Bonded T1 Solution Increases Bandwidth

T1 bandwidth at 1.5 Mbps has been a staple for smaller business applications. For many businesses, a solid 1.5 Mbps download and 1.5 Mbps upload is more than adequate. Some businesses can even use an Integrated T1 solution to deliver both telephone and Internet service on the same line. But other businesses are finding that T1 bandwidth is becoming a bottleneck to productivity. They need and want more bandwidth.

So, what is the easiest and most cost effective solution? A straightforward approach is to add another T1 line. This doubles your bandwidth from 1.5 Mbps to 3 Mbps. But don’t just run out and order a second T1 line just anywhere. If you want to two T1 lines to work as if they were one larger line, then you’ll need to get them from the same supplier and request a bonded T1 solution. Bonding is a technical process that combines the bandwidth of the otherwise independent T1 lines.

Why would you not want your lines bonded? One reason is redundancy. If the two lines are bonded and from the same source, chances are that a fault that takes out one line might well take out the other as well. You’ll be left with no bandwidth at all until repairs are completed. Fortunately, this is usually a matter of hours at most for top tier T1 line service providers. Even so, by keeping the lines separate and from totally different carriers coming in on different wire bundles from different directions, you stand a good chance of an outage being limited to one line or the other.

Redundant lines are easiest to implement when they feed different networks. Say, half your users are on one line and half on the other. Or, you can use a device called a TRUFFLE from Mushroom Networks to combine two or more broadband lines to create one larger bandwidth. If you lose one input to the TRUFFLE, the others keep feeding the network.

Another situation where a bonded T1 solution makes sense is delivering larger amounts of bandwidth to locations where fiber optic service isn’t available or is way too expensive to bring in. You can bond 3 T1 lines to get 4.5 Mbps, 4 T1 lines to get 6 Mbps, 5 T1 lines for 7.5 Mbps, 6 lines get you 9 Mbps, and bonding 7 T1 lines will deliver 10.5 Mbps. That’s equivalent to basic Ethernet network speeds and is more than enough for applications like video conferencing and broadband Internet access for medium size companies.

Bonding this many lines often makes a lot of sense for companies located in rural areas or just far enough from Metro Ethernet service that fiber isn’t practical. That includes WISPs (Wireless Internet Service Providers) and rural medical centers, as well as office buildings of all types. T1 line service is available just about anywhere you can get telephone service and is provisioned on the same type of twisted pair cable that brings in analog or digital phone lines.

Finally, a bonded T1 solution can provide short term connectivity while fiber optic service is under construction. In most cases, the copper wiring to support bonded T1 bandwidth is already in place. A service provider only needs to install customer premises termination equipment and provision the service. Once fiber has been brought in and turned up, you can discontinue the bonded T1 connection or keep it as a backup service that will be unaffected by faults in the fiber optic network.

Can you business benefit from a fast, reliable T1 based bandwidth service? Check prices and availability for a bonded T1 solution now. If you have an older T1 line contract, you may find that you can get more bandwidth for the same money today.

BlackBerry Picking On Cyber Monday

Cyber Monday is the new traditional time to find great online special offers, much the same as Black Friday has become that tradition for bricks and mortar stores. With that in mind, let’s have a look a one very special product line this year. It’s the BlackBerry device from Research in Motion.

BlackBerry has long been the choice of business users for mobile voice and data connectivity. RIM has made it their mission to support corporate IT services with the performance and security needed for serious business use in the field. But, how affordable are the popular BlackBerry models?

Make no mistake about it, BlackBerry devices are expensive technology. That doesn’t mean you have to pay a bundle for the model of your choice. In fact, shop now and you can get 19 different BlackBerry phones free when you order them with new wireless service. The others range in price from $9.99 to $149.99. Not bad for devices that retail for up to $600.

Just what is available at no charge for as long as these special offers last? How about the new BlackBerry Torch? Yes, it’s free when you order it with AT&T wireless service. The Torch offers the BlackBerry OS6 operating system on a combination touchscreen interface plus a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard. You also get an impressive 5 Megapixel digital camera with flash, continuous auto-focus, digital zoom, face detection integrated GPS location tagging and video capture. The full touch screen features a full HTML Web browser with pinch-to-soom and tabbed browsing. By the way, the BlackBerry Torch is available in black, red or white.

The BlackBerry Tour is a popular smartphone for Verizon Wireless users. it’s an international 3G phone with 3.2 Megapixel digital camera, GPS support for VZ Navigator Global navigation services. Yes, this phone runs on both the 800 & 1900 CDMA bands for Verizon and GSM 850, 900, 1800, and 1900 for overseas. Your worldwide tour will be more enjoyable with the BlackBerry Tour, especially since you got it free.

The BlackBerry Curve has been so popular that it is available on most cellular networks. That includes AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon and NEXTEL. There are various models, so check out the details to make sure you get the features you want in a Curve phone. Some have WiFi and/or 3G for fast downloads. Color choices include the classic black, graphite gray, violet/purple, red, white, titanium and fuchsia.

The BlackBerry Storm2 is available free on the Verizon Wireless network. It has a brilliant 3.25 inch display, WiFi, 3G in 150 countries, a full HTML Web browser and a 3.2 Megapixel digital camera. Yes, that’s right. It’s free while you can get it.

Are you a bold person? By that I mean a fan of the BlackBerry Bold. It’s another free BlackBerry model for the AT&T wireless network. You’ll get free access to more than 20,000 AT&T WiFi hotspots nationwide with this very smartphone. It also features international connectivity for data in 185 countries and voice roaming in over 215 countries.

Which BlackBerry you pick is a personal matter. What’s important is that you get your choice at the best deal... preferably free of charge. That means you need to do your shopping now while the best deals are online. Check out the complete selection of BlackBerry phone models right now and get free shipping along with your free phone.

A Plethora of Free Android Phones

Christmas is just not Christmas without the phones you love. The true love of smartphone aficionados this year is the Android phone. But, can you really afford to give an Android to a loved one or yourself? You sure can when that Android is free.

Free is a big deal in the world of smartphones. These phones are the cutting edge of technology and have cutting edge prices to match. It’s not unusual to see a price tag of $500 or $600 attached to the latest models. These are computer prices. Come to think of it, a smartphone, particularly an Android smartphone, is as much a computer as it is a telephone. They run on 3G and 4G wireless networks with enough bandwidth to do the sort of things most people use a desktop or laptop computer for. That includes Web browsing, social networking, email and watching videos.

If you think about it, five or six hundred dollars isn’t that extravagant for a fully functioning computer, but why shell out when you can get your choice of Android phone for free? Save your money for a new tablet computer or something else completely. The trick to getting our phone without paying for it is to order it online with a new service plan. You need a cellular service plan anyway, regardless of what phone you pick. The plans carry exactly the same monthly cost whether you buy them in a carrier store, a big box electronics retailer, or through a high volume online retailer. So, why not be smart about where you make the purchase and get a free smartphone in the process?

Let’s take a look at what’s available in the way of free Android phones as of this writing. The selection changes all the time, but there are always lots of models to choose from.

You’ve hear of the DROID INCREDIBLE? It’s an Android 2.2 phone from HTC for Verizon Wireless. This phone is widely discussed and desired. It has an advanced 8 Megapixel digital camera with a 2x power LED flash. The processor is a screaming fast 1 GHz Snapdragon with 8 GB of internal Flash memory. It comes with the HTC Sense user interface that organizes all of your incoming texts, emails, tweets and Facebook messages by sender. You could pay the retail price of $550 to get this incredible INCREDIBLE or you can get yours free when you sign up for a new Verizon Wireless account online.

How about the popular Motorola DEVOUR in silver? It’s a $500 Android smartphone that you can get also get for free with new Verizon Wireless service. This one features a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard in a durable shell. The MOTOBLUR user interface syncs all your messages, status updates and contacts to your customizable homescreens. Your favorite Google apps come preloaded and include Google Maps, GTalk, Gmail, YouTUbe, Latitude and more.

Other popular Android phones available for free right now include the T-Mobile myTouch 4G, LG Optimus T, DROID X by Motorola, Samsung Intercept in gray steel or satin pink, HTC Aria for AT&T, LG Ally, DROID 2, LG Vortex in black or violet, Motorola BACKFLIP, Bravo, CHARM, Citrus, CLIQ, Cliq XT, Flip Out, Flipside, Captivate and Fascinate. That’s a lot of models just from Motorola. The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 for AT&T and T-Mobile Comet are also free.

Do you think that one of these free Android phones might be just what you are looking for this year? Well, don’t wait too long. You want to get yours delivered in time for the holidays and before supplies inevitably run out. Learn more and check out all the free Android special offers, plus an amazing array of other cell phones and high-end Android phones at deep discounts.

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope your holiday is happy, healthy and enjoyable!


- John

Cash In Old Gadgets To Buy New Gadgets

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are almost upon us. Just look at all the new smartphones and other electronic gadgets that are going on sale, if they aren’t already. Exciting, isn’t it? Yet we know that times are uncertain and that we should really think about how we are going to pay for those shiny new things. Here’s an idea: Get your old stuff to pay for your new stuff!

Sounds a bit fanciful, but it can work. How? It’s because we all collect... make that hoard... electronics and photography gear of all types. Never mind that we aren’t using this gear anymore. We just have it around. It’s too good to throw away and too much hassle to sell, so there it sits. What we don’t consider is that there is a veritable savings account worth of value in all that unused equipment. There’s your cash source to buy the new, new gadgets this holiday season. Now, if there was only a way to tap it.

You’re in luck! There is a fast and easy way to convert your unwanted gadgets to cash. It’s an online service provided by Gazelle, a leader in recycling high technology gear. What they do is make you an offer based on the current market value of your items. If you elect to sell, you get a free postage paid mailer that you pack up and drop off at the shipper. At the other end, Gazelle will evaluate each item for operation and condition. Once checked out, they send you a check. Now when you get that bill for the new flat screen HDTV or video game, you’ve got the funds to cover it. It’s recycling at its best.

This process actually works all year long, but it’s particularly valuable right now. That’s because we tend to buy big time for ourselves and others through December 24, with the heartburn of credit card bills coming due in January or February. There’s no time to waste.

Start scouring the house and even those desk drawers at work. Look in the bottom drawers, especially. That’s where unused gadgets go to hibernate indefinitely. Get a big bag or box and start filling it with cell phones, video games, laptop computers, movies, MP3 players, digital cameras, PDAs, gaming consoles, GPS devices, camcorders, desktop computers, LCD monitors, calculators, camera lenses, satellite radios, external drives, streaming media, home audio equipment, projectors and Blu-Ray players. I’ll bet you’ve got anywhere between a modest box to half-a-room full.

The next step is to get price offers for each item. Consider it a game that pays. Perhaps you can engage family members or co-workers to help evaluate a massive tech collection, especially if they think they might benefit from the proceeds. Find your item through a search on the Gazelle site. Find the exact model you have and then check the radio buttons for functionality, condition and available accessories. Click the “Calculate” button and you’ll see how much they’ll pay you. I just tried a Nikon camera lens and saw I could sell it for $90. If you think that price is fair and want to cash-in, click the orange “Add to Box” button to lock in the offer. Then move on to the next item.

Procrastination is not to your advantage. Technology, like milk and most everything else, loses value over time. Chances are that you’ll get a better offer today than you will in a week or a month from now as your unused gear just gets more and more obsolete. Word to the wise!

Once you have evaluated your collection and see the now substantial total offer, all you need is that pre-paid shipping box. You get that by clicking on the “Checkout” button. When your container arrives, pack each item carefully using recycled newspaper or other soft packing material and sent it in. Congratulations, the hard work is done! Now it’s just a matter of waiting for the moola.

Can it get any easier? Not unless someone came over, ransacked your place while you watched TV, and peeled off a roll of bills on their way out. This is the next best thing. It takes minimal effort compared to running ads, dealing with people at the door or dragging everything through the auction process. When you’re done, you have cash in hand, the satisfaction of recycling things you don’t need anymore, plus all that extra shelf and drawer space you’ll need for your new acquisitions.

Are you motivated to start the process? Gather your gear and get recycling offers for your gadgets now. Those big sales are about to start!

Even Lower Latency Connections To Chicago

If you’ve been wondering just how important network latency has become, note that AboveNet is installing shorter fiber optic routes just to link Chicago and its suburbs. That network will be in operation by mid-next year. Can other cities be far behind?

Latency is the new bandwidth. It’s the scarce resource when you need really, really high performance in your computing environment. Who needs such performance? The big driver has been financial companies that trade on the stock and commodity exchanges. That’s why Chicago, as a major financial center, is being targeted for the AboveNet buildout. New York is another hotbed of activity, with colocation near financial exchanges in high demand. Since we are in a global trading economy, low latency connections to Europe and Asia are also enjoying enormous growth.

Why the need for speed, and why doesn’t more bandwidth solve this problem? Latency and bandwidth are two different animals. Latency is how long it takes a packet to get from point A to point B if there is no interference from other traffic. Bandwidth is the sheer volume of traffic you can handle before packets start piling up at the choke points.

To someone with a too-small WAN network, it might seem that latency and bandwidth are the same thing. That’s because a bandwidth-limited system slows down transmission a lot more than the effect of latency. But once you have enough bandwidth to keep up with the amount of traffic you can actually send and receive, then the network is going as fast as it can. Increasing bandwidth won’t make those packets fly down the line any faster. They’re inherently limited by the speed of light and electrical delays within the circuitry.

You get a dramatic feel for the effect of latency when you watch those television interviews from locations thousands of miles away. They connect to the studio using microwave trucks that beam the signal to a geostationary satellite 22,236 miles above the equator. The signal goes from the truck 22,236 miles up to the satellite and then comes back down 22,236 miles to the television studio. That’s a quarter of a second delay one way or about half a second for a conversation at a minimum. You find it either comical or annoying to listen to the reporters at both locations tripping on each other.

How do you reduce that latency? Take as much equipment out of the path as possible and make the path as straight a line connection as possible. Not much you can do with a geosynchronous satellite. They only work at that altitude. Just don’t try to use one for VoIP telephony or any sort of interactive process or you’ll get frustrated quickly. Fiber optic cables are the high bandwidth connection of choice, but even they are not created equal. Some networks, like the Internet, may take a circuitous route to get packets from one location to another. The Internet was designed to get the packets delivered even under multiple fault conditions. It wasn’t designed to get them delivered particularly fast.

What’s better? Privately run fiber optic networks, like national and international MPLS networks, do a decent job. Even these are designed for normal business requirements and aren’t optimized for minimal latency. What you need are networks specifically designed to minimize latency. They feature very straight runs from location to location, very few switches or routers on the path, and termination as close to the users as possible.

High frequency trading has highlighted the need for low latency networks, but as business moves more and more into the cloud, other processes will drive their own needs for this level of performance. Disk mirroring and data replication are two applications that already benefit from lower latency connections. Cloud computing over multiple locations could easily have the same requirement.

Are your business processes latency sensitive? If so, you should seriously consider the newer low latency network services offered by AboveNet and other competitive carriers. There are microseconds, even milliseconds to be saved.

Where Are T1 Lines Available?

You’ve had your fill of DSL and Cable broadband solutions for your business. The price is right, but the bandwidth is inconsistent and service may or may not be available when you need it most. How about moving up to a T1 line? Sound’s good, but just how available is T-1 and is the cost affordable?

The first thing you should know is that T1 is in a completely different class of service than either DSL or Cable broadband. T1 is a regulated, tariffed telecommunications service. The other two are unregulated information services offered primarily for residential users. In return for a lower cost, consumers are willing to put up with irregularities in the service. These include bandwidth that can slow to a crawl when usage is particularly heavy, a difference in upload and download speeds, and no guarantees on service availability.

For residential and home office users, one of the consumer grade services makes sense. It’s also probably all you are going to get. Most carriers will only install a regulated telecom service to a bona-fide business address, not a residential listing. There is also a credit check and a 1 to 3 year contract for services like T1.

Having said that, you should also know that T1 lines are available to just about any business location. It’s almost like a utility. If you can get electricity, water and telephone service, you can probably get T1 service. That’s above and beyond what you can expect from those consumer services. They are very localized to cities and suburbs. It’s not at all unusual for a business to be out of the area for DSL or Cable, yet have no trouble getting T1 service installed.

Why is this? It’s because T1 technology was developed by the telephone companies for their own use initially. It’s since become available for businesses. As a telco technology, T1 was designed to be provisioned on the same twisted pair copper wiring that is used for analog telephone service. Nearly every business has a multi-pair bundle installed when the building is constructed in order to get telephone service. The wires that aren’t being used for telephone lines are available for T1. It takes two pair to support T1 service. One pair is used for transmit, also known as upload. The other pair is for receive, also called download.

As you might suspect, having separate transmit and receive wires means that bandwidth on T1 lines is symmetrical. You get 1.5 Mbps download and 1.5 Mbps upload simultaneously. That arrangement is also known as full duplex. Check other bandwidth options and you’ll probably see that the download speed is much larger than the upload speed. It’s designed that way to save money and works just fine for casual Web browsing. However, if you regularly transfer files between locations or upload content to a remote Web server, having the same upload and download speeds can be a big advantage.

T1 service is available everywhere, even out in the boonies, because the system was designed for signal regeneration. Every mile or so there is a regenerator that takes the signal that normally degrades with distance and re-generates or reshapes back to an ideal waveform. This can be done multiple times so that you’ll get T1 service even 10 or 20 miles away from the nearest telephone company office.

Finally, you should know that T1 line prices have plunged in recent years due to deregulation, competition and heavy demand for the service. Could T1 give your business the bandwidth and reliability you need? Find out with a quick online search for T1 availability and prices now.

It’s Free Phones Time For The Holidays

We’re right on the cusp of the official start to the holiday season, with a mad dash through the stores beginning the day after Thanksgiving. Before you get caught up in the hoopla and wind up spending a bundle on smartphones you fall in love with, why not take a breath and see if you can get those same phones for free?

How do you do that? What you need is a specialized search engine. It’s designed to find only those cell phones that are free to you when you order them with new service. You’ll find that search engine at Cell Phone Plan Finder.



Are there really more than a few obsolete phone models being given away? Hey, you be the judge. At this writing I count 23 wireless phones of all makes and models available at no charge. The majority of these are smartphones and the rest are current technology cell phones. Let’s take a look at these offerings.

The first two on the list are the BlackBerry Curve and BlackBerry Bold for AT&T. If you like that carrier, you can also get the Motorola BACKFLIP with MOTOBLUR, the Samsung Eternity II, The Samsung Strive in black and purple, and the Samsung Rugby II, to name a few.

If Verizon is more your choice, you’ll be able to pick up the BlackBerry Storm2, BlackBerry Tour, LG Ally, Motorola DEVOUR and Verizon Wireless Salute.

How about T-Mobile? Yes, you can get the Motorola Cliq XT with MOTOBLUR, the Nokia 2720 or Samsung T249, all for free.

Sprint has the Samsung M240 in silver or the Samsung M360 as their free offering.

Oh, you didn’t see the “FREE” sign on these phones when you took your whirlwind tour of the cell phone and big box stores? That’s because you have to know where to shop to get the really good deals. I’d suggest that you take few minutes right now to check out the free cell phones available at Cell Phone Plan Finder.

Is that all the phones that are available at a huge discount? No, just the free ones. There are dozens more available at deep discounts to their retail prices and even the special offers you find in the newspaper. Why not check out the phone available for your favorite carrier or browse the complete selection at Cell Phone Plan Finder.

Benefits Of An MPLS Mesh Network

Once your business has expanded to include additional locations, like branch offices, offsite data centers, factories or warehouses, you need a way to get all those locations on the same network for data, voice or both. The latest and greatest way to do that is the MPLS Mesh Network.

Companies with two locations don’t generally start off with an MPLS network. What they do is buy a point to point T1 line or Ethernet Line service to link the locations. T1 is the traditional P2P telecom service. Ethernet line service is newer and offers the ability to link two LANs at the layer 2 switching level.

So, who needs an MPLS network for two locations? Maybe you do. The reason isn’t that you need the multiple site connectivity that MPLS makes easy. It’s a matter of cost. Depending on the availability of T1 or Ethernet point to point service, you might be better off getting T1 or Ethernet last mile connectivity to a much larger MPLS network. The major incumbent and competitive carriers have regional, nationwide or international service footprints. If your two locations are across the country rather than across town, it’s conceivable that taking advantage of an MPLS network for the long haul span might actually have a cost advantage.

Now, let’s consider the business with 3 or more locations. You can still use the point to point line strategy to link them. If you try to create a mesh network with P2P lines from each location to every other location, you’ll find this topology gets pretty expensive pretty fast. What many companies have done is create a star network with point to point lines radiating out from company headquarters to each remote location. All traffic gets routed through HQ regardless of where it is going.

When you do this, you are effectively becoming your own WAN network provider. It has the advantage of giving you complete control of the network on a instantaneous basis. But it costs you the staffing needed for constant vigilance and the need to establish new long distance P2P lines every time another location is added. The cost goes up linearly as you add locations because there is no economy of scale when it comes to dedicated point to point data lines.

Where you do get economy of scale is by sending your traffic over a privately run MPLS network. All those P2P lines are replaced by access network connections at each location to be served. The lines are only long enough to reach the carrier's local point of presence, and priced accordingly. The carrier then sets up paths through its core network to interconnect your locations as you specify. You can specify which locations can connect to which other locations and how much bandwidth they have available. The MPLS connections can be set up as fully meshed so that every location can interact with every other location.

Beyond that, MPLS networks can easily handle fully converged voice, data and video networks so that you can include your telephone service and video conferencing on the same network. That can be an enormous cost saver for companies with business sites spread over many states, or with international locations included.

Are you paying too much to run your own wide area network to link multiple business sites? Get the quality and performance you require and enjoy a significant cost savings as well when you switch to an MPLS Mesh Network.

Switch to Switched Ethernet Service

Are you still living in the world of telecom past? Those are the days when you had one network protocol inside and something completely different outside. Switch to switched Ethernet service and your network has more options and easier interfacing.

What constitutes telecom past? It’s the legacy transport services developed as telephone technologies and later pressed into service to connect data networks through the public switched telephone network. That includes such favorites as Frame Relay, T1, DS3 and SONET/SDH.

What’s so bad about these venerable telecom services? Nothing at all. They are time-tested solutions to business connectivity. All of these services are readily available, perhaps with the exception of Frame Relay which is being rapidly replaced by MPLS networks. They offer high reliability and dedicated bandwidth suitable for business operations. The only real question is whether these are the BEST options available for your connectivity needs.

There’s a newer networking technology being deployed nationwide, indeed worldwide, right now. What it does is simplify the LAN to MAN to WAN connection. Everything is standardized on the Ethernet protocol. Connectivity is seamless, since outside network connections simply plug into your network edge Ethernet switch and become an extension of your LAN.

Contrast this approach to having to install a CSU/DSU interface card into a router to make the networks compatible. Inside your company, everything is packet based. Outside, those packets have to be shuttled into and out of TDM channels that transport them between locations or to and from the Internet.

With an all-Ethernet system, you also gain some service options you didn’t have before. Ethernet line service gives you a point to point connection between two LANs at different locations. Ethernet LAN service creates a multi-point to multipoint network that links 3 or more locations. All of these locations will appear to be on one large bridged network with switched Ethernet service. The engineer at the desk across town is effectively right next door to the marketing manager a couple of states away and the warehouse on the other side of the globe.

Just to add icing to the cake, Ethernet services also tend to be lower in cost per Mbps than equivalent legacy telecom services. It’s not uncommon to get 3 Mbps Ethernet at the same price as 1.5 Mbps T1 service. The distinction gets even larger as you go up in speed and include multiple locations.

Are you missing out by still depending on yesterday’s telecom technology to support today’s business needs? Check pricing and availability of switched Ethernet service to see if you can get better service for less money? There’s a good chance you can.

Managed Hosting PBX Gets You Out Of The Telephone Business

Many companies aren’t just in the business space they target. They’re also in some peripheral businesses simply because they can’t get out of them. For instance, how many companies wind up in the phone business because they need phones to do their job? It’s something that we may just shrug and accept, but it doesn’t have to be that way anymore.

What got businesses into the phone business was the need to manage anywhere from dozens to thousands of telephone sets within their organization. Why so many? Because the productivity that comes from each individual having their own telephone and phone number exceeds the cost of the equipment and service.

Back when most of us worked on the farm, one crank phone in the house was plenty. When we all became factory workers, a wall phone that you used on breaks served the need. Now that we’re in the information age, interpersonal communications is both necessary and frequent. We all need to talk to customers, suppliers and co-workers. The more efficiently we do this, the more profit the company makes.

This is how we got to telecom departments within companies. The telecom department manages the PBX, which is nothing more than a small version of a telephone company central office switch. All those handsets plug into the PBX and the PBX then connects them together like the phone company does. The PBX also manages outside lines for calls that enter and leave the company premises. In most cases, you dial outside with a one number access code just like you would call long distance anywhere else.

What the telecom department does is manage all those handsets. If one breaks, it has to be replaced. If someone changes desks, their phone number must be re-routed to their new location. That might even involve making some wiring changes. People are always coming and going, and their phone service needs to be accommodated too.

Some companies have two separate departments. One is just for telephones. The other is for computers and the company LAN. In a smaller company, one department might manage both networks. A very small company might outsource one or both functions to a contractor. But the cost of the activity is always there, no matter how you handle it.

The cost being in the phone business is both the cost of handling all those moves, adds and changes on a daily basis and the capital expense of all that equipment. The PBX system itself is an expensive piece of equipment. When it becomes too small to handle the number of extensions or too old to be easily maintained, you need to take out a loan and do what’s called a “fork lift upgrade” to haul out the old system and bring in the new one.

Now, what if there was an easy way to have all the communications ability you have now, and more, but not have to be in the phone business? There is such an option available and it’s called a hosted PBX. What “hosted” means is that someone else has the responsibility of managing the PBX equipment using their people at their facility. What you have is a big empty space where the PBX system used to sit and lots and lots of telephone sets.

When this is done right, an employee in your company won’t know or care where the PBX is. Their phone works just the same either way. In fact, it may work better because their old “dumb” phone has been replaced by a “smart” phone that connects to the computer network and has processing power built-in. The phone and the computer may work together or you may even have a “soft phone” as an application that runs on the computer.

It’s the ubiquity of the company computer network connected to every desk that makes the hosted PBX possible. By adapting telephones to transmit and receive Ethernet packets instead of analog voltages, they can piggyback on the broadband network that every company has anyway. That network invariably connects to the outside world or WAN, which can include a connection to a service provider hundreds or thousands of miles away. That service provider bears the capital cost and operating expense and performs the move/add/change function for you. They’re more efficient at doing this because that’s all they do, and they do it on a much larger scale than you did. In effect, we’re back to telephone as a service or, in today’s terms, voice as a service.

Are you reluctantly in the telephone business? If so, why not compare costs and features and see if a managed PBX hosting solution would be a better option for your company? There are more and better options available today than ever before.

Fiber Connectivity Options For Business

Fiber optic bandwidth is now well within the reach of most medium and large companies, and even smaller organizations that are bandwidth driven. What’s changed? Lower prices and more options. That’s good news for large bandwidth users. Let’s take a look at what’s available that you may not know about.

Fiber optic bandwidth services tend to fall into two categories. There is the traditional time division multiplexed technology that came out of telephone company research. Competing with those legacy services are the newer IP-centric networks being offered by competitive service providers as well as incumbent telecom carriers.

The fiber optic bandwidth service that is most familiar is called OC-3 or Optical Carrier - level 3. It runs at 155.52 Mbps, commonly referred to as 156 Mbps. What you might not realize is that some lower speed services travel part or all of the way from the service provider to your location on fiber optic cabling. These include T1 and DS3, generally thought of as copper-based telecom services. It’s up to the carrier how they want to transport their bandwidth services, but it’s made easier because both T1 and DS3 are easily multiplexed onto OC-3.

Why is that? It’s because T1, DS3 and OC-3 were all developed by the telephone industry for its own use. The smallest element is called a DS0, which is 64 Kbps of bandwidth organized as 8 data bits x 8 Kbps sampling frequency. A DS0 is exactly the size needed to carry one digitized telephone conversation. Package 24 of these DS0 channels together and you have a T1 line running at 1.5 Mbps. Package 28 T1 lines or 672 DS0 channels together an you have DS3 service at 45 Mbps. Now, package 3 DS3 services together and you have OC-3 at 156 Mbps. The device that does the packaging and unpackaging is called an Add/Drop Multiplexer or ADM.

OC-3 fiber optic service is part of an industry standard known as SONET for Synchronous Optical NETwork. SONET is a US standard. The equivalent international fiber optic standard is called SDH for Synchronous Digital Hierarchy. As you probably know, there are higher speed fiber services in the same OCx family. Commonly available services include OC-12 at 622 Mbps, OC-24 at 1.244 Gbps, OC-48 at 2.488 Gbps, OC-192 at 9.953 Gbps and OC-768 at 39.812 Gbps. That last one is primarily used by service providers themselves.

What’s characterized SONET fiber optic services for decades is high cost and very limited availability. Your best bet for connecting to these high bandwidth services has been at a colocation center, also called a carrier hotel. There’s little to no construction cost to get that level of bandwidth in a colo center, because the carriers have a presence within the building. It’s just a matter of getting a fiber optic cable drop from their equipment cage to yours.

SONET services delivered to your door have also come down in price due to increasing demand from business and heavy competition from another service called Carrier Ethernet. This is Ethernet like you have on your LAN, but extended into the metropolitan and wide area networks. The most familiar name for this service is Metro Ethernet. That’s also where you are most likely to find it - in major metropolitan areas.

Metro Ethernet is a packet or IP-based network service rather than a synchronous TDM service. One difference is that you don’t need special interface circuitry to connect to an Ethernet service. After all, it’s Ethernet and it’s delivered to you on an Ethernet connector. The other difference is the scalability of services. Common speeds are 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and 1000 Mbps to mirror the standard network speeds. You can also get 10 Gbps now. But you are not limited to these particular bandwidth increments. Most carriers offer a wide variety of speeds from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps. If you install an Ethernet port at the highest speed you expect to use, you can pay for a smaller bandwidth increment to get started and then upgrade to a higher speed when needed. Often, all that is required is a phone call to your service provider to request an increase in bandwidth.

How about fiber optic pricing? You may still find areas where SONET services are the least expensive, but most of the time it’s Ethernet that has the cost advantage. That’s especially true if you are not running at one of the standard SONET speeds. The cost difference can be half or less for the same bandwidth when you replace SONET with Ethernet.

Do you currently use fiber optic bandwidth services or are you considering them for your business? If so, don’t order anything until you get a side by side price comparison of SONET and Ethernet fiber optic bandwidth. You may be surprised by what’s available at a lower cost than you expected.

Make Mine Green Hosting

What are two of the biggest challenges facing data centers right now? They’re perhaps not the ones you’re thinking of, but power and cost are real limiting factors to the growth of online everything. Some of the biggest server farms are sited not for the convenience of staff commutes or proximity to major businesses, but out in the boonies away from everything. Actually, not away from everything. What they want to be close to is huge sources of reliable power.

They say that information is power. That’s true in more ways than one. Information technology is power hungry. It takes massive quantities of kilowatts to search databases and crunch numbers, at least for the size of the data sets and the speed that we demand. Servers are machines that turn electricity into heat in the process of computing. A couple of high performance PCs can keep a small office toasty warm. Tens of thousands of rack mounted servers can cook anything nearby, if not for the air conditioning. Considering practical efficiencies of energy conversion, it can take one to two watts of electricity for cooling for every watt consumed by a server.

Data centers are power hungry monsters that have come on the scene just as we’re starting to wonder how we’re going to generate more power. The economic downturn has given us something of a reprieve in the last couple of years, but energy shortages will be back again sooner than any of us dare think. Then we’re faced with a choice of trashing the environment with coal and risking our security by dependence on foreign gas and oil, or waiting decades for additional nuclear reactors to come online. We could just give up and outsource our data center needs to other countries, but then what have we got left?

Forget the doomsday scenario. There’s a much better option and it’s in place now. It’s called green energy. Once ridiculed, both solar and wind are now serious sources of cost competitive electricity. Major solar farms are under construction in California. Windmill farms are sprouting up just about anywhere there is a steady breeze. One of the biggest wind initiatives is underway in Texas, the oil state. What do Texans know that the rest of us better figure out pretty soon? Oil is yesterday’s news. The new oil is wind.

HostGator has figured this out. They’re ahead of the curve in ensuring a reliable source of the power they need and reducing the cost of that power as well. The source is Texas wind energy. HostGator buys theirs through Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) to a Texas windfarm in the amount of 4,009 RECs. Each REC represents 1 megawatt of power, so you get an idea of the scale we’re talking about.

But HostGator doesn’t stop there. They believe in green energy so much that they’ve purchased RECs for 130% of the electricity used to power and cool all of their hosting servers. They’ve also addressed the consumption issue by increasing the electrical efficiency of the servers they use by 36%. That has a multiplier effect in that less power hungry servers also need less cooling. Smart, very smart.

The good news is that even if your business isn’t strategically located near a source of green energy or you can’t afford the capital expense of generating your own solar or wind power, you can still have green website hosting through HostGator. They already host over 4,000,000 domains representing about 1% of the world’s Internet traffic. That includes our own T1 Rex, Ether Rabbit and MPLS Networks Today sites, among others. What’s more, we get a terrific deal on reseller hosting for multiple sites. It actually costs less to get ahead of the game with HostGator than to stay stuck in the past with many conventional hosting services. Clearly, HostGator has this figured out.

Smoothstone’s Converged IP Cloud Expanding To Europe

Smoothstone IP Communications, an innovator in the new field of cloud-based unified communications, is expanding its service portfolio to include European locations. Could this be the start of a cloud that covers the Earth?

You bet it is. Thanks to international MPLS connectivity, it is now feasible to port any IP service to anywhere on Earth. That’s the beauty of MPLS networks. They take whatever you’ve got and transport it anywhere users can connect to the network.

Well, it’s not quite that simple. There’s a matter of scaling involved. Servers that easily handle the load for a limited universe of users in a regional area can become quickly overloaded when a tsunami of new users joins the network from a global footprint. Likewise, the core network has to have the bandwidth needed to handle the increased traffic without degrading latency, jitter and packet loss characteristics.

Smoothstone has addressed these issues, partially by expanding their cloud-based applications platform into several European data centers. That removes a potential bottleneck that could form if all packets needed to be processed through a single U.S. data center. It also makes call termination to off-net European phones easier and less costly.

One of the advantages that Smoothstone touts for moving enterprise voice services to their IP cloud is that internal phone calls stay on the network even when those calls are transatlantic to the UK, France, Germany or Switzerland. It’s only when calls need to be terminated to the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) that connection costs are incurred. The more local the call termination, the cheaper it is. That argues for geographically diverse data centers and central office equipment to support telephony in the cloud.

What is also significant is that Smoothstone is not merely another VoIP service provider. The heart of their competitive portfolio is unified IP communications services. That means converged voice and data services to gain the cost advantages that come from deploying one network among business locations rather that separate telephone and data networks. Convergence can be a tricky proposition for time sensitive applications like network voice. If not done properly, VoIP calls can degrade into clipped and garbled conversations. Calls can even be dropped in extreme cases.

MPLS networking is especially suited to supporting converged voice and data. Not only are multiple protocols supported, but these privately owned and operated networks are carefully managed to ensure Quality of Service (QoS) at all times. For companies that want to unify their communications among multiple locations, it’s hard to argue against a solid MPLS core network. Now smoothstone is taking a leadership position to expand the very same converged services to include European cities. By the end of 2010, they expect to be providing applications and services across Europe.

Is your company still suffering from last century’s networking solutions? Have you been stymied by the process of creating unified communications that delivers the quality of service you require? What you need is the right provider with assets and resources to deliver the right solution for your size of operation and be able to seamlessly scale up as your business level increases. See how Smoothstone and other cloud networking services can provide the connectivity you need at a cost that makes sense.

What Makes 10 Mbps Ethernet So Popular?

One of the most popular bandwidth services for business right now is 10 Mbps Ethernet. What’s that about and how can you benefit too?

What we’re talking about here is Metro Ethernet or Carrier Ethernet connections running at 10 Mbps. They can be used to connect two business locations in a point to point setup. They can be used to provided a dedicated Internet access connection. They can also be used as an on-ramp to a larger cloud network for national or even international connectivity.

So why 10 Mbps? It’s a bit of a sweet spot in the spectrum of bandwidth choices. T1 lines have been that sweet spot for the last decade. But business applications are getting more and more bandwidth hungry. The 1.5 Mbps provided by a T1 connection isn’t really enough anymore, even though T1 line prices have come down considerably. The Ethernet equivalent is a 3 Mbps connection for about the same money as T1, but offering twice the bandwidth. For many small businesses, 3 Mbps Ethernet may be all that’s needed for the time being.

Companies with more that a few employees or using video conferencing, on-site web hosting and other demanding services find that 10 Mbps Ethernet offers a considerable bandwidth upgrade at a reasonable cost. It’s not that much more expensive than T1 was a contract or two ago.

One technical reason that 10 Mbps Ethernet is in a “sweet spot” of bandwidth pricing is that you can often get it delivered on copper as well as fiber optic cabling. By copper, I mean multiple pair of twisted copper telco wiring. It’s the same bundle that’s used to bring in analog telephone and T1 lines. The service provider leases this already-installed copper from the local telephone company and then connects those pair to special EoC termination equipment. That’s the magic that makes it possible to get such a bandwidth jump without an equivalent jump in cost.

Where is 10 Mbps Ethernet service available? It’s offered now in most metropolitan areas from multiple competitive service providers. Downtown in major cities, you can almost always get 10 to 50 Mbps Ethernet over Copper. The exact speed available is determined by the distance from your location to the nearest carrier point of presence. In suburban areas and smaller cites, you may also find EoC. If not, some carriers are offering Ethernet over DS1 or EoDS1. This is a similar service, but uses T1 line technology with signal regenerators to extend the service range.

What if you need even higher bandwidths? Ethernet is probably still your most cost effective choice, but it will be provisioned on fiber optic cable rather than copper twisted pair. Way out in the boonies, that can be a problem when there are no fiber cables for miles around. In town, construction costs may not be that expensive if you are close to a service provider’s office. If you, or you plus other businesses in your building or industrial park, order enough bandwidth, construction costs may be waived or greatly reduced.

Does this sound like a promising bandwidth service for your organization? The way to find out is to get a summary of availability and competitive pricing for 10 Mbps Ethernet Service. Quotes for higher speeds up to 10 GigE are also available.

Why Content Delivery Networks Need More Capacity

We’re in the midst of an enormous media shift. For those of us who grew up in the era of broadcast domination, this amounts to a revolution in technology. Nobody worries too much anymore about how to adjust the rabbit ears for best reception. Instead, they worry about 3G and 4G coverage so they can get their videos on the go. Cable and satellite TV, the successors to over the air delivery, now have to worry about the Internet as the connection of choice for both audio and video. If over-the-air delivery is waning, then what is taking its place? It’s the CDN or Content Delivery Network.

What’s a CDN and how does it relate to the Internet? A content delivery network works with the Internet, not as a replacement. The public does not connect directly to a CDN. These are privately run networks designed to provide high bandwidth combined with low latency, jitter and packet loss. They are designed for capacity and quality to support content producers and distributors. Thus, the name Content Delivery Network. They are designed to deliver content, most often in IP video format, from point to point or point to multipoint.

What CDNs do in take a load off the Internet and ensure quality of transmission for most of the distance traversed. Say a customer wants access to an HD video download or stream. You can try to jam that through the Internet and take your chances with traffic congestion and other quality degradations. Or, the provider can send the program over a CDN directly to the Internet Service Provider. The ISP, say a cable company, then gives access to the CDN delivered content to their customer. In this case, it could be through the Cable broadband service or the content could be used to feed a separate cable channel.

Sure, content can still be degraded between the ISP head end and the customer, but at least the service providers have control of that portion of the network. They can choose how to manage the bandwidth shared by their customers to ensure satisfactory video quality.

The media shift now in progress is gravitating toward most consumers getting their video services via cable or satellite rather than through over the air broadcast channels. That’s why you haven’t heard much screaming over the replacement of analog transmission by digital. It's not that those converter boxes are so wonderful. It's that the satellite and cable set top boxes that feed TV sets are capable of providing a variety of compatible analog, digital, SD and HD television signals. Old TVs as well as new are supported.

Digital HDTV was just one phase of the transformation. What’s happening now is that more and more set top boxes and television receivers themselves come with Ethernet ports for IP content. Plug these ports into an Internet router and the TV set becomes capable of displaying video content that never leaves the Net. Netflix is an example of a content provider that uses the Internet. So is YouTube. Even the broadcast networks are providing archives of already aired shows on their Internet sites.

This move from airwaves to broadband will likely result in more and more spectrum repurposed to wireless Internet service. At the same time, IP video content will increase and require a robust delivery mechanism. This is why CDNs are growing and will continue to for the foreseeable future. Level 3, one of the world’s largest IP backbones for content delivery, recently added 1.65 Tbps of global capacity and added Toronto, Montreal, Brussels, Munich and Hamburg to its CDN. Video content delivery is now worldwide.

Is your organization in the business of producing, distributing or delivering content to service providers or end users? If so, you have an opportunity to compare IP video transport services for regional, national or international connections. There is no charge for this complementary pricing and consulting service for serious business and organizational applications.

How Bandwidth Can Affect Productivity

Many companies are finding themselves in a decision process about how much bandwidth to order. For the most part, it’s so many dollars per Megabit per second throughput. There are ways to actually get more Mbps for your bandwidth dollar, and I’ll tell you about that in a second. First, though, let’s see if there is a relationship between your network bandwidth and employee productivity.

If your only bandwidth connection is a broadband Internet service that employees use to sell personal items on eBay or play Farmville when the boss isn’t looking, you might argue that less bandwidth would be a productivity enhancer. In fact, you’d be better off disconnecting from the Internet completely. But most companies can’t do that anymore. They are completely dependent on both internal data transfers and connections to the Internet in order to conduct business. Still, what is the right level of bandwidth to install?

Let’s use an analogy to see if we can figure this out. Suppose you have a office full of sales agents. This is certainly true of insurance firms and real estate brokers. It’s also the case with many other types of business. Now, let's install one wall telephone for every two dozen agents. How much sales volume would you expect to be generated?

In such a case, you’d probably find that the telephone set would never get cold. There’d be a line of agents urging whoever was on the phone to wrap up the conversation and give others a chance. If these were salaried sales people, you’d be losing money in buckets. If they were commissioned sales people, the ranks would soon thin out from a steady stream of resignations.

Obviously you want to manage the productivity of your scarce resource, which is the skilled sales agent. You’d give them each a phone and perhaps both a desk phone and a cell phone. How about the number of outgoing phone lines? You’d install enough lines that there would rarely, if ever, be a busy signal.

This is an easy example because there is a clear connection between sales agents being able to make phone calls and the amount of revenue the company generates. It’s also generally acknowledged that high producing agents are far more expensive than telephones and phone lines. But what about other employees? Does this analogy translate to other activities?

Of course it does. It’s just when you have dozens or hundreds of employees doing all sorts of tasks, it’s harder to nail down the cost of lost productivity. You should try, though, because the loss is there just the same. Any time someone has to wait for a file transfer or access to a Web site they need to do their job, you have minutes of productivity vaporizing.

Multitask, you say? Sure, people do that all the time. If they know that it takes 15 minutes to download a particularly large image file, they might do something else while they wait. But what if it takes 15 seconds? Chances are they’ll sit back and relax or converse with someone at the next desk. Worst of all, what if your network performance is so variable that you have no idea if you’ll get that file in 15 seconds or 15 minutes? Do you start another task only to be immediately interrupted or cool your heels only to find that you’re doing nothing for the better part of most hours?

The problem is probably more insidious because these are extreme examples. In most cases, the wasted time is probably more like seconds than minutes per task. But multiply that lost time by the number of employees every day for a month and you might be surprised by how much it costs. Now, compare that cost to what you are spending on bandwidth per month and see if your telecom bill still looks outrageous.

To go a step further, consider how much more you might accomplish as an organization with more sophisticated tools that are also more dependent on Internet or cloud network connectivity. It’s a tradeoff between the cost of automation plus ongoing bandwidth & maintenance charges versus the cost of bodies in seats to accomplish the same thing. It makes no difference if your bandwidth costs are a few hundred dollars a month, a few thousand or tens of thousands. It’s what you are accomplishing for the money spent that counts.

Now, as promised, I’ll let you in on a little secret about the cost of bandwidth. It’s not the same for everyone. Pick out 10 companies, each with a T1 line or an OC3 fiber optic service, and you’ll find they’re paying 10 different lease prices. Why? Partly this due to the fact that the price of bandwidth is always changing but line leases are for a fixed time period. You also pay less if you sign a 3 year lease than if you hedge your bets and only commit to a 1 year lease. But the biggest cost differences come from what type of bandwidth service you order and who you buy it from. This can result in a factor of 2x or more in the cost of the same Mbps from one company to another.

How can you be sure you are getting the best rate on your voice or data bandwidth services? More competition is better, so using a broker who has relationships with dozens of service providers helps insure that you didn’t miss a big price break because you only got quotes from one or two carriers.

Also be sure that you compare all means of connectivity appropriate to your business. Did you know that you can get twice the bandwidth for the same money if you order Ethernet over Copper versus T1? They’re both professional grade telecom services, but one is cheaper than the other if it’s available for your location. There are copper, fiber and wireless options available for most businesses. Some services offer broadband and telephone on the same connection for a cost savings.

If you are losing money because your systems are bandwidth limited or you suspect you are paying more that you should for a particular level of service, then by all means get current competitive bandwidth quotes and see what’s available. You can do this quickly and easily through the Telarus telecom brokerage service and get complementary consulting help as well.

Load Up on Toll Free Numbers For Your Business

What’s a really inexpensive tool that many business users think costs a fortune? It’s the toll free number. True, toll free numbers used to cost a small fortune and take forever to get set up. Not any more. Now you can have as many as you want ready to use immediately for $2 each.

Shocked? I’ll bet. At that price you not only have to consider getting your first toll free number, but loading up on them as well.

Why get more than one? It’s all about the marketing. Businesses that run ads in a multitude of media need some way to know which ads are working and which are just along for the ride. You can do that with coupon codes or long confusing Web addresses. Often, companies will list a phone number but distinguish the ads with different extension numbers. None of these are sure-fire. Customers and prospects can easily forget codes and extensions or get them mixed up. Even when they don’t, do you really want to make your valuable customers jump through hoops to help you assess your ad results?

It’s much easier to simply present a unique toll free number. You can assign different toll free numbers to each ad, each product, or each sales representative. Different departments can each have their own toll free number to avoid the confusion of phone trees or having a receptionist transfer every call. That makes calling fast and easy for your customers. Since the numbers are toll free, they’ll never hesitate to call regardless of how far away they are located.

What’s makes multiple toll free numbers so attractive is both cost and ease of management. You control everything online for each of your numbers. That includes deciding which phone should ring, including cell phones, how many rings before a call goes to voice mail, and whether or not you want FAX messages delivered to your email.

Yes, those features and more are available with these toll free numbers. You make the updates yourself at anytime, day or night, using an ordinary Web browser. That gives you completely control and you don’t have to wait for certain hours or for someone to have time to make the changes for you.

The cost? It’s just $2 to acquire an 866, 877 or 888 toll free number set up and ready to use. After that you pay just $2 a month to maintain service for each number. Incoming calls cost just 6.9 cents per minute. As an example, if two customers are calling-in to 2 toll free numbers, you pay 6.9 cents per minute per caller for the duration of the calls. Calls from Alaska and Hawaii do have a small surcharge added.

How about 800 numbers? Yes, they are readily available and cost $5 each to acquire and $5 per month to maintain. The cost of the incoming calls is the same 6.9 cents per minute as the other toll free numbers.

Are you ready to load up on toll free numbers? Order your first number and set up your account. Then add numbers as needed. You’ll get online reporting for each number so you’ll know what you are spending and which numbers are producing for you.

Ethernet MPLS Has Cost and Bandwidth Advantages

Two of the hottest voice, video and data networking technologies right now are Carrier Ethernet, also known as Metro Ethernet, and MPLS networks. But did you know that Ethernet and MPLS can work together to give you more bandwidth at lower cost?

What Ethernet brings to the table is a way to avoid the big protocol speed bump that has traditionally existed at the demarcation point between customer network and telecom network. These two networks have very different historical development and would be completely incompatible were it not for some very clever interfacing. Today it is possible to transport packets from one LAN to another LAN via a telephony-based telecom network designed for voice channels, not datagrams. But why should you?

With Ethernet in the metropolitan and wide area networks, the speed bump between inside and outside networks disappears. Ethernet packets flow seamlessly down the line as far and the connections exist. Often that is right into a branch office or other remote site LAN owned by the same company. Metro Ethernet point to point line service makes it easy to interconnect business locations.

Because it is Ethernet all the way, there is an extra advantage to Ethernet transport services. These connections can be set up to operate at the layer 2 switching level rather than layer 3 routing. That gives you the ability to connect your headquarters LAN to a branch office LAN or remote data center and create what amounts to a very large bridged network for your entire company.

So where to MPLS networks fit into this? MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching is a technology that accommodates just about any protocol. You can use it to transport telephone calls, data backups, video feeds, and anything else you need to get from point A to point B. In a way, an MPLS network is something like a postal or shipping service. It doesn’t care what’s in the boxes. It just gets them there on time and undamaged.

MPLS networks are an alternative to the public telephone network or the Internet. They are operated by telecom carriers with regional, national or international service footprints. What MPLS networks offer technically are carefully engineered network services with guaranteed bandwidth, jitter, latency and packet loss characteristics. What they offer economically are very cost effective ways to transport your sensitive voice, video and data with a high level of quality and security.

Now, combine Ethernet and MPLS and what do you get? You get the performance and cost advantages of Ethernet connections from your business locations to the MPLS network cloud. Within the network, your Ethernet packets are transported transparently between locations. You simply specify what type of connectivity you want among the locations you choose and the service provider sets that up.

Ethernet MPLS solutions are readily available and highly competitive. That provides an opportunity for you to consolidate your telecom services and reduce costs while maintaining quality of service. Check Ethernet MPLS pricing and availability now.

Reduce Expense of T3 or DS3

You currently have or are considering 45 Mbps service using T3 or DS3. Before you re-sign or initiate a new contract, take a look at how you might save considerable expense in the process.

T3 and DS3 are often considered to be identical. They’re not, but they are very close technically. T3 refers to a specific T-carrier system created by Bell Labs. It can transport 45 Mbps of data in both directions (full duplex) or 672 telephone conversations. Do you have a T1 line now? It is part of the same T-carrier system. A T3 line can carry 28 T1 lines, to give you an idea about how much bandwidth 45 Mbps represents.

DS3 is the digital signal that rides on a T3 line. It is the specification that describes how you get all those telephone calls or T1 lines worth of data into that particular format of data stream. In other words, a physical T3 line transports a DS3 formatted digital signal. Sounds almost redundant until you learn that there are other ways to transport that DS3 signal. Most important is using a compatible fiber optic SONET connection. OC3, the lowest level of SONET fiber service generally available, runs at 156 Mbps and can transport three independent DS3 signals. A service provider might drop off one at your locations and another down the block. Or you might order an OC3 and break out the 3 streams yourself if you need that much bandwidth.

How, exactly, you get DS3 service to your PBX phone system or network router depends on what service providers in your area are offering. In dense metropolitan locations you may be able to get DS3 service via fixed wireless microwave connection, as well as fiber optic cable and perhaps coaxial copper wire. You’ll connect from the carrier’s termination to your DS3 router using a pair of copper coaxial jumper cables.

The fact that there are different delivery mechanisms for DS3 is one key to being able to reduce your telecom line expense. Not too long ago, the local telephone company was the only one offering this service. Now there are competitive carriers, each with their own fiber or wireless networks, who aggressively pursue high bandwidth customers. That has tended to drop the cost of DS3 service dramatically in recent years.

If you don’t specifically need DS3, but only the bandwidth level that DS3 can provide, there is another option you should seriously consider. That is metro or carrier Ethernet. At the 45 Mbps level, Ethernet may be delivered to your location by either fiber optic line or bundled copper pair. The copper solution only works within a short distance of the carrier’s nearest point of presence. But not everyone needs the full 45 Mbps. If your requirement is, say, 20 Mbps, then you may be able to get EoC or Ethernet over Copper over a wider area than is available for 45 Mbps service. You’ll also pay less, since Ethernet is priced per Mbps.

Ethernet is also a good choice for companies that have an immediate and anticipated need for more than 45 Mbps. It is a scalable service, so you can get 50 Mbps now and upgrade to 100 or 200 Mbps later without a major effort. Ethernet at these levels is delivered by fiber optic cabling. Fiber support an almost unlimited bandwidth capacity. Ethernet services are readily available at 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, 1,000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet and 10 GigE.

Does your organization have a need for increased bandwidth or would you like to check competitive prices before you commit to a new contract? Our Telarus consultants will be happy to get you a listing of bandwidths and pricing for DS3, Ethernet and other bandwidth services available for your location. As a bandwidth broker, Telarus works with dozens of carriers and can get you more competitive pricing than you could hope to get on your own. Best of all, this is a complementary service for all serious business applications.

AboveNet Core Wave Makes Dedicated Wavelength Bandwidth Available

What do you do when ordinary bandwidth is no longer up to the task? You go above and beyond with AboveNet’s Core Wave service. For demanding financial services, media, health care, retail and government applications, you really do have to get to the core of fiber optic transport. The very core.

Most telecom services are electrically multiplexed somewhere along the way. What multiplexing does is combine your bandwidth service with dozens, hundreds or thousands of others to fill the capacity of a fiber optic core network. But what if you have enough demand on your own to take all the bandwidth a service provider can deliver?

One answer is to become your own service provider. You do this buy building-out or buying fiber strands or even entire fiber optic cables. That’s what Cable TV MSOs do. So do major telecom service providers. But bandwidth is their business. It’s what they do to generate income. You aren’t really in the business of bandwidth. You simply want to use large amounts of bandwidth to enable your business processes. Does investing large amounts of capital in fiber infrastructure really make sense for your corporate mission?

Of course it doesn’t. What does make sense is to partner with a service provider that has already made the investment and has enough bandwidth capacity at their disposal to meet your current and future needs. AboveNet has that capability and now they are making it available to large organizations in major markets.

Let’s take a look at AboveNet Core Wave. It’s a high capacity bandwidth service for point to point connectivity in metro areas, like New York City. Right now you can get 1 Gbps, 2.5 Gbps and 10 Gbps service. The platform is scalable, so that when demand justifies it AboveNet can also offer 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps bandwidth services.

How are they doing this? The platform is built on a fiber optic network managed by ROADMs. A ROADM is a Reconfigurable Optical Add Drop Multiplexer. This is the cutting edge of fiber optic networking. What a ROADM does is manage the traffic on the network optically. Each fiber transports not one, but many different light beams known as Lambdas or wavelengths. Each wavelength is said to have a different color, although these are in the infrared spectrum and not visible like the colors from a prism. A ROADM can manage dozens or hundreds of wavelengths in a process known as DWDM or Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing.

Normally wavelengths have such high carrying capacity that they transport traffic for many companies. But Core Wave gives you the option of having your own dedicated wavelength. The wavelength is like a blank slate to be written on, so you are not forced into the protocol of the core network. AboveNet gives you the choice of Ethernet, SONET/SDH, or Fibre Channel for storage networking.

Are your bandwidth needs pressing the limits of conventional telecom services? If so, perhaps it is time you moved up to fiber optic wavelength services, like AboveNet Core Wave. Why not check pricing and availability now? There is likely more capacity available than you think.