VPLS Connects Your Many LANs

Does your company have multiple locations? I’ll bet each one has its own LAN for computing and perhaps VoIP telephony, doesn’t it? So, how do you connect them all together?

The answer is probably, “With some difficulty.”

Well, how would you like to be able to do that with very little difficulty, and perhaps at a considerable cost savings over your present point to point communications links?

The network service you’ll be interested in is called VPLS or Virtual Private LAN Service. It’s offered by Layer2 Communications and other highly competitive network service providers.

VPLS is a class of VPN or Virtual Private Network that connects multiple sites to form a single bridged domain. It is implemented using a MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching Network. That makes it protocol-transparent so that all services, regardless of which location the are physically located at, appear to be on the larger LAN that serves all locations.

VPLS is sometimes called Transparent LAN service. That’s because WAN communications moves from level 3 to level 2. Your connection to the network is via a managed edge switch that is provided by the network operator. The inherent broadcast nature of Ethernet is preserved, creating a “plug and play” environment as new services are added to the network and discovered by other members connected to the VPLS.

VPLS might be the right service for your company or organization if you need to connect anywhere from a few to a few dozen locations as if they were on a single Local Area Network. Advantages of this approach, compared to a private network arrangement with individual point to point connections back to headquarters, include lower latency, higher efficiency, and lower cost... perhaps much lower cost.

Will VPLS save you money and make your network more versatile and easier to operate? Why not discuss your needs with one of our expert consultants and get a complementary quote that meets your business needs? Our telecom brokerage service represents Layer2 Communications and other high value network service providers. Request a VPLS service quote online right now.

Motorola EM330 Titanium is FREE

Let me tell you about the Motorola EM330 Titanium. It’s a great looking flip-phone that you’ll be proud to carry and use. It has the now-standard dual displays. The outside display is a basic black and white screen that shows time, signal strength, battery life and other useful information. The inside display is a 1.8 inch screen in full color.

So far, you’ve got a basic flip-phone that runs on the AT&T wireless network. But look what else you get in the EM330. How about a 1.3 Megapixel digital camera that offers 4x digital zoom and camcorder mode for capturing the action in video clips. It supports AT&T picture messaging.

With such a nice camera, you may find yourself using it as a regular digital camera and not just to take funny pix to send to your friends. Concerned about running out of memory from taking too many pictures? No problem. Just add a microSD memory card up to 2 GB and snap to your heart’s content.

How about the music features? This flip phone has a built-in MP3 player with external dedicated music controls. It also has an FM radio so you can tune in your favorite stations. Want to listen in private? You can stream your tunes to a wireless Bluetooth headset to get that “big” sound. Transfer music from your PC using a USB cable or Bluetooth.

Stay connected to your social circle or business associates via email, text messaging, instant messaging or the built-in mobile Web browser. Make sure you order the plan add-on services you need to communicate as you please.

You might be concerned that having extra capabilities in your phone will reduce your talk time or add to the size and weight. Not so. Those clever Motorola engineers have devised circuitry that fits into a handy size 3.5 x 2 x 0.9 inch titanium colored case weighing in at just 3.2 ounces. Talk time? It’s up to 7 hours, so chat on my friend. On standby your battery will last up to 10 days between charges.

What are the hottest cell phone deals available right now, including free cell phones? Use the Cell Phone Plan Finder to check out the top phones and associated wireless service plans.

Multi Protocols Network Services

MPLS, Multi Protocol Label Switching, is a fairly new type of network service that is growing in importance. It is often touted as the future of telecommunications. Let's have a look at why that might be so and how it can benefit your business applications.

The idea behind MPLS is in the name. The "multi protocol" part means that this is a network designed to transport many types of network protocols. The Internet is not multi-protocol. It's based on IP or Internet Protocol. If you want to send something through the internet it has to meet the IP specs.

The PSTN or Public Switched Telephone Network is also not "multi-protocol" It's based on TDM or Time Division Multiplexing. TDM creates small 64Kbps channels originally designed for digitized telephone calls. Anything else sent through the PSTN has to fit in one or more of those channels. That's true for even the highest speed SONET (Synchronous Optical Network) fiber optic services.

Certainly, we use both the Internet and the PSTN to transport everything from telephone conversations to high definition video. This is done by converting between protocols. Just about anything digital can be sent through any digital network. But there is a price to be paid in equipment cost, time delay or latency, and inefficiency for each of those conversions.

MPLS networks are based on something called label switching. That's the LS in MPLS. Data packets entering a MPLS network are assigned labels that where they are to be routed and the QoS or Quality of Service required. Voice or interactive video packets are time sensitive and sensitive to QoS. General data transfers are not so sensitive to latency and jitter.

The traffic engineering aspect of MPLS networks make them superior to using the Internet for time sensitive applications. An MPLS network is good for transporting telephone calls, video, data transfers, encrypted information and interactive data. Everything enteres through an ingress router that assigns it one or more tags. Everything leaves through an egress router that removes the tags. While traversing the network, only the tags are examined by the tag routers. The original packets themselves do not need to be inspected because everything the network needs to function is defined in the tags themselves.

MPLS networks are especially good for companies and other organizations with multiple locations. The network cloud can provide a mesh network where any location can talk to any other location. Or you can define who gets to connect to who. It's almost like having your own private network, but a lot cheaper. The service provider ensures that you get the bandwidth and connections you need to ensure that other users will not impact the performance of your service.

There are many competitive telecom service providers offering MPLS network services in competition to the traditional telcos. How do you find them? The easy way is to use a telecom brokerage service that represents a dozen or more carriers, so you can get the best price for the network services that meet your needs. Shop For MPLS is such a service and offers complementary consulting as well as fast and accurate price quotes. Request an MPLS quote in under 2 minutes, right now.

New Ethernet Internet Finder Service

If you are in a business that needs high bandwidth connectivity and you want it at better than traditional telco prices, then you should have a look at the new GigaPackets Ethernet Internet service finder.

If you are already aware of the cost and performance benefits of Metro and Carrier Ethernet services, then you'll want to see what's available for your business location right now. Why? Because the faster you make the transition from antiquated telecommunication connections to the new Ethernet WAN services, the sooner you'll start saving money every month. In the current economic environment, who can afford to wait?

What's all the excitement over Ethernet? Isn't that just the protocol that runs on local area networks?

Oh, yes. Ethernet is at the core of nearly all LAN networks. The only exceptions are very specialized networks for high speed disk access or proprietary setups used in research. Any PC, server or network appliance you buy today is going to be setup for some flavor of Ethernet. The most common speeds are 10 Mbps Ethernet, 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, 1000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet and some installations of 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

But the GigaTrunks Ethernet Internet finder isn't looking for Ethernet in the LAN. It's looking for Ethernet that runs outside of your company. That includes connections to other business locations and to the Internet. Collectively, these are called Ethernet WAN connections.

Now, here's what the excitement is all about. First, being Ethernet, these connections effectively allow you to extend your LAN across town or across the country. Since no protocol conversion is involved in transfering packets from your LAN to the WAN and back to a LAN somewhere else, Ethernet transport services are highly efficient and offer low latency.

But that's just half the story. The other half, perhaps even the more important half, is that Ethernet is proving to be a very low cost service compared to traditional telecommunication service prices.

Why? One reason is because Ethernet is being offered by newer network service providers who are out to compete with those old-line telecom companies. Many have all new IP-based networks with the latest high performance equipment and none of the old legacy services and connections to maintain. They can often make the connection directly from your company to wherever else you want to go. By staying on a single provider's network, you can enjoy a cost advantage.

Another opportunity for cost savings comes with the development of EoC or Ethernet over Copper services. This is an access technology that connects from your company to the service provider using bundles of twisted pair copper telco wiring. Most likely you have a multi-pair cable in place already. Bandwidths up to 45 Mbps are possible with EoC, depending on your distance to the carrier's facilities.

How much can you save by using Ethernet instead of what else is available? A sure way to find out is to take a minute and use the GigaPackets Ethernet Internet Finder right now.

We Welcome a New iMac to the Family

It’s Saturday afternoon. I’m wondering where it is. Could the FedEx online tracking be wrong? The truck’s been out for delivery for about six hours now. They must have unloaded every package possible long ago. Oh, wait. What’s that white truck across the street? Is it? Is it really? Yes, it is!

Inside a plain brown corrugated cardboard outer shipping box is what I’ve been eagerly anticipating for a week. It’s a brand new Apple 24 inch iMac shipped with custom options from the factory.

What’s perhaps a little silly about all this anticipation is that it’s taken me a year to actually order one of these. In fact, I’ve been on the PC side of things for about 10 years after well over a decade as a Mac only user. Why the change of heart yet again? What is it I hope to achieve with a Macintosh that I can’t with a PC? Why now?

It all comes down to two things. How decrepit your current computer is and what you are planning to do from now on. Notice I didn’t say what you are actually doing. The choice of the iMac is more for the future than the present.

I’ll explain. The whole reason I switched from Mac to PC in the first place was incompatibility with the corporate world I was deeply immersed in at the time. The PowerPC Mac I was using was in need of replacement. The processor was too slow, the hard drive was too small, and the memory was laughable tiny even after a couple of upgrades. The cost of further upgrades was approaching the cost of a new machine, so I figured that was the perfect time to switch to a more corporate computer.

Now fast forward to this year. The Compaq desktop Windows PC has slowed with every browser and system software update. It takes up to 20 minutes every morning for it to power up, load all the software in the tray, check for new virus definitions and update the virus software. You wouldn’t dare bring in email or go searching the Web without those updates. When we go out for lunch, I run a full system virus scan. That may sound like overkill, but it finds something at least once a week.

In addition to the maintenance time needed and the slowing performance, the processor fan is starting to make crunchy noises. I’ve already replaced a disk drive and a monitor. A new fan wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But the truth is that “grandpa” is getting tired. Today, a fan. Tomorrow, a power supply. The next day? Hey, the keyboard is getting a little sticky and the wireless mouse needs more time to charge every day. No, it’s really time for a replacement once again.

But why switch back to a Mac? I’ve eyed my wife’s MacBook Pro with envy for a year now. I used it to record some audio reports using GarageBand. The audio quality was startlingly good and the process of recording and editing was nearly intuitive from start to finish. I would have done more, but there was no way to get enough time on that computer.

Therein lies the explanation. You can get a wide range of software to do just about anything on a PC. But the Mac comes with creative multimedia tools already installed and ready to use. They’re also tightly integrated as a system. With a PC, it’s up to you to make all those disparate functions sing together in harmony... if you can.

So, the iMac is an investment in the future. In my opinion, that’s a creative future full of interactivity and multimedia. It’s a world that I want to be part of as a matter of course, not as a heroic process of kludging together pieces of this and that. I think that Apple is, and truthfully always has been, way out in front of Microsoft and others in evolving toward the future even when the status quo seems to be working just fine. So, Mac it is.

Now, do the results live up to the anticipation? Here’s how it went down on Saturday. Within 15 minutes after arrival, the iMac was out of the box and on the desktop with power, broadband and keyboard connected. Minutes later, it was on and connected to the Internet. The wireless mouse (an upgrade) worked fine with no adjustments needed. There were no other connections. It’s one integrated unit with software installed and running as soon as you can see the screen light up.

Granted, there was some customizing required. Gmail worked immediately because it’s Web based and the Safari browser comes ready to run. Email needed to be told what mail servers to use. I’ve got 4 POP mail accounts I need. Oddly enough, the computer never once asked me anything about connecting to the Internet. It found the LAN connection and configured itself. I could have used wireless also, as it comes built-in.

The rest of the weekend was spent playing around with the dashboard widgets, so I’ve got weather radar, forecasts, time, temperature and stock prices at a click of the mouse ball. I’ve also installed the Talking Moose for company, the Firefox browser just because it’s familiar, Stuffit Expander for downloading programs, and Flip4Mac to view Windows Media videos online. Oh, yes, and a favorite photo to use as a desktop background.

That’s it. There was no trial-ware and no junk-ware offers to fend off. In fact, there’s no clutter at all. All the programs are on the dock at the bottom of the screen. The only other object on the desktop is the Macintosh HD in the upper right hand corner.

Now it’s Sunday night. As a test of how useful the new iMac is, I’m writing this on the TextEdit program that automatically checks spelling and grammar as I type. That’s an immediate improvement over WordPad on the PC. Grandpa is snoozing away on the typewriter return. Haven’t needed to turn him on all day. That’s pretty amazing in itself. I recall it taking several days to be able to use him productively in his prime. It took about week after that unfortunate disk crash to get everything back in order. We don’t need to say any more about that.

Now to post to Blogger and then get back to exploring all these new programs. Wow, look at all that space on the desktop. Did I mention this machine has a 24 inch monitor? I’m sure we’ll find some way to put it all to good use.

Is Dial-Up Internet Doomed?

Once the undisputed ruler of the Internet, dial-up service, seems to be facing a bleak future. It's become a broadband world, with every technology from WiFi hotspots to DSL to two-way satellite to Cable Internet to Fiber to the Home to cellular WAN clawing at each other's users in hopes of getting them to switch services. Where does the once cutting edge 56K dial-up service fit in? Or does it?

If you are a heavy broadband user, you may be shocked to hear that as many as 20 or 30 million people in the U.S. still log-in to the bloodcurdling scream of the connecting telephone modem. Are these people Luddites? Masochists? Or do they live way out yonder where the cable lines don't go?

Actually, dial-up Internet users fall into two categories. Those who would switch to broadband in a second if there was a low priced alternative available and those who use the Internet so little that they loathe to pay anything at all. Dial-up works just fine for them, thank you.

Hey, it wasn't that long ago that dial-up worked just fine for all of us. You remember the last century, don't you? I'm so old I can fondly remember getting my first 2400 bps modem bundled with Prodigy service for the Mac. This was pre-Internet, but offered web-like pages that were actually generated by the software installed in the computer. The latest news and other information automatically downloaded from the service as needed to fill in the blanks.

The US Robotics 56K modems that came later were plenty fast enough for surfing text-heavy Web pages, sending and reading email, and even building your own site. As a regular modem upgrader, I came to expect constant performance improvements. But it all stopped at 56K. Why? Because that's all an analog telephone connection can handle. To be truthful, I never got the full 56 Kbps or anything close on our noisy lines. Connections at 36 to 48K were common, but completely usable.

I've had a cable broadband service for almost 10 years now. But I only gave up my dial-up account last year. Why? Because I was still getting significant traffic on that first website and the cable has only become dependable since Comcast took it over a couple of years ago. I cut the cord since my old faithful Web site faded into obscurity and the plethora of free WiFi hotspots nearby serve as an adequate backup ISP.

So if someone who is an avowed heavy Internet user hung on to dial-up service until just recently, it doesn't really surprise me that there are millions of casual users out there who don't feel the need for speed. It could be that email is their killer app. It could be that they only log-in occasionally. It could be that they are social users, not developers, and that the sites they visit aren't that resource demanding. How much speed do you really need for Google searches, Wikipedia, or Twitter?

Suffice it to say that the $9.95 a month dial-up service from NetZero looks really good compared to broadband prices. For $14.95 you can get an accelerated dial-up service that doesn't cram bits down the phone line any faster but gives the effect of faster loading pages by caching, reducing image sizes, pre-fetching and other technical tricks.

Even so, is NetZero destined to be the last dial-up ISP standing? There are forces afoot that might make it so. Most significant is the new rural broadband stimulus that is using public funds to bring at least 640 Kbps broadband to the hinterlands. If prices fall well below $20 a month for broadband, many dial-up stalwarts will be tempted to move on up to watching online videos and hanging out in resource demanding websites.

Frustrated rural residents who have their choice between pricey two-way satellite Internet or cheap dial-up will jump to low cost broadband in the blink of an eye. So will urban dwellers of modest incomes who need cheaper broadband for school work or launching their own online businesses.

There is also a whole class of users who get all the Internet access they need or want on their cell phones. The new touchscreen models with 3G connectivity can message, email, and bring up Web pages as efficiently as PCs running on typical broadband services. A recent entry, the netbook, is a notebook computer that runs on cellular broadband. Get used to one of these and the thought of having a wire connected to your computer just so you can access the Internet will seem quaint, indeed.

Dial-up is far from dead, and its demise may be extended well into the future by the crush of the current recessionary economy. But sooner or later the symbiotic relationship between dial-up modem and analog telephone line will be done for, as both technologies fade into the history of technology along with the telegraph, coal furnaces, and the Victrola.

Dynamic T-1 Offers Business Savings

As a small but growing business, your needs have grown from a single analog phone line to multiple outside lines for local and perhaps long distance calling. You could just keep adding more lines, one at a time, but isn't there a better approach that could be more cost effective? You bet there is. It's called Dynamic T-1.

A dynamic T-1 line is pretty much what it sounds like. This is a T-1 service that adapts itself to your needs on a continuous basis. But how does it do that and why?

First of all, let's consider the traditional T-1 line. T-1 is a digital voice and data line service that can provide you with up to 24 telephone lines or 1.5 Mbps of broadband Internet access on a single line. It actually uses 2 pair of copper telephone wire, so it's a service that's available just about anywhere. Some T-1 lines are set up as private point to point connections between two business locations.

Dynamic T-1 is a newer variation on the T-1 line that gives you both telephone and broadband Internet on the same line. This makes it an ideal choice for the smaller business that needs both telephone lines and Internet broadband. A larger business might need multiple T-1 lines to accommodate their many employees. But as a smaller business, you need something sized for your type of company and priced so that you can afford it.

The way dynamic T-1 service works is that the service provider installs a special piece of equipment often called an IAD or Integrated Access Device at your premises. The T-1 line goes in one side. Your connections for telephone and Internet come out the other side. There's an equivalent piece of equipment at the other end of the line so that the provider can feed both phone service and Internet service to you.

Dynamic T-1 is an advanced form of Integrated T-1 service. The term integrated means that both voice and data are integrated or combined into a single line service. But note that all integrated services are not dynamic. Earlier Integrated T-1 service allocated bandwidth for a given number of phone lines whether they were in use or not. Dynamic T-1 gives priority to phone calls, but re-assigns that bandwidth to speed up your broadband access when the phone is hung up.

Is dynamic T-1 service right for your business? It's certainly more cost effective than buying separate T-1 lines for telephone and Internet access when that's more capacity than you really need. It can also save you money compared to buying a bunch of individual telephone lines and a separate DSL or Cable broadband service that may not be all that reliable. Dynamic T-1 service is highly reliable and an excellent value for the money. Check it out for yourself. Get prices and availability for dynamic T1 service now.

You Are A WiFi Finder

The ultimate in Internet geekiness may be available through ThinkGeek. It's a t-shirt that glows to indicate the strength of nearby WiFi hotspots. Put this on and Internet addicts will follow you anywhere. Better yet, BE the hotspot and you'll have them eating out of the palm of your hand... or at least the signal you're radiating.

The Wi-Fi Detector Shirt by ThinkGeek is a black cotton t-shirt with a removable decal that shows a tower and radiating signal lines. Those lines light up in proportion to the signal strength of a nearby 802.11b or 802.11g WiFi hotspot signal. The closer you get, the more it glows.

Oh, wait. I can see a couple on the beach running toward each other. Their detector shirts get brighter and brighter as they approach until finally...ZAP. The power of love was just too much for the detector circuits and they fizzled.

OK, that's probably a bit far-fetched. But there is a way to make your detector shirt glow brighter as you approach the object of your affection. All they need is to be carrying a MiFi Personal Hotspot. That's the cool new device that slips in a shirt or jacket pocket, or can be tucked into a laptop bag or purse. The MiFi combines a wireless modem aircard for Sprint or Verizon Wireless Internet service along with a WiFi card to create a completely wireless roving hotspot. It can be used to secretly give you broadband access where others have none. Well, not so secret when someone with a detector shirt nears.

Say, are you still in pursuit of a compatible significant other? In that case, YOU bring the MiFi hotspot and wear the shirt. Geeks in the know will immediately recognize your radiating 2.4 GHz powers to connect and gather near. You can let up to 5 of them share your walking broadband connection. Will they love you for it? Will they buy you food in return for your generous connectivity? They better. Otherwise, they get shunned as a more promising follower is enabled for WiFi Internet. As Tom Petty said, "It's good to be king."

By the way, if you aren't into being a hotspot on the hoof but still want to draw attention to yourself, there's also an equalizer T-Qualizer Shirt. It has one of those spectrum analyzer displays with the signal bars that you see on many stereo receivers. It's got a built-in microphone, so all you need to do is swagger into a club or party and switch on the EQ display. Why, the moving lights in time to the music might even have a hypnotic effect on those you wish to impress. It will be up to you to use that power for good and not evil... as I'm sure you will.

Video-Film Production Bandwidth

Video and film production is increasingly a digital process, often with contributions from multiple sources in diverse geographical locations. While "sneaker-net" or postal services can be used to transport content from place to another on tapes and disks, rapid production schedules really cry out for electronic transfer. But how do you do that and what are the costs involved?

The key characteristic of digital transport services is bandwidth. This is the transmission rate in bits per second, although in practical terms it's quoted in Mbps or Gbps. The thing you need to know about bandwidth is that, in general, the higher the bandwidth, the higher the price. I say in general because some newer services, such as Metro Ethernet, can be priced lower than traditional services for the same bandwidth.

How much bandwidth do you need? That depends on how big the data files are that your process generates. Video clips or streaming video intended for watching on Web browsers is orders of magnitude smaller than high definition video intended for digital cinema.

There is also a tradeoff between how fast you need a file delivered and the required bandwidth. If you desire real-time high definition broadcast quality with no compression, you're looking at requirements for fiber optic services in the Gbps category. If you are satisfied with overnight transfer of compressed standard definition video programs of less than an hour's length, you may be able to get by with a much lower cost T1 or bonded T1 line in the Mbps category.

So it comes down to these tradeoffs: real time transfer, say for on-air broadcast, versus file transfers that can take minutes or hours. Also high definition versus standard or even lower grade definition. Finally, uncompressed versus compression by, say, MPEG-2 or MPEG-4.

There are a few standard digital interfaces used in video, film and television broadcast that have been standardized by SMPTE, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. They are based on the SDI or Serial Digital Interface that is standardized in professional video equipment. The standard definition interface is SD-SDI per SMPTE 259M. This requires a bandwidth of 270 Mbps. The high definition interface is HD-SDI per SMPTE 292M. It requires a bandwidth of 1.485 Gbps. Another emerging standard is dual link HD-SDI or a pair of SMPTE 292M links, standardized in SMPTE 372M. This dual link requires 2.97 Gbps. Finally, SMPTE 424M is a 3G-SDI serial link that also requires 2.97 Gbps.

While these standard signals were developed primarily for interconnecting professional video equipment using coaxial cable, there is now equipment available to transport those SMPTE standard signals over private or leased fiber optic lines over long distances. Studios, production houses and cinemas can be interconnected using equipment such as Optiva cards from Emcore or Ekinops video transport modules.

In addition to the interface hardware you'll need transmission services, most often leased lines. Depending on your location, you may be able to get SONET or Gigabit Ethernet fiber optic line services. If you don't need real-time transmission or are able to use compression to reduce your bandwidth requirements, you may be able to get by with Ethernet over Copper or DS3 service.

What will work best for your application and how much will it cost? Find out by discussing your needs with one of the expert Telarus bandwidth consultants available through our Gigapackets bandwidth service. This is a brokerage service offering services from a dozen or more carriers. It's available free of charge to serious business users.

DS3 Router Included With Service

Are you thinking about upgrading your voice or data bandwidth? DS3 service will give you 45 Mbps for both upload and download. That's enough for bandwidth intensive uses such as video transfer, medical imaging or call center operations. But what do you have to do about getting a DS3 router to make the connection to your network?

Relax. DS3 is a mature technology and equipment is readily available. Prices for DS3 service are coming down, too. With more and more companies making the jump from T1 lines to DS3 bandwidth, you should find implementation fairly straightforward. In fact, there's a new DS3 option available that you might want to consider. It's line service with a managed router.

Why a managed router? For one thing, it gets you out of the business of having to manage DS3 connectivity yourself. If high bandwidth telecom circuits are your expertise, then by all means order the cheapest DS3 circuits you can get and handle the interface and service issues yourself. But if you'd rather not be in the middle of a finger pointing exchange between the telecom carrier and the router manufacturer, consider staying well out of that loop.

A managed router is one that is provided by the carrier who transports your DS3 signal. The router is installed on your premises and connects to your network through your own switching and routing. The port to your network is demarcation point where you take responsibility. On the other side, including the DS3 router itself, the service provider takes responsibility for the equipment and line operation.

The beauty of this arrangement become apparent even before a piece of gear in the carrier's network fails or some ham fist chops through an underground cable. The managed DS3 service provider monitors the circuit to and including the DS3 router on your premises. If something goes wrong in the middle of the night, they'll find out about it right away and perhaps have service restored before you know it ever went out.

Managed router service is growing in popularity as companies are forced to run with thinner IT staffs at a time when they are getting involved with higher bandwidth line services as technology advances. You can often get a router included with both T1 and DS3 services, if you wish. In many cases, the competitive environment will hold the cost down so that you'll pay little if any premium for this extra service.

If managed router service is of interest or you just want to see if you can save money before you renew your existing line contract, check DS3 service prices quickly and easily now.

With Hosting You Get Domains

How much would you like to pay for, say the next 3 months, to host your web sites? How about nothing?

That's right. You'll pay nothing, nil, nada, el-zippo when you take advantage of the summer 2009 promotion being run by 1&1 Web Hosting. In case that's not good enough, they'll throw in domain names for free. Still not good enough? How about business hosting for $9.99 a month? How about developer hosting for $19.99 a month? How about free software to really seal the deal?

Free software? What kind of free software?

It's the software you need to build and promote your website. Even the simplest beginner hosting plan, which goes for a measly $3.99 a month by the way, gives you the online 1&1 WebsiteBuilder. If what you want is a good looking Web site really fast, then you'll be up and running within the hour with your own content.

Upgrade to the family and hobby site plan that runs $4.99 a month and you'll get a CD ROM of specialized software that includes photo editing, GIF animation, site submission and ranking, and FTP for uploading files to the server.

Now, upgrade to the business hosting or developer hosting plans and, in addition to the jaw dropping amount of storage and bandwidth that come with these services, you'll get a premium software suite with Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0, Adobe GoLive CS2 for website design plus the software included with the family and hobby site plan.

Oh, you thought you had to go out and spend a fortune for those programs so you could design a really professional website? Put your money back in your pocket. You can get your hosting package, domain names, and design software for less than what you were going to spend on software packages.

So, how about those domains? With 1&1 hosting packages you get at least 1 domain included. You don't have to pay registration or renewal fees as long as you keep your hosting. The beginner package comes with 1 domain, which is about all a beginner should be attempting anyway. The home and hobby hosting offers 2 domain names. The business package offers 3 and the developer hosing gives you 5 domains at no charge.

Want more than that? Right now, you can get .com, .net, .org, .info, .us and .biz domains for just $6.99 a year. That's just through August 31, so you best hurry to get in on that bargain rate.

Clearly, 1&1 has deals going that are far superior to run of the mill hosting and domain name registration services. But then, they always do. Get all the details and sign up for your amazingly low cost web hosting packages with free domains while these specials are in effect.

Phone Toll-Free Service

In a business environment where it's hard to get anyone to buy anything, the easier you make it for your customers to do business with you, the more likely they'll buy from you instead of your competitor. One benefit that prospects and existing customers consider valuable is the ability to call toll-free instead of paying for the phone call themselves.

It may seem silly that people will make a buying decision on whether they have to spend a matter of pennies or dimes to make a phone call. But consumers are fickle. That even applies to business people under pressure to cut expenses no matter what. Letting them phone toll-free may not be the major part of the decision, but it does remove one more objection. Why not do it when the cost to you is so very little? Plus, when you get the right toll-free service you get additional valuable business tools that make your job easier and more productive.

One excellent provider of toll-free phone services is Kall8. You can get a toll-free number instantly for just $2. Then for merely $2 a month you have the online management system to put your toll-free number to work. Until someone calls, that's all you pay. You are charged just 6.9 cents per minute for incoming calls from the contiguous 48 states, slightly more for calls that originate in Alaska and Hawaii. Can it get much better?

You bet it can. The low cost and instant availability of toll free numbers is just the start of the service from Kall8. The first additional service you'll enjoy is the ability to change your ring-to number at will. That's the number of the phone that will ring when someone calls your toll free number. It doesn't always have to be the same phone.

Some sales people find it valuable to set their ring-to number to their office phone when they are at their desk, and then change it to their cell phone when they leave. At home they can leave it programmed to ring their cell, or they can change it to ring their home phone. That saves cell minutes and ensures that a prospect or client can always reach you immediately. Don't you think you might close more sales if the caller doesn't get frustrated by voice mail and goes elsewhere?

Do you ever get need to receive FAX messages? You may be calling from the road, but the FAX you need will be sent to a distant office machine. Not with Kall8. You just have your caller send the FAX to your toll-free phone number. It will be received by Kall8 and sent to your email. You can get access to it at hotel or coffee shop hotspot or even on your Internet-enabled smartphone.

Voice mail has a similar feature. If you elect to have your messages go to voice mail, you can call into the system to hear them. Or just have Kall8 send them to your computer as a sound file attached to an email.

Need to make a long distance call from someone's home or a client's office? You surely don't want them to have to pay for it. No need to. Call your Kall8 number, enter the access code, and you'll be able to use the service in reverse as a virtual calling card. The cost of the call will be charged to your account at the same 6.9 cents per minute that you pay for incoming calls.

You can even set up conference calls, with up to 25 participants calling in on your toll-free number. Kall8 takes care of the conferencing bridge and charges you the regular per minute cost per participant. This feature is included with your toll-free service and is available anytime you need it.

There are other features, including detailed call reports, that you'll find handy in managing your toll-free phone number. Hard to believe you can get all this for just $2 a month plus the cost of the calls. If you are paying more than that now or have always wanted toll-free service but thought it was too expensive, then learn more and order your Kall8 toll-free phone number(s) now.

Cell Phone Wireless Broadband

If you are only using a cell phone to talk, you're missing half the capability of the cellular networks. What started as a mobile voice network is now both a voice and data network. Not just text data, but wireless broadband Internet access that rivals fixed DSL and Cable broadband offerings.

What's available in mobile Internet service today? If you haven't used this capability or been following industry developments, you may be surprised by how available and how fast cell phone wireless Internet access has become. There are two rival systems in use today, with two more even faster networks starting the build-out phase.

AT&T has championed their HSDPA and EDGE networks, with the most talked-about implementation being the Apple iPhone. The original iPhone runs on EDGE, with broadband speeds around 100 Kbps. That's at least twice what you'd get with dial-up, but modest by broadband standards.

The new iPhone 3GS runs on the HSDPA or High Speed Download Packet Access network. That jumps the download speed up to a maximum of 3.6 Mbps, with typical user speeds around 500 to 700 Kbps. That's more what you'd expect in basic broadband service and enough to enable fast Web browsing and video downloads. Right now AT&T is upgrading its network to a faster technology called HSPA which should double your access speeds.

T-Mobile uses the same technologies for voice and data as AT&T. Both are worldwide carriers based on GSM service that is popular internationally.

Verizon and Sprint are CDMA rather than GSM carriers. That means they use a completely different technology. On the data side this is called EVDO for EVolution Data Optimized. EVDO is highly competitive with HSDPA, with a basic Rev 0 speed offering bursts of up to 2.1 Mbps on downloads and a typical speed of 400 to 700 Kbps. EVDO Rev A takes that up to 3.1 Mbps download bursts, although typical speeds are only modestly improved to around 800 Kbps. What Rev A really does is improve upload speeds to 300 to 400 Kbps.

As you can see, the 3G networks for the major cellular carriers give you similar performance. Your choice probably will revolve more around the coverage available in your area and the particular model of phone, aircard or netbook that you choose.

What's even more interesting is the 4G wireless broadband in the development and early deployment phase right now. Sprint has partnered with Clearwire to create a new service called WiMAX that will run on completely different frequencies. AT&T and Verizon are working to develop a competing technology called LTE, or Long Term Evolution, that will also use different frequencies than are being used for cellular service now. That means that 3G and 4G networks will co-exist, at least for awhile.

How fast will 4G be? They'll start out about 10x as fast as 3G and go up from there as the technology is refined and deployed everywhere. The 4G wireless networks will be the equal of faster wireline broadband services today and will easily support services such as real-time two-way video.

While 4G is the coming thing, 3G is the hot mobile broadband service readily available today. Discover the wide variety of cell phones, smartphones, wireless modem aircards and netbook computers available with cell phone wireless broadband, often free or at very attractive discounts.

Ethernet Port At Your Door

There's an Ethernet port that connects to the outside world. Where is it? It could be as close as your back door. Actually, it could be right there in your telecom closet.

Ethernet WAN (Wide Area Network) service is a fairly new development. Most companies and other organizations are used to getting their outside connections using the traditional telecom network. The same technologies that carry telephone calls have been repurposed to transport digital signals from point to point and as access to the Internet.

You're no doubt familiar with T1 lines. Perhaps you also use DS3 connections or OC3, OC12 or OC48 SONET fiber optic services. Did you know that all of these services got their start carrying telephone calls between phone company central offices? Since they are digital in nature, specialized equipment can do a protocol conversion from the Ethernet that runs on your local networks to the TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) that runs on the public switched telephone network.

Say you want to connect the LANs at two of your business locations. You may order a point to point T1 line to transport the packets between locations at a rate of 1.5 Mbps. If you need more bandwidth to keep the LAN data from having to wait on the WAN connection, you can order DS3 service at 45 Mbps. The protocol conversion will be performed at each end, so that your LANs and the telecom network each have the data in a format they can use.

This methodology works fine, and has been doing so for decades. But now you have another choice. Why not just connect your two LANs together with a very, very long Ethernet connection?

You are probably saying, "Ethernet doesn't work that way. There are strict limitations as to how far you can extend the network."

That's true within your own building or campus. But there is another set of standards that apply to Ethernet that is transported by common carrier over long distances. These long haul connections come under the category of Carrier Ethernet. Within a city, they are often called Metro Ethernet.

There's practically no limit on how far you can connect using Carrier Ethernet. Do you have an office and factory in different parts of town? Connect their networks with a level 2 Metro Ethernet connection. That's right, level 2. You can use network switches to make the connection and keep everything on the same network. You can also set up mesh networks for multiple locations in-town or around the country. How about the Internet? Use a Carrier Ethernet connection to provide your access to the Internet.

But why do that if your old telecom services work just fine? How about paying less, maybe 50% less, for the same connectivity? The higher your bandwidth requirements, the more Ethernet WAN connections can save. The reasons are that Ethernet services are often provided by competitive carriers with modern networks designed from the ground up for efficient IP transport. When they can provide the complete network, including connections to your buildings using EoF (Ethernet over Fiber) or EoC (Ethernet over Copper), the cost savings can be astonishing.

How much can you save? Run a quick check and see what Ethernet WAN services are available for your location.

What is ISDN and Why Do I Want It?

You may have heard the term ISDN related to telephone services. So what is it and what can it do for you?

ISDN stands for Integrated Services Digital Network. It's a fancy term for digital telephone service. But not just any digital phone service. This one has very specific standards.

The story behind ISDN goes back to the days when the standard for Internet access was a dial-up modem using an ordinary analog telephone line. ISDN was envisioned as a way for users to have a combination of separate telephone service and Internet service on a single ISDN telephone line with three channels. Two of these are called "B" or bearer channels and are 64 Kbps each. The third is the "D" or delta channel that is used for switching and signaling. One B channel can be used for a telephone handset. The other can be used for a modem. Or both channels can be combined for 128 Kbps Internet service. This arrangement is called ISDN BRI. The BRI means Basic Rate Interface.

The telephone companies expected ISDN BRI to be a hit with consumers as an upgrade to their analog phone service. But by the time it was ready for mass deployment, Internet standards had moved on and everybody really wanted DSL or Cable broadband. After all, 128 Kbps may be impressive when compared to a dial-up modem, but it pales in comparison with always-on broadband at 512 Kbps or higher. Today, even mobile users want bandwidth above 1 Mbps, so ISDN BRI is of little interest to most users.

The exception is in the field of broadcasting and professional audio. ISDN BRI lines can be used to transmit high quality audio through the telephone network by using a CODEC (Coder / Decoder) to convert the audio to and from the ISDN format at each end of the call. Guests around the country can join a panel discussion and sound like they are right in the studio instead of hundreds or thousands of miles away. Voice over artists can contribute to a production from their home studios.

Where ISDN flourishes today is in its second standard, called PRI or Primary Rate Interface. ISDN PRI consists of 24 channels configured as 23 bearer channels plus 1 delta channel. The 23 bearer channels can each support 1 telephone call each. That's 23 digital phone lines, plus the delta channel used for signaling and Caller ID data.

ISDN PRI is the telephone service of choice for medium and large company telephone systems. Most PBX and IP PBX business phone systems offer built-in support for at least one ISDN PRI line. Other systems can be configured for one or more ISDN PRI trunks with a plug-in circuit card.

In addition to office PBX telephone, ISDN PRI is preferred by company contact centers and independent call centers. There is a significant cost reduction realized by using a single ISDN PRI instead of a dozen or more individual analog phone lines. Each channel on the PRI can be configured to be local and/or long distance, incoming and/or outgoing calls. If more than 23 lines are needed, more can be added to the system to double, triple or quadruple the number of active phone lines.

ISDN PRI is delivered on a T1 line in the United States. For this reason, it is sometimes known as T1 PRI or T1 telephone service. In other countries, an E1 line might be used to provide PRI service.

Now that you know what ISDN is good for, can this service help your business or organization to provide high quality voice communications for perhaps less than you are spending now? Find out by checking ISDN PRI service pricing now.

Motorola Karma's Gonna Get You

Karma is the effect of your actions coming back to you in the future. John Lennon sang about "Instant Karma" back in 1970. Now Motorola's got karma in the form of the new Karma QA1 Silver cell phone. It's perhaps the first phone designed for social networking. With all the cool technology in one compact package, this Karma really is out to get you - as a customer, that is.

The Motorola Karma is a palm size device, almost square in shape when closed, with rounded corners. With a flick of your thumb, it slides up to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard normally hidden beneath the screen. With the crisp 2.5 inch color screen and this keyboard, messaging is a pleasure. You'll be fully enabled for SMS text messaging in a threaded, chat-style view. Plus email, instant messaging, and multimedia (both picture and video) messaging.

Ful HTML Web browsing is available with the MEdia Net Web browser. This one will perform, too, because the Karma connects to AT&T's 3G network. Data download speeds are up to 3.6 Mbps, better than many landline broadband services.

Motorola isn't kidding when they call the Karma a social networking phone. They've built-in quick and easy access to Facebook and MySpace. Oh, yes, you can also actually talk to people if you want. It is a cell phone. In fact, it's a internationally compatible cell phone so you can call from most anywhere in the world.

Not feeling all that social at the moment? Then listen to some XM radio or your own tunes. Get away from the madding crowd. Don't worry, you can find your way back when you're ready. The aGPS systems supports AT&T Navigator for mapping and directions.

While the Motorola Karma goes out of its way to make text messaging easy, it also gives you the ability to capture and share high resolution still photos and video clips. The 2.0 Megapixel digital camera takes pictures good enough to print. You can do that wirelessly with any Bluetooth enable printer. In camcorder mode, you can record video clips at 15 frames per second or share them in real-time with AT&T video share service.

What are the hottest cell phone deals available right now, including free cell phones? Use the Cell Phone Plan Finder to check out the top phones and associated wireless service plans.

Rural Broadband Stimulus Hopes To One-Up Dial-up

Just before the 4th of July holiday, the long-anticipated rural broadband stimulus funding was launched with release of the official government "Notice of Funds Availability (NOFA) and solicitation of applications."

If you want to get in on the action, you best get a move on. Applications are only being accepted between July 14 and August 14 of this year, 2009.

As a potential user rather than a provider of broadband services, you'll have to wait awhile longer before you can expect a nearby on-ramp to drive your buggy onto the information superhighway. Yes, buggy not sports car. If you've been eagerly anticipating FTTF (Fiber to the Farmstead), you may find the definition of broadband a bit disheartening. The bar has been set at a breathtaking speed of 768 Kbps download and 200 Kbps upload to meet the criteria of "broadband" Internet service.

Why such a poky broadband standard when AT&T and Verizon are slugging it out to see who can deliver 50 & 100 Mbps to the most residential users where their U-verse and FiOS services, respectively, are in a feverish construction phase? Simply because some people way-out-there are lucky to get 56 Kbps dial-up modem service on their telephone line. The idea is to get universal digital service in the same way that we've finally gotten universal telephone service and rural electrification.

The one difference is that electricity and telephone service standards are the same everywhere. There isn't one set of standards for city dwellers and another for those in the boonies. But broadband is a different animal. It's always been tiered service, with those who live in denser populated areas and willing to pay more getting to go first class.

Perhaps this is the natural difference between mandated universal service and the workings of the competitive marketplace. I've argued before that broadband should be treated like a utility. Even more than that, it should be considered a strategic infrastructure for the country. Broadband is a lot more than the amusement value of YouTube and Twitter. It's about the commercial value of online shopping, working remotely, and creating value with new Web services. It's about the educational importance of having an immense library at your fingertips that would have stunned Andrew Carnegie, as valuable as the bricks and mortar libraries he donated were to earlier generations. It's about the democracy of collaboration to advocate for a cause or support a political candidate on the other side of the state or the country.

The commercial marketplace will never be all-inclusive. It's profit driven. Where the numbers look good, the infrastructure will be built and the head-to-head competition will be brutal. Areas where the population is too thin to recover capital costs in a timely manner are simply passed over. You can see this today even with cellular phone service. In the city there may be a carrier branded cell phone store on nearly every corner. But drive out where the highway turns into a cow path and you'll find gaping holes in the service footprint. No bars in these places unless they're country taverns.

The opportunity that may be missed here is the chance to lift the entire population to a new plateau. That may sound a bit fanciful, but consider the downward slope we've been on as a society from our post-WWII productivity and world dominance high. The national debt is through the roof. The auto industry nearly died this summer. The banking system had to be brought back from death's door this spring. Anyone looking to "upgrade" their house or job this year? Hanging-on is the new moving up.

We've been told repeatedly by industry and government officials that we're competing in a new world marketplace. Just what tools do we have to compete with? If this is the long anticipated information age, many of us are going to miss it. We going to miss the knowledge jobs. We're going to miss the massive productivity multiplier that instantaneous collaboration offers. We're going to miss the opportunity to live where it's beautiful and still participate in the 21st century economy. We're going to miss the next leg up in technological progress that will be based on video instead of text. We're going to miss it because 768 Kbps is a pittance, not a stimulus.

Hopefully, the minimum will not become the standard and the builders of the rural broadband initiative will exceed expectations, giving us something of real value for our $7.2 billion. Perhaps your company will be one of those that wins a grant to trench fiber or put up a WiMAX tower. If so, I hope you'll think big and set the performance standard high. As a society on the edge, we truly need the best you can possibly do.

Local Telephone Service Provider Options

Every home and business needs local telephone service of some sort. Not so long ago, the solution was simple. Just call up the local phone company and make an appointment for them to come and install a telephone set or a dozen. Nowadays there are more options and more decisions to make to ensure that you'll get the best deal possible.

The traditional local phone service or "dial tone" service is the same analog technology that's been around for 100 years. The technology is well established. The required copper pair wiring has been pulled into nearly every building in the United States. You can still walk into a local telephone company office and request service. But you might do better to consider offers from both the incumbent local exchange carrier and competitive carriers that have established themselves since deregulation made this possible.

Analog phone service is a viable option for residential, home office, and small businesses that need only a single line or a few lines. But once a business is large enough to have more than half a dozen outgoing lines, there are digital options that start to look more attractive. Integrated T1 line service gives you telephone and broadband as a bundle with a price that may be better than buying them separately. A full T1 line or ISDN PRI service offers up to two dozen phone lines. These are commonly used with PBX telephone systems connected to phones throughout the company. Check prices on digital phone service options to replace analog lines.

VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol is a digital service that is even newer than T1 "digitized analog" phone service. The technology is designed to mimic the format of computer data packets so that it runs on commonly available broadband services such as DSL, Cable Internet, and T1 Dedicated Internet. A regular analog phone plugs into an Analog Telephone Adaptor provided by the VoIP supplier to make the broadband connection.

A popular ultra-low cost residential service is MagicJack. This company provides an ATA that's about the size of a pack of cards and plugs into a USB connection on your broadband connected PC to get access to the Internet. The computer needs to be on to use the phone, although incoming calls will go to voicemail when the computer is switched off.

Other VoIP providers offer a stand alone ATA that connects to a broadband router or modem and doesn't require the use of a PC for phone service. The phone is active as long as there is an active broadband connection. There are many competing services available today. Use this Affordable VoIP Service Finder to compare offers.

Larger companies use enterprise VoIP solutions that are based on private line or network connections that do not use the Internet. An service growing in popularity is SIP trunking, a digital line service based on the Session Initiation Protocol that is common to many VoIP systems, including IP PBX systems that manage multiple phone lines and handsets.

An increasing trend among younger phone users is to make their cell phone their primary telephone, perhaps to the exclusion of a landline service. For those who are on the go a lot, including independent sales professionals, the ability to make and receive calls anywhere has a lot of value.

The latest phone models include a high resolution digital camera, the ability to download and play videos and full HTML Internet browsers, as well as multiple messaging options that include email. It's not inconceivable that some individuals may be able to use their smartphone as a substitute for even a desktop or laptop computer, as well as a traditional fixed location telephone. Compare cell phones and wireless plans to see if any of this makes sense for you.

Wavelength Services For The Enterprise

Once needed only by telecom carriers, wavelength services are now available for enterprise users. These higher bandwidth fiber optic services are needed by hospitals, medical centers, banks, financial institutions, service providers to government, video production and distribution houses, content delivery networks and research facilities. Every day more applications cross that threshold of needing faster pipes to transfer data. Should those faster pipes be wavelength services?

A wavelength or lambda is light at a particular frequency or color. This characteristic is generally expressed in terms of wavelength in nanometers rather than frequency in terabits per second. Just as frequencies can be multiplexed to create a broadband wireline service, wavelengths can be multiplexed to offer multiple paths through a single fiber strand.

The multiplexing process at the physical level for fiber optics is called WDM or Wavelength Division Multiplexing. There are two technologies available. CWDM or Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing creates anywhere from 2 to 20 independent wavelengths, with 16 being a standard. DWDM or Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing requires more precise equipment to create from 40 to 128 or more independent wavelengths.

As you can imagine, having dozens of independent wavelengths per fiber optic core and perhaps 100 cores in a cable, the amount of available bandwidth is truly staggering. So much so, that carriers are leasing out entire wavelengths to companies and organizations that need high bandwidth conduits. Wavelength services are similar to point to point T1 lines in that you have exclusive use of the wavelength. While the wavelengths in any particular core may be leased by dozens of different users, any multiplexing on the particular wavelength you are leasing is up to you. It's a private line service, with the line being a particular wavelength of light.

What bandwidths are available on these wavelength services? Commonly available speeds are 2.5 Gbps and 10 Gbps. Other increments of 1 Gbps and 5 Gbps are also increasingly available. Need more than 10 Gbps? It's possible to get as much as 40 Gbps in some areas. Can 100 Gbps be far behind?

Another advantage of wavelength services is that they are not locked into a particular protocol. You can use your wavelengths to transport Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps), Gigabit Ethernet, SONET OC-3, OC-12, OC-48, Fibre Channel, ESCON and Frame Relay.

Who's offering wavelength services suitable for large enterprise and other organizational use? Major competitive carriers such as Level 3, XO Communications and AboveNet have these and other fiber optic bandwidth services available right now. If you have a serious application that needs connectivity at this level, find out what wavelength services are available for your business locations.

Military Surplus Telephone Equipment

Here's an idea for dealing with the current business downturn. Let Uncle Sam help you out.

OK, perhaps you don't qualify for any TARP or other government stimulus funding. But there still a way your red, white and blue Uncle can save you money. All you need to do is bid on and win any of the mountains of surplus parts and equipment that the government doesn't want anymore. It's patriotic, it's "green" since you're recycling this unused equipment, and it's often a huge bargain.

When we think of government military surplus, things like jeeps, boots and tents come to mind. Oh, you can still get those if you want them. But the inventory of government surplus now in warehouses nationwide goes far beyond those usual military items. How far? How about high technology parts and equipment like computers and telephone gear?

Let's have a look at some of the items up for bid as of this writing. Would you be interested in a lot of 100 telephones that include some Nortel Network model M3902 phones? How about a pallet or so of telephone wire?

Do you find fiber optic equipment a tad expensive? Would you be interested in a Cisco LightStream 1010 ATM switch? There's one available.

There's test equipment, too. How about a Packeteer PacketWise Technology Packet Shaper 6500 protocol analyzer? Looks like this one cost $19,000 to acquire. I'll be you can get it for a lot less.

On a more mundane level, there are 9 pallets of printers and fax machines from manufactures like HP, Xerox and Lexmark awaiting your perusal. Why just go out and pick up a printer when you can have a truck load of them?

Well, maybe you'd just like a nice video projector. Or 4 pallets of Pentium IV desktop computers. Or some IBM ThinkPad docking stations.

Where did I find all this stuff? It's online at Government Liquidation. This is a site where you can register to bid on official U.S. government surplus equipment and supplies.

They also have a selection of items you can just buy outright. Most of these are clothing, but they did have a couple of types of computer speakers available the last time I looked.

If you've ever enjoyed browsing in local surplus stores, you'll find yourself spending a lot of "coffee break" time looking over the latest offerings online. Just tell the boss that you're researching ways to save the company a bundle and perhaps nobody will look closely enough to see that you are really checking out aircraft parts or inflatable boats. Who knows, you may just stumble across a great deal on a PBX system or some expensive fiber optic routers that you can get for a song.

Is MagicJack The Next Ma Bell?

The telephone industry is in trouble, we're told. Young people are shunning the traditional landline phone service that their parents and grandparents treated as a necessity of life. The breakup of the Bell System into smaller independent companies serving regional areas says that there will never again be anything like the ubiquitous "Ma Bell" that served every home and business. Clearly, the once proud telephone network is a goner. Or is it?

It's true that cell phones have replaced traditional analog phone service for about a third of the population. Those in their teens and 20's don't remember a time when there wasn't wireless. They got their first cell phone in high school or college, in much the same rite of passage as teens traditionally get their first cars. Once untethered, why go back and pick up something as archaic as a telephone with a wire?

It's also true that the breakup of the Bell System resulted in such an upset in the industry that it will never be the same. For awhile the technology remained the same and only the names of newly competing phone companies changed. The one key resource was the copper telephone cable that had been installed to virtually every home and business over the preceding 100 year build-out of universal telephone service. CLECs or Competing Local Exchange Carriers leased these lines at cost from the ILECs or Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers, who maintained ownership of the wires. That worked just fine until the ILECs persuaded the government to let them charge retail, not wholesale, prices for leasing their lines. That ensured they could easily make a profit. It also changed a competitive playing field to one where the CLECs could no longer compete, and they pretty much all fell by the wayside.

Not being able to compete on analog phone service, savvy competitors found a way to bypass the ILECs and the high lease prices they demanded to use "their" phone wires. Instead, they leveraged another set of wires that came into most every home and business. Those were the wires that delivered broadband Internet service. By piggybacking on the broadband connection that people were already paying for, VoIP phone service providers essentially got their phone wires for free.

That's why VoIP providers can offer such good deals on bundled local and long distance service. They use the Internet to transport digitized phone conversations between your location and their facilities. At those facilities they "terminate" or connect with the traditional PSTN, or Public Switched Telephone Network, so that VoIP users can call landline or cell phone users.

It looked like VoIP companies were in the catbird seat until yet another type of phone company came on the scene. Instead of charging around $20 a month for unlimited local and long distance service, this company was offering unlimited bundled service for around $20 a year, over a 90% cost cut. How can any company offer prices this low and still survive? How can VoIP providers stay in business any more than wireline CLECs could when they lost the competitive advantage?

The company that's causing the latest upset in the telephone business is MagicJack. The secret to their business model is that they are a hybrid between a traditional wireline telephone company and a VoIP provider. The parent company of MagicJack, YMax, is a registered CLEC throughout the country. In essence, YMax is a nationwide phone company in the image of Ma Bell, sans the traditional analog phone wires. They get around this limitation by using your broadband Internet to connect with their central offices.

Owning their own network to carry the calls saves YMax the cost of leasing other people's facilities. They still have to pay termination fees for calls that leave their network, but they also collect termination fees from other phone companies when someone calls a MagicJack number. So if the majority of users had MagicJack, YMax would collect far more in termination fees than they would spend. At some point they would become the default nationwide phone company and claim the title of Ma Bell II. Maybe Momma Jack or MoJo would be more appropriate.

Now you can see the method behind the magic of offering MagicJack phone service for the cost of the USB hardware that connects your phone to your computer so it can use the DSL or Cable broadband line, plus about $20 a year for service instead of a monthly phone bill. The MagicJack is reportedly selling at a clip of 9,000 to 10,000 units per day. If they can keep this up, how long will it be until the tipping point is reached and they own the residential landline business?

OK, but what about those younger and more mobile users who don't want a wire of any kind tethering their phone to a particular location? YMax is getting ready to go after a slice of this market with a new product called the FemtoJack. It will also plug into your computer. But instead of a wire to your home phone, it will connect wirelessly to your cell phone. The idea is that while you are home you'll make your calls over the Femto Jack instead of burning your monthly minutes on the cellular network. If your house has a dead zone for cellular, this will be an even better deal.

The next question is whether YMax will settle for having a major piece of the residential phone service business, assuming an even savvier competitor doesn't come on the market. Or, will they start working their way into the business market or launch a VoIP wireless network to really take on the cellular carriers? Those would be even more ambitious projects, but they are the key to dominating telephone service in the future.

Ethernet Is The New T1

You've been hearing about the rise of Metro Ethernet as a desirable access technology for businesses WAN connections. The key word has been "metro." Metro is short for metropolitan, which means larger cities with their larger, concentrated business districts. They've been the first target of competitive bandwidth providers with IP core networks and lower per-Mbps pricing. But you have to be located downtown or in a large suburb to take advantage of Ethernet WAN services, right?

Not for long. Hatteras Networks has just announced a line of repeater and line power modules that can enable service providers to deliver Mid-Band Ethernet up to 25 miles over ordinary twisted pair telephone wire.

Hey, wait a second. Hasn't this been the domain of T1 lines? You bet it has. The competitive advantage of T1 lines is that they can be deployed on two pair of ordinary twisted pair copper. That's the type of telco wiring that's been pulled into nearly every business for multi-line telephone service.

T1 lines are reasonably cheap and available just about anywhere you can get landline phone service. After all, T1 is just a digital service that runs on the same type of wiring as analog voice. The key to making T1 as popular as it is has been is the repeater or regenerator. This is a device that you install a mile or so down the line to boost the signal so it can go farther. As a digital repeater, the voltage of the signal is amplified and the shape of the digital waveform is regenerated or brought back to its original specs. When the signal leaves the regenerator on its way down the line, it looks just the same as it did when it left the original T1 router.

How far can you repeat a T1 signal in practice? About 25 miles is reasonable. That puts nearly every business, including those in rural areas, within reach of a telco office that provides T1 line service.

But now Hatteras has done the same thing for Ethernet over Copper or EoC services. EoC has been in demand in metro areas because businesses can get anywhere from 5 to 45 Mbps of bandwidth without having to pay expensive construction costs to bring in fiber optic services. The hitch is that your building had to be within a few miles of the carrier's POP or Point of Presence. Those are similar to a telephone company's CO or Central Office. But with this new repeater equipment, competitive carriers will now be able to offer Ethernet services far from their metropolitan POPs. It's the long-awaited high bandwidth solution for suburban, exurban and rural areas.

Carrier Ethernet services are still in the rapid growth phase. What you can get for your business depends on location and which competitive carriers have a service footprint in your area. Use the easy Etherent Building Services Finder to see what's now available in the way of high bandwidth / low cost Ethernet for business addresses.

WAN Topology Options

You have options when it comes to connecting to branch offices, franchisees, suppliers, customers and remote workers. Which particular topology will work best depends on what you are trying to accomplish. Are you simply trying to perform overnight backups to a off-site data center across town? Or do you need to create a virtual company by interconnecting principals in a half dozen states like they were in the same building? Let's have a look at some popular WAN topologies being used today.

The most ubiquitous WAN or Wide Area Network is the Internet. It goes everywhere and connects nearly everyone. It's the ultimate mesh network. Connections to the Internet are relatively cheap and available in many forms, from wireline to wireless to fiber optic. So what limits Internet performance? There are two problems, really. One is security and the other is performance predictability.

The fact that everyone's connected to the Internet means you have to take special measures if you hope to keep your private business information private. That means encryption of your data during transmission and while it is resident in facilities you don't control, like remote storage. The VPN or Virtual Private Network is a software solution that creates private tunnels through the Internet by encrypting and decrypting your data. It's a popular solution for remote workers who will connect to the company servers using their home Internet connections and need to access sensitive information.

Performance is another matter. The Internet is a public utility. You have no control over who uses it or for what purpose. Fluctuations in bandwidth are commonly experienced by residential users on DSL and Cable broadband, both of which are "best effort" shared use services.

The Internet is designed to accommodate a high volume of traffic generated by an enormous number of users and to do this reliably. It is self-healing in that a failed router or cut line will be bypassed and other paths used. For those reasons, characteristics such as jitter, latency and packet loss are not guaranteed and can be expected to vary. This is no problem for data transmission using TCP/IP, the popular protocol for transporting packets. But it can wreak havoc on real-time services such as VoIP telephone and Video conferencing.

Business grade Internet connections function much better than consumer oriented services. But if you want to maintain control of your network quality over distance, you need to get off the Internet and use a private network service. In the past, Frame Relay was the way to go. Today, MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching networks are the WAN solution of choice. In essence, the bandwidth you need is reserved for you by the network operator and only those locations you specify can be part of your network. That improves both stability and security.

MPLS is a mesh networking topology. Each location connects to the network "cloud" via a T1 line or higher bandwidth option such as DS3 or Gigabit Ethernet. The network operator provides a high performance fiber optic core network for the majority of the connection distance.

But what if you only need to connect two locations? Point to Point dedicated private lines are the traditional and often lowest cost solution. Security issues are minimized because you have exclusive use of the lines themselves. When you aren't transmitting data, they simply idle.

You can expand the point to point solution to more locations, usually by establishing a star network with the headquarters location as the hub. It becomes a cost tradeoff as to when an MPLS network becomes the better solution as the number of interconnected locations increases.

Which WAN topology is right for your situation? You need to know the options and the best way to find them is to get competitive quotes on WAN services for your business locations. There is no cost for this service to serious business users and expert consulting is included to help you sort out the myriad of options available today.