If you are eventually going to work from your home for your company, are you able to connect to your companies T1 service from home and if so how do you do this?

Unless your company is willing to install a T1 straight to your house, you will be limited to the speed of your own Broadband connection.
A T1 is a very expensive installation for home use.

What are you doing that you would need a dedicated high speed line?

I gues a T1 line is not necessary for what I'm doing, I just have to have a broadband connection since I will need a connection on all day, if I can ever get it to work:(... I just wondered if you could be directly connected to your companies T1 line but I guess you can't. Thanks

The benefit you would get would be a direct connection to your company's network for shared resources and email. Most companies simply have the employee use a DSL/cable connection and install VPN access to the network resources.

Or just hook me up with DSL and give me a voip phone...

Since my company is an isp and my main page is the companies website.
THanks for all of your help

What you are talking about is a VPN. T1s are very specialized nowadays. They are are used where high volume data transfer is necessary. They also cost much more than other broadband alternatives.

Your company should have a VPN setup where you can connect to your company's network using your broadband connection. That's what I do when I work from home. Its not quite as speedy as being in the office, but its close.

Cgirl,

I too used to work for an ISP and I had a T1 connection to my house. It was a benefit that wasn't afforded to everyone in the company but only to those that needed it. Since I was part of the core engineering team I managed to get one (after sweet talking mgmt into it of course).

Could I have settled for a VPN across my Cable Modem? Absolutely. And today that's the norm. In my area, Cable is 4Mbps download and 384Kbps uplink. I use it for everything while I'm at home and when I'm connected to my work I even use it for VoIP. It isn't perfect but it does work fine for VoIP 99% of the time. I have a desktop at work which I can RDP to and it works practically as if I'm in the office since RDP does not use a whole lot of bandwidth. As far as VoIP goes, you may want to consider a "soft phone" which is a software based VoIP phone. Check with your IT folks on how to set that up.

Good luck

Casey

We use cisco IP 7960 series... is that a soft phone?

we use cisco IP 7960 series...is that a soft phone?
No, that's the actual phone. Since you are a Cisco environment then what you need is either the "Cisco Softphone" or "Cisco IP Communicator". The IP Communicator is basically a newer piece of software that is significantly better than the old "softphone".

The IP Communicator is basically software that installs on your desktop. You'll need a microphone and speakers of course to operate it. You start your VPN connection and then fire up IP Communicator and then you can use it as if you're in the office. As a matter of fact, if someone dials your office phone and you happen to have IP Communicator up and running on your PC through the VPN then your IP Communicator will ring as well. It is very flexible. Here's more info from the Cisco web site:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/voicesw/ps5475/index.html

I'm sure if there are other vendors out there that do VoIP that they'd have similar features. I'm only familiar with Cisco's VoIP technology.

Good Luck

Casey

Thanks, I appreciate the info:)