate for Internet browsing and email may not be able to handle the increased traffic created by the IP phone calls. Fortunately, it is easy to bond in more bandwidth to create a network with adequate bandwidth.
