Broadview Networks OfficeSuite Brings The Cloud To SMB

As a small to medium size business, you’d like to embrace cost saving technologies like Enterprise VoIP, private IP networking and cloud services. But, oh, the investment to get into this game. You take another look at Internet-based services, but have serious concerns about quality and reliability of service. If only small to medium businesses without huge IT staffs could get the good stuff. But, wait, you can!

You can, indeed, upgrade to the latest in sophisticated telecommunications services without the big investment in dollars and staffing to do it all yourself. Broadview Networks has exactly the service you need in their OfficeSuite. It IS your office at one or many locations. You get the functionality of an enterprise-grade PBX or key telephone system. You get easy administration to add stations, sites and users through an ordinary Web browser. You get the ability to connect satellite and regional offices across the country with your main office using the same system and network. You get seamless communications with home-based employees and mobile professionals who have the same features and functionalities that are available on their office phones. You even get Internet access.

What you don’t get is grief and capital expenditures. OfficeSuite is a hosted VoIP system. That means that all the expensive and hard to maintain switching and server equipment is located in a Broadview Networks facility. They have the telecom talent to keep everything working 24/7 and enough resources to ensure that you can scale up your operation any time you want. What you have in your facility is telephones and computers connected to your 100 Mbps or 1 Gbps Ethernet LAN.

Now, be careful here. Not all hosted PBX solutions are the same. Some try to minimize costs by pressing the Internet into service as a telephone trunk line. Broadview Networks operates its own private network built on a redundant fiber-optic backbone. The difference between sending sensitive traffic, like telephone calls, over the wild and wooly Internet and sending them over a carefully controlled private network is the difference between take-what-you-get and dependable high quality performance. Broadview Networks can interconnect multiple locations through their converged MPLS network that maintains strict quality control on voice and data streams.

With advanced technology and quality networking, OfficeSuite offers not only the usual telephone features, but exciting extras that can improve your productivity. Hot Desking lets employees move around the office and between locations. They simply log in to a phone like they would log into an Internet account. Click to Dial lets you click on phone numbers in your Microsoft Outlook contact manager to immediately activate a speakerphone and call the contact selected. Get voicemail notifications and messages from any phone and receive messages through e-mail, even on your smartphone. Decide where to send calls if you can’t pick up. Inbound callers reach your Auto Attendant that prompts them to user extensions and company directories.

Are you ready for a more sophisticated phone system, or perhaps one that is easier to manage and doesn’t require you to run to the bank for a capital loan? Then get complementary consulting and quotes on OfficeSuite and other quality hosted PBX phone systems. You’ll likely find that trying to be your own phone company is more trouble that it is worth.

Bandwidth For Data Center Consolidation

Companies are always on the lookout for ways to save money, while still delivering the same value to their customers. Efficiency improvements are a sure winner. You may think you’ve wrung out all the efficiency you can from your data centers, but have you?

Most organizations don’t appear fully formed. They start out as small operations to test the market and the concept. Over years or decades, they outgrow facilities, add new products, acquire and merge with other companies, and so on. At any given point in this process, there is generally something to be gained by stepping back and considering how you would set things up if you had a clean sheet of paper.

One byproduct of company mergers and expansions is that you wind up with multiple data centers. Each installation made sense at the time. They are uniquely designed to serve the needs of a certain type of company, a certain size enterprise or certain product line. But when conditions change, you can find that there are creeping inefficiencies that come from patching things together here and there. It all works, but it may be costing you more than it could.

Data center consolidation is an activity that many companies are taking a closer look at, especially as top line growth stagnates and staff has been thinned out. You may not want to put everything in one location for the sake of redundant backup. But you may have bits and pieces here and there that can be easily combined. Fewer locations with fewer servers, larger servers and virtualization are all techniques that ultimately lead to the same or better performance at reduced cost.

Something to bring into the analysis is the cost and availability of bandwidth to support your consolidation efforts. That’s especially true if only the data centers are being consolidated but other operations continue at your geographically diverse locations. You’ll need some way to get data from place to place. That task used to fall to the site LAN, but now you’ll need a WAN connection.

Depending on how much traffic leaves data center and goes to each site, you may not need the same bandwidth that you have on your LAN. Workers at each location need access, of course, but the heavy processing may be local to the data center with just data entry and results going across the WAN. You’ll need to ascertain that bandwidth requirement and then check availability and pricing of bandwidth options.

Fortunately, bandwidth today is cheaper than ever with more options available. Ethernet is becoming more and more popular. It tends to be cheaper per Mbps than traditional T-carrier and SONET services. You can get point to point Ethernet line services or multipoint Ethernet LAN service. MPLS networks are often an excellent solution to the task of interconnecting multiple sites. They offer managed bandwidth, class of service options, and lower costs that proprietary networks.

Some companies are finding the the place to consolidate their data centers is in a colocation center or “carrier hotel” This is a completely managed facility will physical security, fire protection, backup power and a full time technical staff. You’ll often find the best bandwidth deals at colo centers because carriers establish points of presence within the facility to reach many customers at once. With multiple service providers vying for your business, you can often get outstanding deals on any level of bandwidth your require.

Are you in the midst of or considering a data center consolidation project? If so, get competitive quotes for your bandwidth needs from multiple service providers. This will help you minimize your costs, while getting the performance you need.

What is a PRI in VoIP?

We tend to think of VoIP as a “new generation” phone service based on IP technology unrelated to the historical public switched telephone network. Well there’s some truth in that, but no matter what you implement you’ll still be dealing with the good old PSTN. The bigger your company or organization, the more “outside” phone lines you’ll need. You should take a close look at ISDN PRI to make the connection to all the phones that are not part of your enterprise VoIP telephone system.

What is a PRI? It stands for Primary Rate Interface. That’s telephony talk for a particular standard related to another telephone industry term, ISDN. ISDN is the Integrated Services Digital Network. There’s a history to the development of ISDN that relates to the once lofty ambition of replacing all analog home and business phone lines with digital versions. You may not have heard of this, as it fizzled when broadband Internet came along and usurped the data role intended for ISDN. Even so, the business version persists and is more popular now than ever. That’s what’s called PRI or ISDN PRI or even T1 PRI.

Why T1 PRI? It’s because ISDN PRI is physically transported on a T1 line. T1 is another telephone industry standard widely used in business for dedicated Internet and point to point data connections. T1 lines have the advantages of being provisioned on copper wires so you don’t need fiber optics installed. They can be extended to nearly any distance, are highly reliable and reasonably priced. The pricing has gotten really attractive lately due to all the competition in the industry. With all this going for it, T1 makes a great choice to carry PRI.

What’s different between a regular T1 line and a T1 PRI line? The line speeds and voltages are the same. What differentiates a PRI is how it is organized. Instead of a big chunk of bandwidth, ISDN PRI is set up as 23 channels that each represent one digital telephone line. A 24th channel is used for signaling and data such as Caller ID. It’s an upgrade to an older T1 telephone standard that was set up as 24 phone channels and no Caller ID.

The beauty of bringing in an ISDN PRI line or “trunk”, as it is called, is that you get 23 outside phone lines coming in on a single digital line. It’s a lot more compact and is almost always cheaper, usually a lot cheaper, than dealing with 24 individual analog business lines.

The interface is also generally very easy. Most PBX and IP PBX telephone systems either come with ISDN PRI capability or offer it through a plug-in module you can buy. All the circuitry to convert between 23 individual phone lines and the PRI digital trunk are implement on that circuit board. You simply plug-in one or more ISDN PRI lines and you have outside phone lines and a lot of them.

But why would you connect a T1 PRI to a VoIP phone system rather than keep it 100% VoIP? The simple explanation is that the rest of the world isn’t serviced by VoIP or at least the same VoIP provider. The only thing universal is the PSTN, where you can dial any number and get connected to any telephone in the world. Your enterprise VoIP phone system can save you a bundle on internal calls that stay on your own network. You can also buy a SIP Trunk that connects you to a telephone service provider completely in IP or Internet Protocol. But, guess what happens at that service provider when you want to call an outside number? That’s right. You’ll be switched through to the ISDN PRI lines that connect them to the public phone network.

Which is the best deal for your company when it comes to analog (POTS) phone lines, ISDN PRI or SIP trunking? Why not let an expert consultant get you competitive quotes for these various options so you make an informed decision? The service is fast, easy and free.

Competitive Fiber Optic Service Nearby

Is your organization a high bandwidth user? By that, I mean you need reliable commercial bandwidth from 100 Mbps to 10 Gbps or higher. You can’t get there with bonded T1 lines or Ethernet over Copper. What you need is fiber optic service. But is competitive fiber optic bandwidth available anywhere nearby? Let’s check and see...



The fact is that buildings lit for fiber optic service are popping up faster than you can keep track of them. Why? Because today’s bandwidth hungry applications are demanding higher and higher network speeds. That includes connections that leave the LAN and go to the Internet or point to point to other locations. These connections carry large medical images, HD video streams, large database backups, engineering simulations and similar massive file transfers. Electronic medical records have dramatically ratcheted-up bandwidth requirements for hospitals and medical centers. Productivity software can only save you a fortune if it can operate efficiently. That means near-instaneous file transfers. Wait time is lost time and lost time is lost money.

Level 3, a major competitive carrier, has announced that it has 8,000 buildings on net for its metro fiber network. However, there an estimated 100,000 buildings that are around 500 feet away from those buildings. Those 100,000 locations are an opportunity well within reach.

Other competitive carriers, such as XO communication, are also aggressively expanding their fiber optic footprint in response to the demand for higher bandwidth than today’s connections can provide.

What sort of bandwidth options are available? The most popular service is Metro Ethernet. It is scalable so that you can order just the speed you need today and then easily upgrade when the need arises. It is also considerably less expensive than traditional SONET services, often just a fraction of the cost. Bandwidth? The sky is pretty much the limit. Standard Ethernet speeds of 100 Mbps, 1000 Mbps and 10,000 Mbps are supported, as well as many increments in-between. In fact, Ethernet services are usually available as low as 3 Mbps, with 10 Mbps being a popular upgrade from T1 lines.

Could you use more bandwidth at a reasonable price, perhaps even a cost reduction? How about truly high speed service? Check availability and get Ethernet pricing quotes now.

Fascinated By The Samsung Fascinate

Are you familiar with the Samsung Galaxy S series of smartphones? Remember that name. This is the hottest design in cellular phone technology since the venerable Motorola RAZR phones. The whole idea of Galaxy S is to give you a mobile telephone, handheld computer, multimedia center and gaming device in a single ultra-portable package. The Samsung Fascinate for Verizon Wireless is the latest addition to this Galaxy S line.

The technology is as fascinating as the name. This phone sports a 4 inch Super AMOLED screen for a brighter image both indoors and outside where it is really bright. The 1 GHz Hummingbird processor gives you the computing power needed to deal with today’s streaming media. The integrated 5 Megapixel digital camera has both autofocus and the ability to record HD video on the go. Couple that with a DivX video player and MP3 music player.

Software for the Samsung Fascinate is equally impressive. It starts with the Android 2.1 operating system and all the apps that Android supports. You can text with Swype by simply sliding your finger over the letters to draft a text message. An integrated social hub unifies content from your Facebook, Twitter, Email and IM accounts.

How about connectivity? You’ll be connected to the Verizon Wireless 3G network, running the EV-DO Rev A cellular broadband standard. You also have WiFi capability and the ability to create a 3G Mobile HotSpot to wirelessly connect with up to 5 devices. Share your bandwidth or keep mum and enjoy it all to yourself. Oh, is that your boss over there needing a connection? Better enable that device if you know what’s good for your career!

Other fascinating features of this Samsung smartphone include integrated GPS with support for voice-guided, turn-by-turn directions by VZ Navigator. You can download a movie the day it is released with the Blockbuster mobile app. Catch your favorite football team in action with the new NFL mobile app.

Are you fascinated with this exciting new phone? Would you like to have one at a tremendous online discount? If so, learn more and order your Samsung Fascinate for Verizon Wireless now.

Of course, there are many other Android smartphones and other smart and basic cell phones available free or at a deep discount. Check out today’s special deals at Cell Phone Plans Finder and pick your favorite.

Managed Voice over MPLS For High Quality Enterprise Telephony

Companies with multiple locations are rapidly discovering the cost and performance advantages of MPLS networks. MPLS VPN networks are becoming the preferred way to interconnect multiple sites around the country and around the world. But what do you do about your voice services?


The traditional approach is to keep voice and data separate. The telephone system has a proven legacy based on switched circuit analog and digital trunking. Most PBX systems are set up to interface to standardized copper pair analog business lines or ISDN PRI digital trunks. These are your portal to the worldwide PSTN or Public Switched Telephone Network that links every telephone set on Earth.

This traditional approach to business telephony has the advantage of guaranteed connectivity and proven voice quality. The incentive to change to something more advanced comes from potential cost savings and productivity features.

There are huge cost savings possible if you can combine your voice and data networks and keep your internal phone calls off the PSTN. Isn’t that what Enterprise VoIP about? That’s exactly what many major corporations are doing. But only well-healed companies can afford to manage their own nationwide converged private line networks. When it comes to international connections, the costs can go up dramatically. Is there a more cost effective option?

Why not use the same MPLS networks that provide data connectivity for your many geographically diverse sites to also carry your voice traffic? Well, why not? MPLS networks already have the requisite quality of service controls to ensure that voice packets won’t get trampled by data packets. The entire network is managed to ensure low latency, jitter and packet loss. It seems like a good match for IP telephony.

Indeed it is. That’s what VoMPLS or Voice over MPLS is all about. With VoMPLS, your internal telephone traffic stays on your own network. In fact, it’s the same network that interconnects all your PCs and other network device. You’ll only pay per-minute telephone charges when your calls have to go “off net” to the public phone system. You can make that connection yourself with ISDN PRI trunks connected to your company PBX or you can outsource call termination to a SIP trunking service.

Does VoMPLS make sense for your company or organization? New services, including one just announced by AireSpring, are making this option the best cost/performance choice more and more. Find out with a quick inquiry about Voice over MPLS network options.

NetWolves Leverages The Power Of The Pack

When you are looking for a comprehensive solution to all of your business voice and data needs, it’s pays to have a wolf doing your bidding. NetWolves is an aggressive service provider with an unusual flexibility to optimize the exact suite of services you need.

First and foremost, NetWolves is an FCC-licenced and tariffed carrier in all 50 states. But beyond that, they have strategic agreements with over 120 leading telecommunications carriers. By leveraging the power of the pack when it comes to telecom service providers, NetWolves can pick and choose from an enormous menu of available services to get exactly the right mix for your particular applications. Many carriers are working from a much shorter line card and need to fit your requirements into whatever they have available.

Most businesses, even the smallest, have a particular mix of needs that include telephone, Internet, security, offsite backup, remote workers, employees in the field, private data transfers, e-commerce, and perhaps multiple site connectivity. NetWolves takes all of this into consideration and custom designs an array of services tailored to your situation. They also offer consulting and management services as an adjunct to your IT team or as the IT support for companies that don’t have their own staff.

NetWolves can offer you a complete range of voice services including multi-carrier solutions on a single invoice. These voice services include switched outbound and inbound toll-free service plus intrastate, interstate and international calls over your existing business lines. Do you have your own PBX or IP PBX system? NetWolves can provide the ISDN PRI and VoIP services you need to support whatever phone system you have. That includes ANI (Automatic Number Identification) and DNIS (Dialed Number Identification Service).

Data services include private lines from 56K/DS0, DDS, T1/DS1 at 1.5 Mbps, on up to T3/DS3 lines running at 45 Mbps. For multiple locations, you can get MPLS network connections that create a VPN or Virtual Private Network. NetWolves also offers VPN security technology that includes IPSec VPN and SSL VPN. While IPSec VPN is ideal when transferring large amounts of data over a secure site to site connection, SSL VPN is an attractive solution to support business travelers and partners who need secure access only for email and small files.

NetWolves is capable of providing complete network management for your company. Their WolfPac security platforms act as network gatekeepers to control access into and out of a company’s network. Security services are scalable and include Stateful Inspection firewall, IPSec, SSL VPN, intrusion detection, congestion management, quality of service control, email virus protection, content filtering and other services with the ability to provide 24x7 monitoring.

Could your organization benefit from the capabilities of NetWolves or other highly competitive carriers anxious to bid for your business? If so, get price quotes tailored to your requirements for whatever level of service you need.

International VPLS Offers Worldwide Connectivity

For businesses and organizations that have offices worldwide, the ideal networking solution would be to have your own private LAN that included all of your locations for voice, video and data. But that’s a pipe dream, right? Once you leave your property, you have to use telecom services to connect from location to location. Or do you? With International VPLS, the world is your LAN as well as your oyster.

The name gives it away. VPLS stands for Virtual Private LAN Service. It’s the best thing to actually stringing your own fiber optic lines between sites. Of course, that’s impractical. But you can get essentially the same performance at a very reasonable cost with International Ethernet VPLS.

Here’s how it works. Each location connects to an International MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) cloud network using an Ethernet access connection. This can be a fiber optic line for high bandwidth or an EoC (Ethernet over Copper) line for bandwidths below about 50 Mbps. Regardless of the physical layer technology, you’ll be connecting Ethernet from your LAN to an Ethernet line that runs to your service provider.

The magic of VPLS is that all connections are made as Ethernet connections. An MPLS network can handle any protocol, so pseudowires are used to provide Ethernet connectivity between locations. Regardless of how many local area networks you have, or how many locations you are connecting, or where in the world those locations are, you will have the equivalent of one large layer2 switched Ethernet LAN. An office PC in Zurich is just as close on the network as the printer in Tokyo or the server in New York.

How about security? That’s where the “virtual private” designation for VPLS comes in. Your Ethernet access lines are all fully dedicated to your use. The MPLS network is a shared resource, but it uses proprietary tag switching technology unique to that type of private network. There is no connection with the Internet at all. Also, the pseudowire connections that are set up by the service provider transport only your traffic and only between the locations you specify. Of course, if you want even higher level of security you can choose to encrypt your data for an extra layer of protection.

Is an international or domestic VPLS solution right for your company or organization? You may be able to save considerably compared to the cost of proprietary networks using point to point lines, with increased performance as flexibility of adding/deleting sites as well. Find out now with a quick inquiry about International Ethernet VPLS for your locations.

Try Cloud Website Load Testing Free

You’ve built your online presence. The question is whether you’ve built a house of straw, a house of sticks or the proverbial brick house. All websites look great when the server is just stilling there idling. The real test is when the visitors come in droves. Can your site handle the traffic? There’s only one way to know. You need to do load testing.

There are different ways to do load testing. BrowserMob offers some significant advantages for business users who take their online presence seriously. It’s reasonably priced, considering the value of lost business when your site crumbles under the load. That’s business you’ll never get back. Frustrated users are gone for good. This is especially important with the holiday season looming. Your worst e-commerce nightmare could be a ton of traffic, each user with credit card in hand, and nothing but a stalled out storefront or hideous 404 page staring them in the face.

How do you make sure your website is up to the task? Give it a serious test before the real onslaught arrives. BrowserMob gives you a choice of real browser users, virtual users or a combination of both. They use real browsers to create an experience that more accurately mimics the real user experience. Massive amounts of simulated traffic is generated by a cloud computing resource utilizing a huge pool of IP addresses.

Why not blast your site with up to 5,000 concurrent browsers? Simulate as many as 500,000 sessions with a maximum capacity of 6,0000 Mbps. Make sure you are doing it right with expert testing advice from the BrowserMob load testing and website monitoring experts.

What’s the best way to get started? Why, with a load test of course. If you like what you see, you can then move on to choose a service plan appropriate to the size of your operation.

Please note: The free website load test from Browser Mob is no longer available. Sorry.

The Samsung Epic 4G offers Epic Performance

What would you think of a smartphone that can run rings around a netbook computer? What if you politely declined WiFi hotspot service because it would slow you down? Can you handle that kind of speed in a cell phone?

There’s a lot that makes this phone special, but the Sprint WiMAX 4G network connectivity makes you believe it’s epic. Peak download speeds can exceed 10 Mbps. That’s an order of magnitude faster than 3G. Instead of being a WiFi user, you’ll be a WiFi provider with mobile hotspot capability to support other devices as long as you are in a 3G or 4G service area. Treat your unconnected friends or colleagues while you’re on the road. Or give yourself anywhere connectivity for the times you need a laptop, notebook or tablet computer.

If the speed of this Android 2.1 smartphone has you drooling, wait till you see the display. This is no ordinary touchscreen. The Super AMOLED thin touchscreen offers a near-HD display at 100x the contrast of other leading phones. It also features pinch-to-zoom, six axis motion and proximity sensors.

This advanced display is a good match with the 5 megapixel digital camera with camcorder mode, dual LED flash, auto-focus, live video share, and geo-tagging. Record in HD and easily playback wirelessly on your HDTV or other DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) certified devices. Oh, by the way, there’s another camera. It’s mounted on the face of the display so that you can enjoy video chats. This is a VGA camera, so you’ll look good in the picture.

Back to the blazing speed of this phone. In addition to WiFI, 4G and 3G connectivity, the processor in this smartphone is a 1 GHz Cortex A8 Hummingbird. In the 4G and WiFi modes, you’ll have simultaneous voice and data capability for increased multitasking. With many other phones, you have to switch back and forth.

The Samsung Epic is not only faster than a certain competing smartphone that rhymes with grapple, but it has something else eschewed in Cupertino. It’s a slide out QWERTY keyboard. That’s right, real keys for real typing. You also have an on-screen virtual keyboard and SWYPE typing options as a matter of personal choice. Text messaging, instant messaging, multimedia messaging, email and HTML Web browsing are all at your fingertips. Did I mention this thing moves like lightning?

The Samsung Epic isn’t for everyone. Just for everyone who can’t settle for lesser technology once they know the performance bar has been raised. If you are one of those who demands the latest and the best, you’ll enjoy a tremendous online discount when you order your Samsung Epic 4G with a new Sprint account.

Of course, there are many more heavily discounted and even free smartphones available for your perusal. Check out the daily specials now at Cell Phone Plans Finder.

Ethernet over Copper Growing By Leaps and Bounds

What’s the hottest new access network service? It’s clearly Ethernet over Copper. So hot is it that competitive carriers are scrambling to add coverage as fast as they can. An recent example is XO Communications, a major player in EoC, that just expanded its Ethernet over Copper network by more than 30%.

Just what is Ethernet over Copper and why is it so hot? The technology was developed in response to changing network priorities. WAN or Wide Area Network networks have traditionally been the domain of the telephone industry, which has adapted telephone transport technology to also carry data and video.

T1 lines have been used almost universally by businesses for point to point and dedicated Ethernet connections. They can be configured to transport 1.5 Mbps in both the upload and download directions. What’s made T1 so universal is that it is provisioned on two pair of ordinary copper telephone wires.

Ethernet over Copper also makes use of those same copper telephone wires, some of which have been in the ground for decades. Why push this old copper into service when fiber optics is so much more advanced? Simply because there is so much copper available and perfectly functional. Every business location has copper telephone bundles installed by default. If you want fiber optic service, you need to be in a fiber lit building or often be willing to pay the construction costs of extending fiber from the nearest carrier point to presence to your location. If copper will work, construction costs are minimal to non-existant.

But what can you do with copper? You can extend your LAN across town or across the country. You can even connect internationally to include locations overseas. Want a fast, reliable connection to the Internet? EoC will give you just that.

But why Ethernet over Copper instead of just sticking with the venerable T1 line? It comes down to cost, bandwidth and services. EoC is typically cheaper than T1 for the same level of bandwidth. In fact, you can often get 3 Mbps Ethernet for the same price as 1.5 Mbps T1. The most popular service is 10 Mbps Ethernet over Copper, although you can also get 20 Mbps and sometimes up to 50 Mbps over copper. T1 bandwidth can also be increased by bundling multiple T1 lines together, but the cost is often prohibitive above 10 Mbps.

In addition, Ethernet over Copper keeps your network protocol as Ethernet from LAN to WAN and back to LAN. That allows you to create virtual LANs that include multiple locations acting as one bridged LAN network. Ethernet line and LAN services are becoming very popular with businesses that support multiple locations.

Is Ethernet over Copper a service that would benefit your company or organization? Before you sign a contract for any other service, be sure to get pricing and availability of Ethernet over Copper bandwidth. It can be an eye-opener.

Wireless SIP Trunking

One thing we know about business telephone and dedicated broadband access is that they are wireline services. Well, that’s what we used to know. There’s a new player in the marketplace and it is wireless SIP trunking.

A pioneer in this field is Airband Communications. They offer enterprise-class IP-based voice services bundled with wireless Internet access. In wireline parlance, this could be called a SIP trunk or Integrated voice and data service. But Airband VoIP trunking service has some unique advantages.

Like other integrated services, there is only one WAN connection providing both telephone and broadband Internet access. This one just happens to be wireless. Also like the better integrated services, bandwidth is dynamically allocated between voice and data to make efficient use of the connection. Voice packets get priority to maintain quality of service. The bandwidth sharing of voice and data also only exists between your facility and Airband. Your telephone calls never travel on the Internet and aren’t subject to the disruptive effects of congestion, jitter and latency on the public network. In fact, you get a unified service level agreement from Airband that covers availability, packet loss, latency and jitter for your peace of mind.

Standard telephone trunking using ISDN PRI generally comes in blocks of 23 channel with a maximum carrying capacity of 23 separate phone lines. Airband’s VoIP trunks can be added in single increments. Buy these outside phone line connections as business picks up and you need them rather than paying for excess resources up front.

A standard package starts at 5 VoIP trunks minimum bundled with 2 Mbps of Internet access. This is perfect for smaller businesses, with unlimited local calling and 200 minutes of domestic long distance per trunk. 911 support is included. So is local number portability so you can keep the phone numbers you have now. You’ll also get both inbound and outbound caller name and ID. If you want, you can add-on DIDs (Direct Inward Dialing), toll free numbers and directory listing, and analog/Fax/security lines. The interface of this system will support either PRI or SIP to your in-house telephone system.

Don’t confuse this fixed wireless service with either cellular or WiFi services. This is professional grade private fixed wireless network with 128 bit data encryption and quality of service (QoS) controls. The radios at each end automatically adjust 8 levels of signal modulation to ensure reliable transmission in all types of weather. In fact Airband offers Dual Path Service Delivery (DPSD) that automatically fails over to the backup service should the main path ever fail. With wireline services, you have to do this yourself by ordering separate diverse line services from different carriers or take your chances on line breaks.

Could your business or organization benefit from a high quality fixed wireless solution with bandwidth up to Gigabit Ethernet? If so, get service availability and pricing on fixed wireless for voice and data now.

Future Proofing Your WAN With Ethernet

The nature of wide area networks is changing. Once the exclusive domain of telephone technologies, core networks are being re-engineered for packet switched services. Voice will always be important, but data and video are now the dominant forms of network traffic. How does this affect your business connections and should you be doing anything to stay ahead of the curve?

Most businesses and organizations are being affected by increased requirements for bandwidth. As their line service contracts come up for renewal, savvy managers are taking a look at what’s available now and rethinking their options. Do you simply renew the T1 line contract that you’ve had for years or switch to a newer Ethernet service?

I mention Ethernet because Ethernet in the WAN, also called Carrier Ethernet and Metro Ethernet, are becoming the network connection resource of choice. What’s behind it is a recognition that virtually all business, organizational and home networks are based on standardized Ethernet. That includes the wildly popular WiFi wireless routers and hotspots that have Ethernet inputs and outputs. It seem intuitive that Ethernet would make a good metro and wide area connection technology.

What’s held back Ethernet WAN services is the entrenchment of telephone technology line services. Until deregulation, there was a century of monopoly ownership and development of analog phone lines, carrier telephony, T-Carrier digital line service and SONET/SDH fiber optic services. All of these services were designed to support the basic core element of the individual two-way telephone conversation. Even the vast cellular networks were designed with telephones in mind first and data piggybacked on later as an afterthought.

With data and video dominating digital traffic, it makes sense to take another look at what network characteristics make the most sense for now and in the future. Network providers, including incumbent telephone companies, have done this and are moving rapidly to IP networks and connections. The two most on the ascendancy right now are Ethernet and MPLS Networks. MPLS is an excellent choice for creating a virtual private network cloud that can transport nearly any type of traffic across the country or worldwide. It readily supports Ethernet, making those two network technologies a powerful combination.

While there are other network protocols for specialized applications, it looks right now like we are headed toward an everything-over-Ethernet world. It’s an easy connection from your switches and routers to the carrier that transports your packets to remote destinations. You just plug-in and go. You also have the option of ordering a layer 2 Ethernet service so that you can make all your distant sites connect like they are on the same bridged LAN. In a way, Ethernet makes the WAN portion of the network disappear.

Is it the right time for you to move to Ethernet services? You’ll likely find that they are less expensive per Mbps that other options and offer scalable bandwidth anywhere from 1 Mbps on up to 10 Gbps or more. Check out the cost and availability of Ethernet WAN service for your locations before you commit to other options. You could be missing out of a better deal.

Avoid DNS Cache Poisoning With UltraDNS

On today’s Internet you are going nowhere without DNS. Well, at least if you are human. DNS, the Domain Name System, is what converts all those domain names and lengthy page links into the numerical format that is the native language of the Internet. Living without DNS is untenable with IPV4. When we move to IPV6, probably within a year, it will become even more hopeless.

That’s why fast, reliable DNS services are absolutely critical to anyone using the Web. We tend to take DNS for granted, since these services are provided by every Internet service provider and every Web hosting company. But all DNS services are not equal. Some are slow, some are slow to update, and some are just plain dangerous.

The dangerous part comes from a security attack called cache poisoning. Evil doers, mischief makers, criminals and some of your nastier competitors, compromise a DNS server by exploiting a software weakness. Once in control, they can hijack your traffic and serve up any content they want to unsuspecting visitors. Imagine paying for traffic to your sales sites and then having that traffic redirected to someone else’s sales sites behind your back. Even worse, the content served up could contain malicious content that infects the computers of your visitors and ruins your reputation.

A good way to avoid security issues like DNS cache poisoning is to use a more premium DNS service that offers improved security features. UltraDNS from Neustar is a managed external DNS service that offers a feature called Cache Defender designed to do just that. UltraDNS creates a secure link between the ISP servers and the UltraDNS authoritative DNS servers to prevent malicious DNS responses from poisoning the ISP server’s cache. It uses proprietary software rather than the industry standard BIND software that has been known to have security vulnerabilities.

Managed DNS services are an alternative to taking whatever default DNS service is available from your hosting provider or managing your own DNS servers in-house. The UltraDNS Managed DNS Service has the advantage of being built on a global directory platform with network nodes on five continents worldwide. DNS service requests are routed to the nearest geographical node, with redundancy provided by the other nodes. Being a managed or “cloud” service, you are relieved of burden of system maintenance and operation and benefit from having this immense global resource at your disposal. So confident is Neustar in the robustness of this system that they offer a Service Level Agreement (SLA) with a 100% uptime network guarantee.

POS For Temporary Store Locations

One thing you see every holiday season is the emergence of “pop up stores.” These are temporary retail locations that take over unused floor or store space in malls and strip centers to offer seasonal merchandise. You’ll find them selling christmas decorations or gifts, Halloween costumes, calendars, and other items that only sell for a few weeks or months during the year. When the season is over, they shut down operations until the next year. While these stores are in operation, they need to have the same or even more efficient point of sales systems than regular stores.

Why is POS so important? Simply because the nature of a temporary store is that you have lots and lots of customer traffic in one big burst. Any slowdowns at the checkout lane will drive potential customers to get out of line and go somewhere else. These are sales that can’t be recouped. If you don’t grab them when they’re hot, you don’t get them at all.

Traditional telecom services are a problem for temporary operations of all types. The standard contract for a T1 line or other bandwidth solution is the 1 to 3 year contract. That’s fine for bricks and mortar operations that are a fixture in the community. They know they’ll need the service for at least that long. But what’s a pop-up operation to do? Pay for an entire year’s service even if you need it for only a few weeks to a few months?

Relax. You don’t need to resort to cash only sales or those credit card machines that mangle the cards. You can get highly reliable, fast and secure cashless transactions. What’s more, you can lease this wireless broadband capability on a month to month basis and be up and running in a matter of days. No professional installation is needed. The system comes ready to plug-in and use.

What sort of bandwidth solution is this? It’s a proprietary 3G wireless service from Accel Networks. What Accel has done is make arrangements with the 3G cellular service providers for coverage in the US and Canada. These cover over 90% of business locations, pretty much wherever you can get a strong cell signal. Accel provides you with a bundled proprietary hardware and access solution pre-configured for the best performance at a particular location. Support and monitoring is 24/7. Bandwidth bursts to over 1 Mbps download, considerably more than you’ll likely need for POS even during your busiest times. It’s all PCI compliant so you can accept major credit cards.

Temporary store locations are just one of the important uses for this wireless service. It also works perfectly to provide broadband Internet connectivity to construction trailers, special events, cleanup and rebuilding after natural disasters, or while waiting for permanent wireline services to be installed.

Many businesses use this service on a continuing basis. It takes the place of VSAT satellite terminals, hideously slow dial-up Internet access, and unavailable DSL or Cable broadband. The honest truth is that many smaller businesses don’t need more bandwidth or need to pay higher prices than with this near-universally available business wireless service. These include retail stores, gas stations, convenience stores, quick service restaurants and others.

Do you have a need for temporary or attractively priced wireless broadband service in your business or organization? Find out how little it costs and how fast you can get 3G wireless broadband service at your desired locations. You may wonder why you ever thought you needed a wire.

International Dedicated Internet Access

If your business depends on the Internet for information, sales or its entire operation, what you need is rock solid Internet access. For international companies, you need that rock solid Internet access at each and every location.

The Internet has a robust top-tier network infrastructure, with the world’s largest telecommunications providers peering to ensure that any packet from any place on Earth can get to any other place on Earth. The inherent design of the network is self-healing. If a path goes down, the core routers will find an alternative path from source to destination. This is all automatic and distributed throughout the Internet. Many of the performance limitations experienced by businesses and individuals are more related to the access networks than the core of the Internet itself.

For sure, the lack of determinate paths, quality of service mechanisms, and latency minimization does pose some limitations on Internet performance related to real-time processes. That’s especially true for two-way voice and video. That, plus transient congestion issues and inherent security, is what drives the expansion of content delivery networks and private IP networks. Even so, for e-commerce, public information distribution, email communication, team collaboration, remote workers, and many other needs, using the Internet is the most economic connectivity option if not the only one that makes sense. There’s no reason you can’t leverage the power of this enormous public resource with the right access service.

The gold standard for Internet connections is called DIA or Dedicated Internet Access. What dedicated means is that there is a certain amount of bandwidth dedicated to your exclusive use from your business location, through your Internet service provider and out to the Internet.

But aren’t all Internet connections dedicated? Not by a long shot. Virtually no residential Internet services, mobile broadband or bargain-rate Internet services sold to small businesses are dedicated. Instead, they are what is called “shared” connections. You and a few dozen to a few hundred of your fellow broadband users share a block of dedicated bandwidth between your location and your Internet service provider.

Why is this done? Simply to reduce the cost of service to make it more attractive. Many users, especially individuals, prefer low cost to guaranteed performance. They don’t mind so much if files take varying times to download or that VoIP audio has some distortion or hiccups. They’ll certainly be frustrated if their “best effort” Internet service goes down for a few hours or, in extreme cases a few days or weeks, but that won’t drive them to spend more for professional grade DIA.

Any business using the Internet for more than casual access can’t tolerate varying and indeterminate performance. The costs of lost business and productivity mount up faster than the cost of digital line services. That’s why serious businesses quickly turn to dedicated connections with service level agreements to ensure maximum availability as well as bandwidth. That bandwidth ranges from T1 lines and Ethernet over Copper broadband up through SONET and Carrier Ethernet over fiber optic connections. What you need depends on your particular situation. It could be anywhere from 1 Mbps right on up to 10 Gbps or more.

International companies have special needs, in that technology does vary somewhat worldwide. An obvious example is the use of T1 lines in the United States and E1 in Europe. An ideal situation is to work with a provider that can give you the right level of bandwidth with the right interface at each of your locations. That’s what International network service companies do. You have the advantage of one vendor to deal with and one bill for all of your broadband connections and virtual private networks (VPN) that ensure security on the largely insecure Internet.

Are you in the market for more robust Internet connections to serve your business locations, either domestic USA or worldwide? If so, find out how much quality and bandwidth you can get for your budget for International Dedicated Internet Access.

VPLS Is The Ethernet Cloud

We’re all familiar with the term cloud network. Various technologies are used to provide the infrastructure of the cloud and the services you can get through the cloud. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could have your own cloud that included all your business locations?

In a way, you can. While it’s generally not practical to create a completely proprietary cloud network, you can get very close with VPLS or Virtual Private LAN Service.

The “virtual” in VPLS means that you are sharing a privately operated multipoint network that you don’t own. The most popular network for this purpose is MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching. A characteristic of MPLS networks is that they can transport any type of traffic from point to point, point to multi-point or in a fully meshed network. That includes Ethernet traffic of most any bandwidth.

VPLS is an Ethernet based meshed network that is implemented using an MPLS cloud with Ethernet access connections. Pseudo-wires are used to create any-to-any Ethernet connectivity through the MPLS network. Using layer 2 pseudo-wires allows maintenance of a single bridged domain. This is what gives the perception that all of your sites are interconnected on your own Ethernet cloud. It is truly a virtual private LAN.

VPLS makes sense if you have multiple sites in a single metropolitan area but want the experience of having everyone working in a single large, indeed very large, office building. With VPLS the PC or printer in the next office is exactly as close on the network as the PC or printer ten miles away. But VPLS isn’t limited to metropolitan area networks. You can network many cities in the state or many cities in many states. The extent of your network is limited only by the service footprint of your service provider.

Actually, provider footprint is not even a limiting factor anymore, thanks to Ethernet Exchanges like Telx that interconnect participating carriers. It is even possible to include international locations in your VPLS cloud. AboveNet is a competitive carrier that offers international VPLS for the US and major cities in Europe.

Any company or organization with multiple point of presence should have a look at VPLS as a cost effective and seamless way to interconnect their voice, video and data networks. It is right for you? Find out with a quick inquiry for cost and availability of VPLS services serving your locations.

The Siren Song of Cloud Computing

You may have a sense that you are hearing the call of the cloud wherever you go. Cloud computing, cloud services and cloud networks are, indeed, the hot topic of technology. But that song you can’t get out of your head? Perhaps what you are hearing is “It’s Cloud Computing.” Let’s listen now:



Loose Bruce Kerr pretty much says it all, with some apology to Joni Mitchell. No apologies needed to the juggernaut that is cloud services. This is a true revolution in technology, much the same as the move from mainframes to networked PCs and now back to something of a mainframe in the cloud. True, there are security and connectivity issues to be addressed. But once cloud services become established as mainstream, the idea of actually buying and upgrading software will seem as quaint as address and data switches on the front of a computer.

Are you missing out by pooh-poohing the availability of cloud computing, storage and networking? You could be saving a considerable amount of money with MPLS cloud networking to link multiple sites. If you are not ready to buy your computing from the cloud, perhaps the intermediate step of managed colocation could be a big and staff saver. It’s good to at least look at both sides, now... and in the future.

BlackBerry Torch Fires Up Mobile Business

Like the torch that heralds the start of a new Olympics, the blackBerry Torch heralds the introduction of a new approach to mobile business communications.

The two big changes you see in this smartphone are the combination of touch screen and slide-out QWERTY keyboard, plus introduction of the new BlackBerry 6 operating system. Some of BlackBerry’s claims for the new OS are the ability to see all your social and RSS feeds in one place, faster Web browsing with multiple pages open, universal search for everything on your BlackBerry smartphone, improved multimedia with a build-in YouTube app, simple setup and personalizing, an intuitive fluid design.

If it sounds like BlackBerry has gone social, it has. This simply reflects the fact that social networking is now an important element in business, especially customer service and new customer acquisition. Of course you want easy and fast access to Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube, Linkedin and your other social networks. You need those interactions on an impromptu if not continuous basis.

Other key features of the BlackBerry Torch 9800 for AT&T include the impressive 5 Megapixel digital camera with flash, continuous auto-focus, digital zoom, face detection integrated GPS location tagging and video capture. The GPS services support also works for location-based services like AT&T Navigator.

The full touch screen features a full HTML Web browser with pinch-to-soom and tabbed browsing. You’ll be able to access email, read important documents or surf the Web while you are on a call, thanks to the AT&T network that has this multitasking ability enabled. Others don’t. You’ll be able to download view Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents on the go. The next generation messaging capability allows you to send group messages and maps. Visual voicemail lets you listen to your voicemail messages in any order and easily manage your inbox without calling in.

By the way, this is not just a BlackBerry device but a 220 country world phone as well. It is compatible with the GSM 850,900,1800 and 1900 bands and UTMS 800, 850, 1900 and 2100 bands. That pretty much covers the globe. You’ll have 3G data speeds where available and WiFi that autoconnects at AT&T HotSpots. Don’t worry about running out of storage for everything you carry with you on your BlackBerry. The Torch lets you expand up to 36 GB using a microSD memory card.

Are you a BlackBerry user that’s ready to move up to the latest technology? Or have you been eyeing BlackBerry devices with envy? Here’s your chance to get a leg up on your colleagues at a tremendous online discount. Learn more and order your BlackBerry Torch 9800 for AT&T now.

Of course, you’ll also find excellent deals on free and heavily discounted smartphones at Cell Phone Plans Finder. Be sure to check the today’s special deals.

Free Help On Your Telecom Needs

How would you like to hire some help for free? Not just any help, mind you, but high quality technical expertise to assist you with your telephone and computer networks. No out of pocket cost today or ever. Do you think that offer works well with today’s shrunken personnel budgets?

I’ll bet you do. In fact, you are probably chafing at the bit to find out where you can get some of this help before it’s all gone. Well, relax. There’s plenty to go around.

How can this be true? After all, if you expect to get a service then you also expect to pay for it. You can’t get something for nothing, can you? Yes, you can, if someone else is paying the bill.

Perplexed? Don’t be. What I’m talking about is a telecom brokerage service that has a large group of expert consultants in telephony, computer networking, international network services, wireless business solutions and the like. They stand ready to work with you right now, if only you would let them know what you need. You don’t have to be too specific. Just type a sentence or two to give them the general gist of what you are after. Someone will email or call you shortly to work through the details.

What happens after that? Your friendly consultant may take a few hours or even a couple of days to gather quotes of dozens of competitive service providers and sort out the best price/performance offers to present to you. This is the type of leg work your own staff would otherwise have to do... while you are paying them. No available IT staff to query dozens of potential suppliers in order to find the best match to your needs? Then you really need this service.

Some of these expert consultants routinely spend hours, even dozens of hours working on a single project for their client. How much do they bill per hour? Nothing at all. Oh, they get paid alright. But it’s not by you or any other end user. The brokerage service is paid by the service providers themselves in lieu of having to hire their own staff to do this work. You don’t get dinged with a higher price for service either. You’ll pay exactly the same as if you tracked down each competitive carrier or other service provider and ordered service directly from them without any outside assistance.

One other big advantage of working through a telecom broker is that they have the ability to compare and contrast offers from several to several dozen providers offering a suitable service for your business and location. They can keep a cool head sorting through the offers because they aren’t beholding to a particular vendor. They also know about special limited time offers being run by each providers, information you are unlikely to discover yourself.

So, whether you don’t have a staff or would just rather supplement their effort with free expert consulting service, you owe it to yourself and your bottom line to take advantage of this offer. Simply enter a brief online inquiry to describe your networking need and a friendly Telarus consultant will be touch pronto. You’ll be surprised at how much information you get for almost no effort on your part.

ENLAN Spans The Nation

The idea of having all your company locations on a single extended LAN is one that is gaining traction. Why continue to manage a nightmare of dozens or hundreds of connections to link an array of branch offices or retail locations when a single managed network can handles this for you?

TW Telecom calls this service ENLAN for Extended Native LAN. It provides users with a fast reliable and secure network that extends to encompass what is normally considered the WAN or Wide Area Network territory.

The WAN has traditionally been the jurisdiction of the telecom companies. If you needed to leave your own property, you were forced to convert your traffic to a telco standard to travel on their network and then convert back at the remote location. No more. A combination of Ethernet and MPLS is making the WAN invisible. It all now looks like one big LAN.

The way this works is that the core of the extended LAN is the TW Telecom MPLS Cloud. As a multi-protocol network, the MPLS Cloud can transport whatever digital format is required. That includes voice, video and data packets as well as traditional TDM services.

Ethernet is a perfect fit with MPLS networks. TW Telecom lets you keep everything in the Ethernet protocol, just like it is on your LAN. Rather than going through a speed bump when you have to exit your edge router and enter the WAN, you simply hook up to an Ethernet connection that leaves your facility. When this Ethernet access network reaches the MPLS Cloud it is assigned to one or more L2 Tunnels where it is transported to its intended destination. From there another Ethernet access connection takes it to the remote location.

Note that all connections are Ethernet and the transport takes place through layer 2 tunnels. That allows you to keep a switched Ethernet protocol linking all your desired locations. It looks just like one big LAN, even though you are traversing a MPLS cloud network on the way from point to point.

Being able to stay at the layer 2 switching level is one advantage of ENLAN. Another is that the Ethernet access connections and MPLS tunnel bandwidth is scalable. You can order bandwidths from 2 Mbps up through 1 Gbps. Your access is through IEEE standard 10/100/1000/10000 Mbps Ethernet interfaces. With scalability you can get the bandwidth you need to support your operations right now and then easily upgrade as needed.

Is ENLAN or Ethernet / MPLS networking right for your business or organization. To find out quickly and easily, simply request a quick quote for the bandwidth and locations you need to support. Then see if you can justify not saving a small fortune on your network services.