How far we have come since the days of dial-up Internet. Remember having to wait until somebody had finished their phone call, and then running a long cable from the phone to the computer?
Those days are long behind us, and in keeping up with the latest technology, Flow Communications has recently upgraded its Internet connection in the Johannesburg office from ADSL to fibre-optics.
Previously, we were splitting all our traffic over three ADSL lines, which worked well at the beginning. However, thanks to the growth of the Flow team over the last year or so, those lines started to be congested, and another solution was called for.
Flow’s IT manager, Marco Camacho, oversaw the whole process of moving over to fibre.
“The problem with ADSL is that it’s a best-effort service – you can get fast download speeds, but uploading is much slower. Since we are constantly uploading content to clients’ websites, or need to make changes quickly, faster upload speeds mean better productivity.
“Our new fibre setup now offers 10mbps speeds for both downloads and uploads, and we can also switch back to the 7mbps ADSL if the router detects a dropped connection.”
Head developer at Flow, Richard Frank, is happy with the new set-up, saying: “The fibre line should give us more stability and consistent download speeds, and much faster upload speeds.”
Clients will be able to see changes made sooner, and Flowstars will be able to work more efficiently.
“Neotel’s process and planning was done very well,” says Marco. “From physically digging in the street, laying the fibre from the street to our server room, to installation of hardware. They even met their deadline for the project two days early.”