What’s faster than conventional business bandwidth solutions, such as T1 and DS3, and also cheaper? Metro Ethernet.
What’s new and in demand at an incredible rate of adoption? Sorry Superman, it’s Metro Ethernet.
Metro Ethernet is the WAN connection service that’s a real triple threat. Its speed may be one or two orders of magnitude above what you have now. It’s spreading like wildfire among business users. It’s generally cheaper per Mbps than your other bandwidth options, even the venerable T1 lines.
But can it leap tall buildings in a single bound? Your data certainly will. It will zoom in and out of your building at megabit to gigabit rates. That’s another advantage of Metro Ethernet - it’s scalable. You can start with enough bandwidth to meet your current needs and perhaps a little extra margin. When business picks up and your WAN connection becomes a bottleneck, you call up your service provider and ask them to increase your bandwidth.
Scalable bandwidth isn’t a characteristic of all network connections. Often if you want a higher service bandwidth, you need to go through a lengthly order and provisioning process. Metro Ethernet is designed with scalability built-in. The only real limitation is whether you have a fiber optic connection or use bonded copper pair.
Copper pair bonding is desirable for a lot of businesses because it frees them from the limitation of the single T1 line at 1.5 Mbps and allows them to move up to 3 Mbps, 5 Mbps, 10 Mbps standard Ethernet speed and even the equivalent of DS3 at 45 Mbps. All of these service levels are available over twisted pair copper, as long as you are reasonably close to the carrier’s facilities. In metro areas where you’ll find Metro Ethernet, that’s often the case.
Of course, fiber optic service to your building gives you a much larger range of service options. You can easily get 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, 1000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet, and often even 10 Gbps Ethernet.
Even more impressive than the line speeds are the lease rates for Metro Ethernet services. Don’t drop your coffee cup if you are quoted a rate that’s just a fraction of what you are paying now for traditional telecom services. It’s for real. Competitive carriers are looking to capture their share of the business bandwidth market and you can get some excellent deals on 1 to 5 year contracts. Recently I’ve seen Metro Ethernet services that offer more bandwidth for less cost than even T1 lines.
Would your company benefit from switching to Metro Ethernet or other Carrier Ethernet services? Find out by checking availability and pricing for Metro Ethernet service now.
