While he can't find fiber deals like that for every branch, he says he was able to get a 10 meg link for another location for a little more than $600/month. Otherwise he is using mostly DSL.

And those DSL links are pulling their weight, he says: "I thought I would get half of the rated DLS throughput, but I'm seeing almost the same throughput on the DSL as I'm seeing through the MPLS T1 links at a fraction of the cost; $80 vs. several hundred."

Then there is the reliability factor. With two independent links to each site and the Talari box dynamically shifting between them as necessary, IT no longer gets calls in the middle of the night. "If an MPLS link goes down at 2 p.m., no intervention on our part is needed," he says. "The link might seem slower at the branch, but there is no interruption to the terminal session or printing."

Another side benefit: "Talari gives us much better monitoring, second by second, of our lines, and the DSLs have impressed me with up time and line quality. Previously I only had binary status information -- the link was either up or down. Now I can check the status of the circuit and assess the quality of the line."

That has proved to be much more useful than he anticipated. "I reviewed the Talari installation with our MPLS supplier and, on their own, they came back with a number of options on how they could increase bandwidth too us at a lower cost. The point being, my MPLS providers understand where this is going. They came back to us with a lower rate on higher bandwidth. They see the writing on the wall."