>Hi Ed,
>
>Thank you for your response.
>
>I have to link 3 building togather which are within 2 km, and one building which is as far away as Monterey, Mexico. I will try to find out the cost of a dedicated leased phone line for the link to the Mexico building. It must be expensive?
>
>What type of speeds can I get using a line ?

Anywhere from 56Kbps up to several Gbps, it depends on the type of point-to-point connection you pay for. T1 will give you 1.54Mbps roughly. In most cases, a leased line increase in cost by both the distance and mile for point-to-point connections.

You might investigate frame-relay service to connect to Monterey as well - frame-relay uses a packet switching network to route traffice between your two sites; you pay not for a dedicated circuit like a leased line, but for connection to the frame-relay network and data volume passed on it.

If this is a Microsoft networking environment, you might also explore paying for a dedicated connection to the Internet with a static IP address at both sites and using VPN services (Virtual Private Networking, a secure method of passing data between sites over the Internet supported by most of the Win32 platforms) to use the Internet to transport data between your sites. There was an entire issue of Windows NT Systems magazine devoted to VPN issues recently; you can check details at www.ntsystems.com and search the index of back articles.

I'd look into stringing fiber optic between the building that are fairly close together if you can (for example, if you're talking about several buildings on a single site, or where you have access rights across roads through conduit to run the fiber optics) since the cost of a fiber bridge and the fiber optic install is going to be far less expensive in the long run than routers and monthly lease line charges would be.