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I feel the need... the need for speed!

Posted by Mike Snyder on March 30, 2007  |  Comments (1)

While visiting one of our customers, Jim noted how ridiculously fast their Internet connection was. Our customer said they have 300 Mbps for BOTH download and upload speeds! Compared to our paltry 1.5 Mbps T-1 line from Megapath, relatively speaking we're limping along at the pace of a turtle.

Maverick from Top Gun would approve of Cogent's 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet

While we knew our T-1 wasn't the fastest option out there, Jim wanted to learn more about this smokin' fast connection.

It turns out that our customer was using a company Cogent for the Internet connectivity, so Jim procured a quote from them immediately. The good news is that our office is considered "on net" for Cogent so they were able to offer us 100 Mbps of Fast Ethernet download and upload for just $900 per month...plus Jim negotiated a free install ($1,000 value) and the first month free. So for just a few hundred dollars more per month than our Megapath T-1, we're going to increase our bandwidth by a factor of 66. It should be up and running in the next few weeks, and we can't wait!

Some other interesting things to note about the Cogent Fast Ethernet:

• Full SLA: Their SLA guarantees 99.99% network availability, 99.9% packet delivery, less than 50 milliseconds roundtrip latency and proactive outage notification within 15 minutes.
• Guaranteed bandwidth: Unlike cable connections, we're guaranteed 100% of our 100 Mbps bandwidth 100% of the time.
• No router: All it takes to get connected is a Category 5 cable or cross connect plugged into your existing LAN or equipment.

While I can't recommend Cogent entirely until we test their service live for ourselves, things are looking very very promising so far.

Comments

1. We are a Microsoft Certified Partner specializing in Microsoft CRM consulting and installations. The People Ready marketing campaign, the recent Microsoft Convergence show in San Diego and the hundreds of regional seminars on Microsoft CRM have many first time CRM buyers implementing both Microsoft CRM 3.0 and the new Exchange Server 2007. Hence the need for the 64 bit Email Router.

   This brings the issue of installing the Email Router on an Exchange 2007 Server all the more critical. New customers installing Exchange Server 2007 into the Domain and updating the Active Directory schema are then prohibited from installing ANY Exchange 2000 or 2003 to support Microsoft CRM.

   New Microsoft CRM customers are then locked out of using the email routing feature until the CRM 4.0 "Titan" release next year. Titan will be 64 bit compatible and therefore can be installed on the Exchange 2007 Server. See the TechNet article regarding deploying Exchange 2000-2003 in a new Exchange 2007 only organization:

   http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998604.aspx

   Can someone at Microsoft please address the issue of not having a 64 bit Email Router for Microsoft CRM that can be INSTALLED on the Exchange 2007 64 bit Server "prior to next years Titan release"?; because this makes no sense to any of our Microsoft CRM prospective customers.

   And heads up to anyone installing Exchange Server 2007 who use Microsoft CRM with the Email Router. You MUST keep at least one Exchange 2000 or 2003 Server in your org if you want to keep using or install the new Email Router for Exchange Server 2007.
   

   Posted by: Mark K.  |  Mar 31, 2007 12:45:23 AM

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