Tell me about T1 business connections.

I have no experience with T1 connections. I have been dealing with home routers only. A customer wants me to come to their business and setup a VPN connection. I think I can handle it. What type of hardware should I expect? A modem or a router. This business consist of 1 Windows server, 6 desktops, and 2 laptops. I have setup VPN on 2000 servers before and for remote connections. The ISP is called CBeyond. I saw on their website that they provide VPN service as an additional service. I am assuming it is router based because they have an example of a GUI for VPN. Is a T1 line physically just a 4 wire cable like a phone line?
Any advice would be welcomed.

hello fflury, I will try to share you with my little experience, for VPN connection you would need a VPN concentrator. VPN concentrator is just a software installed on top of a hardware. there is really 4 types of VPN connection I am aware off. and not all VPN software supports all of them.

my setup for VPN was with Cisco products and Open Source softwares.

One option is that you would have to install a Cisco Router that ship with VPN IOS capabilities on each site. and simply configure the VPN on each. so you should expect tosee on your edge network a Router based product with an VPN capabilties software.

Second option, you can use open source software install it on a PC and transform it into an edge router capabilities with VPN concentrator, such as Vyatta is one of the leading Open Source Router that it can outperform Cisco in some models and it has VPN concentrator capabilities all of Free or you can buy their Appliance that is a hardware based with embedded Linux that is tailored for Routing.

or you can Install IPCop Firewall with OpenVPN software and make it a VPN concentrator.

so in short you need a router with VPN capabilities or a Firewall with VPN capabilities.

the network topology in its simplest form is like this:

[Site1]---[Router1:WithVPNCapabilities]--[TransparentModem1]----[TransparentModem2]---[Router2:WithVPNCapabilities]----[Site2]


I am not familiar with T1 connection, but I did configure E1 type connection. but they should look the same in basic ideas.

For E1 connection the setup for us was as follows:

1. a modem on each site configure in a transparent mode so they operate on layer 2, no ip addresses needed to assign for them, we got E1 connection for telephony service only that is why no ip addresses where assigned.

2. our E1 connection was two twisted pairs, that is four wires cable between the two modems.

3. A Router with E1 card or in your case a T1 card installed. we used Cisco Router with Cisco E1/T1 card.

4. The Router E1/T1 card is plugged into the modem and the configuration should be given to you by your Service Provider to be applied on the Router side.


good luck I hope this might help you in some form.