Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Welcome To The Big Bandwidth Era

You remember the big band era? Tommy Dorsey? Glenn Miller?

No, I didn’t think so. It was a bit before my time, too, although I do enjoy the music of that era. Back then technology was radio and bandwidth was measured in cycles per second and kilocycles. Today, technology is digital and bandwidth is measured in Mbps and Gbps. Welcome to the big bandwidth era.

So how much bandwidth is needed to qualify as big? NuVox, a major competitive carrier, defines big bandwidth as anything over 10 Mbps. That’s the level that consumer Internet service providers are targeting, now that video is becoming the true killer app of the Web. It’s also where businesses are headed... and fast.

What’s driving that need for speed? Video is certainly part of puzzle, with many companies being both producers and users of online video. Cloud services are also a big emerging driver. By moving the server infrastructure and storage network into the cloud, companies see a way to get out of the expensive upgrade and maintenance cycles while still having the IT services they need. Add to that the mad scramble to replace everything paper with everything electronic, especially in the medical field, and you’ve got WAN networks getting pretty congested.

So, what does it take to get 10 Mbps or more connected to your network? T1 lines (1.5 Mbps) are still a readily available and affordable to get reliable business bandwidth. A industry standard process called bonding allows multiple T1 lines to act as one larger pipe with higher bandwidth. Two bonded T1 lines gives you 3 Mbps, four provides 6 Mbps, 8 bonded T1 lines will deliver 12 Mbps, a “big bandwidth” solution.

Another form of twisted pair copper transport is EoC (Ethernet over Copper) It uses the familiar telco trunk lines that are installed at most business locations. But special equipment at each end creates an Ethernet transport service. NuVox is offering a variety called Etherloop that is a half-duplex transmission technology capable of providing bandwidths up to 30 Mbps up to 10,000 feet from the carrier POP or Point of Presence.

Moving up from copper to fiber optic services, a very popular traditional service is DS3 at 45 Mbps. Other fiber based services include Fast Ethernet at 100 Mbps and Gigabit Ethernet at 1000 Mbps. Now we’re really talking about BIG bandwidth.

Is your company needing to move into the big bandwidth era? You’ll find that the cost of these higher capacity services may be much lower than when you looked into them a few years ago, thanks to competitive carriers like Nuvox. How much lower? Find out now by getting a quote for big bandwidth services available at your business location.

Click to check pricing and features or get support from a Telarus product specialist.




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