Most enterprises are on top of their local area networks or LANs. With 100 Mbps, 1,000 Mbps and 10 Gbps switches in the network closets and Fast and Gigabit Ethernet network cards built into just about every PC and peripheral, LAN bandwidth is relatively easy to come by. No so once the network leaves your premises. That's where you turn your traffic over to a telecom provider for transmission within your metro area or cross-country. That's also where the cost per Mbps of traffic has traditionally been the highest. In most cases, the cost of replicating your LAN bandwidth through the WAN is prohibitive. It's also been unnecessary. Internal traffic levels have been much higher than traffic with the outside world. But this is changing.
WAN traffic levels are on the increase for a lot of reasons. The most basic is an increase in business, especially online business. As more and more customers shop via company websites and place their orders online Internet traffic goes up. Online B2B transactions are also on the rise. Not so long ago, most business was conducted via telephone, FAX, and mailed documents. The speed of commerce is now driving companies to Extranets with their suppliers and larger customers. Smaller customers who used to phone-in orders or call for customer service are getting more inclined to manage their accounts online.
A trend toward data center consolidation is exacerbating this situation. As more and more servers and their respective services are brought in-house you need to provide all that Internet bandwidth that was once provided by the hosting company. Other Internet traffic is generated from branch offices and remote workers using the company VPN while they work at home.
A new survey published by Blue Coat Systems identifies such factors as daily backups between data centers, Internet traffic growing as a percentage of corporate WAN traffic, and increasing use of SSL as a standard protocol for secure Web transactions as driving the need for increased WAN bandwidth. Blue Coat supplies WAN optimization appliances that increase the efficiency of WAN bandwidth. Other companies such as Expand Networks, Juniper Networks, Cisco Systems, and Riverbed offer competing hardware solutions.
Another approach is to simply increase your WAN bandwidth to accommodate the increased traffic. But isn't that the most expensive solution? Not necessarily. While WAN optimization hardware can improve the utilization of the lines you have now, a competitive WAN carrier can reduce the cost of your present bandwidth and the bandwidth that you really need. This is possible due to a few factors you may not be aware of.
First of all, the cost of nearly all WAN bandwidth from T1 dedicated Internet, point to point private lines, ISDN PRI for PBX phone systems, and DS3 to OCx for high capacity networking have all come down in price the last few years. If you have been locked into a long term contract or have been automatically renewing without running competitive price checks, you may be paying far more than the current market price for comparable services.
The number of competitive bandwidth vendors has increased dramatically. A new online search tool called GeoQuote introduced within the last four years makes it easy to "play the field" to find the best bandwidth prices available for your particular locations. Compared to calling around or interviewing vendors to ferret out the best deals, this approach is both fast and painless.
New bandwidth products have also been introduced in the last few years that may be more appropriate to your needs. MPLS networks can be good replacements for Frame Relay networks in connecting multiple remote sites. Carrier Ethernet solutions offer a more technically efficient way to transfer data from one corporate LAN to another. Internet-based secure VPN connections may work as well as dedicated private lines but at a much lower lease cost.
What is the most cost effective solution to unclogging your WAN? Our team of technical consultants would love to evaluate your current WAN costs and provide you with competitive quotes that might make your eyes pop.
Who knows? You may even wind up increasing the performance of your Wide Area Network and actually paying less than you do now. It can happen.
