Security 

This should be the most important consideration when you are planning the installation of a high bandwidth internet connection.  When you install a high performance internet connection for your company you open a window to the world that not only allows you to see out, but potentially for everyone else to see in.  Your internal network carries the life blood of your company.  Accounting information, customer information and your company trade secrets all reside on your network.  If this resource is not protected properly, it can be available for any motivated party to see. 

Reasonable levels of network security are relatively in-expensive, and can protect your company from potentially devastating consequences.  Security is normally provided by a device called a firewall.  Firewall is a rather generic term which refers to a device or computer that looks at any network traffic moving on or off your network, and by following a set of rules determines whether or not the traffic should be allowed.  This can be a complex process, and is best handled by people well versed in network security.

Availability

DSL is a technology that is provided by your local telephone company, or a third party provider such as Covad.  DSL basically uses signaling frequencies that are higher that the typical telephone voice and modem range to carry high speed data to and from your home or business.  This is why it can generally be provided on the same line as your telephone connection.  The down side of this method is that this signal degrades quickly as the length of the cable from the CO (Telephone Company Central Office  -  that big windowless building with the phone company logo)  gets longer.  DSL can typically only be delivered to homes and business that are within about 2 miles of the CO.  If the distance is greater that 2 miles, there are some hybrid technologies that can be used to provide service, but the service is typically much lower speed.

Advantages

High speed internet access can be a great asset to almost any business that needs any type of e-mail or web access.  By improving the performance of your internet connection, the internet is transformed from a nuisance to use into a reasonable business tool.  Rather than waiting for pages to load, you can get the information you need, and get on with your day.  E-mail becomes virtually real-time because you are no longer required to dial up, and wait.  These can be genuine productivity enhancements for your business.

Disadvantages

Being always connected to the internet can lead to additional network traffic generated by employees running applications like Real Player, or Pointcast

Temptation to do excessive non work related web surfing is increased as performance is much better at the office than at home.

Performance

There are two major factors that can affect performance.   The first is the speed of the connection to the ISP (Internet Service Provider).  This connection is sold in many different speeds.  Not all speeds are available in all locations.  Some common ones are 256/64, 384/384, 768/128, 768/768, 1.1/768, and 1.1/1.1.  The second, and often limiting connection is the one between the ISP and the Internet backbone.  There are a couple of factors to consider here.  The first is how fast is the ISP’s connection to the internet backbone.  Common connections are now DS-3 connections.  A T-1 connection used to be a common connection, but does not offer enough speed to service very many DSL users.  The second and more important question is has the ISP oversold the connections to the internet?  This is a VERY common problem.  What this means is that the ISP has more people using the backbone connection than the connection can service in a timely fashion.  This translates into good ping times (a common method of performance evaluation used by people to fool you into thinking everything is fine) to the ISP, but poor ping times to other servers on the internet.

Internal Network Needs 

Your internal network needs to be analyzed and very likely documented so that the installation of an internet router/firewall can be done in an efficient manner.  Many smaller networks that use the TCP/IP protocol have been implemented with little or no consideration for routing, and can be difficult to add internet access to if not properly planned. 

Should you host your own servers?

Having this level of connectivity to the internet leads to the question – Should I use this connection to provide my own Web and Mail Server?  This can be a difficult choice to make. But here are some things to consider.

Do you need to provide real time access to internal databases or other services for your employees, and/or business partners.

Does your organization have the internal resources to maintain a Web or Mail server?

Are you willing to accept the additional security risks in exchange for the savings of a few dollars a month?

Are you willing to expose your internal network to potential security breaches?

Do you need to support remote users like telecommuters?

Do you need to communicate with other business locations?

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