How Your Port Sets Your Bandwidth

By: John Shepler

As users of MAN and WAN telecom services, we’re acutely aware of the bandwidth we’ve contracted for. What once was seemed like more than adequate line speed now seems a bit confining. In the worst case, applications don’t run right and productivity slows to a crawl as everyone waits on something to download. Now, what’s needed to jack up the bandwidth and get rid of all that congestion?

Every Connection Has its Speed
You can often run any line at less capacity than it is capable of, but not more. Factors that go into the maximum speed include type of transmission medium, such as twisted pair copper, coaxial cable, fiber optic strands, or microwave wireless. They also include the capability of the port on the access router or other customer premises equipment (CPE). Let’s have a look at some common connectivity solutions and their port speeds.

T1 Lines
T1 lines run at a synchronous speed of 1.5 Mbps. Synchronization between source and destination is typical of the TDM or Time Division Multiplexing technologies that include T-Carrier (T1, T3) and SONET (OC-3, OC-12, OC-24, OC-48). The way these lines carry traffic is to chop up a fixed line speed into smaller pieces called channels. T1 happens to have 24 channels of 64 Kbps each. That turns out to be just right for packing one telephone conversation into each channel. For data traffic, all the channels are combined into one large pipe.

It’s easy to see how you can have less than 1.5 Mbps by using fewer channels or rate limiting the data speed. This used to be popular as a cost savings mechanism when T1 lines were very expensive. Nowadays, 1.5 Mbps is considered an entry level broadband at best. So, how do you get more than 1.5 Mbps out of a T1 line?

Short answer: You don’t. Longer answer: You combine or bond two or more T1 lines so they act like a single transmission line. This gives you the option of creating bandwidths from 3 to 12 Mbps. The thing to remember is that every time you want to add another line, it has to be physically installed by the same carrier. They will usually have to change out your CPE as well as connecting the additional line wiring.

T3 Lines or DS3
T3 and DS3 are pretty much the same thing, although there is a hair of technical difference between those designations. They both run at 45 Mbps and are delivered on a pair of coaxial cables to a specific plug-in card on your router. What you don’t see is that the DS3 signal almost always runs multiplexed on a SONET fiber optic service to the curb. All of these are TDM services, like T1 lines on steroids.

SONET Fiber Optic
SONET or Synchronous Optical NETwork is a family of standards that offers an easy upgrade from T-carrier. Yes, SONET still uses the 64 Kbps channels when it is set up for telephone trunking. Otherwise it offers a very large data pipe that can also be used as a SIP trunk.

Like T-Carrier, every flavor of SONET has a different interface. You’ll need specific cards or carrier supplied routers for OC-3 at 155 Mbps, OC-12 at 622 Mbps, OC-24 at 1.2 Gbps, OC-48 at 2.4 Gbps and OC-192 at 10 Gbps. You can sometimes get rate limited bandwidth at each level for some cost savings.

Ethernet over Copper
Ethernet over Copper (EoC) uses the same twisted pair transmission wiring at T1, but is capable of higher speeds, albeit at shorter distances. Typical bandwidth range from 3 on up to at least 10 or 20 Mbps. In special circumstances, this can be increased to 50 or 100 Mbps.

Ethernet is a bit different from TCM in that there are no synchronous channels. Instead, everything is carried by packets. The number of packets that the line will carry each second is its bandwidth. The bandwidth you can get depends on the capability of your carrier and the speed of the installed port on the CPE. Most often this is a managed edge router they install in your premises.

You simply plug into the Ethernet port on the router using a standard RJ-45 Ethernet cable. Port speeds follow the Ethernet standards of 10 Mbps and 100 Mbps. If you have the 100 Mbps port installed, you can specify the bandwidth you want in fairly small increments up to the technical capability of the connection. Better yet, you can tell the carrier to change your bandwidth at any time and it will be done quickly. Some carriers even let you make the change yourself through your web browser.

Ethernet over Fiber
Ethernet over Fiber (EoF) works just like Ethernet over Copper except that it runs on fiber optical cabling all the way and offers nearly unlimited speed options. Your access ports can be copper or fiber connections. Twisted pair copper jacks make sense for 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and 1000 Mbps ports. Fiber connections are used for 10 Gbps and above.

Fiber has become far more economical in just the last few years. Today it makes sense to install Ethernet over Fiber service as low at 10 Mbps. With a typical 1000 Mbps port, you typical have all the expansion capacity you’ll need for the foreseeable future. There won’t be any equipment changes needed until you breach the Gigabit Ethernet bandwidth level. Then it’s likely you’ll move up to a 10 GigE port. By that time, 100 GigE ports may be rule rather than the exception.

Cost Considerations
TDM services such as T1, T3 and SONET are proven technologies, but they represent the past in telecommunications and networking. The new competitive carrier networks are designed around Ethernet for scalability and compatibility with the Ethernet protocol that runs nearly every company network. In most cases, you’ll find that Ethernet offers a cost savings over TDM in both the copper and fiber formats. That cost savings can be as much as half or more depending on what’s available in your area.

Is your current connectivity starved for bandwidth? Clearly, it’s time to consider an upgrade. Get competitive quotes on copper and fiber optic services available for your location and be sure to specify a port speed that will handle both your current and expected needs.

The Software Defined Network Comes to Austin

By: John Shepler

The Software Defined Network (SDN) has been one of those nebulous concepts that is coming someday to do something better than current IT technology. Well, that day has arrived and here’s what SDN is going to do for your company.

Why Software?
Like software everything, the software defined network is intended to replace fixed hardware functions with reprogrammable software. It’s not really a simplification process. The hardware may be more generic, like microprocessors and digital signal processors, but if you include the lines of code, the component count shoots through the roof. The beauty of software is that all those “soft” parts can be replicated instantly at little or no cost. Even more importantly, software can be changed from afar as needed.

The Idea of Virtualization
You’ve probably run into virtualization in the IT racks. Not that long ago, a server was a stand-alone computer with its own operating system and software load. Each server had a designated function. If it was overloaded, you needed to buy a more powerful computer and swap out the boxes. If the application wasn’t that demanding, the server would loaf along most of the time.

In this type of environment everything needs to be planned up-front and changes are time consuming and sometimes expensive. There’s also a poor utilization of resources. You may need a lot of lightly loaded servers all cooking in the racks in order to run your myriad of business applications.

Virtualization changes all that. The server is no longer a hardware appliance but a software function running on one or more processors. The computer hardware might not look much different, but what used to be one server may now be a dozen running on the same box. Huge applications might span several boxes to get the job done. It’s just a matter of how much in the way of resources an application needs.

Some of what virtualization has accomplished is to reduce the number of physical computers needed since each box is running at a higher capacity. Even more important, a new virtualized server can be installed in minutes since it is simply a software “instance” running on the hardware already in the racks. Don’t need a server anymore? Simply have the software release the resources back into the pool. You don’t even have to set foot in the data center to make this all happen.

Does this sound like “The Cloud”? Virtualization on a huge scale is the magic behind cloud data centers and cloud services.

Virtualization for the WAN
Now consider your telecommunications network connections. Like all hardware based approaches, there are many specialized functions implemented by very specific equipment cards and boxes. Some are in the central office, some in the network path and some at the customers premises. It takes a long time to provision a new service and get everything wired up correctly so that you get the service you pay for and don’t interfere with others or have them interfere with you. The term “nailed up” goes back to the days when physical copper wires were literally nailed up on a board while they were assigned to a particular customer.

If you’ve ever tried to upgrade service, you know what a pain it can be. You need to submit a new order that needs to be processed. The changes to the network for your extra bandwidth have to be engineered. Then a truck has to roll to your location delivering a CPE (Customer Premises Equipment) box with the proper interface for the new service. Bandwidth is typically available in major increments and you better get your order placed well in advance of running out of current capacity.

Now, what if the network could be virtualized like the servers? The hardware becomes more of a life support system for the software. That software can be changed, upgraded or supplemented at will. All of a sudden, network changes become fast and easy. That’s the software defined network.

What AT&T is Doing in Austin
AT&T is launching its software defined network in Austin, Texas with the moniker AT&T Network on Demand. That’s pretty much what it’s all about. Businesses will be able to increase or decrease the bandwidth of their broadband speeds in near real time. In olden days (before SDN) this could take hours maybe days in the case of Ethernet services or weeks or longer for legacy SONET and T-Carrier.

The Carrier Ethernet services over copper and fiber that have appeared on the scene recently were engineered with more of the software defined network idea in place. One of their bragging points is that you can usually get a bandwidth increase by simply calling your service provider and making the request over the phone. No need to keep watching out the window for the service truck to roll in. As long as you have enough port capacity, the carrier will make the changes “invisibly” while you are doing other things.

In fact AT&T’s SDN will let them provision new communication ports in days compared to weeks. That’s an extension of the software-defined philosophy that separates physical hardware from software. Once again, as long as the installed hardware has the capability of handling the demands placed on it, what it does is really a function of software parameters and apps. Look for this approach to expand rapidly throughout the industry. It will be a matter of competitiveness among the communication carriers and other service providers.

Are you limited by your current MAN or WAN network capability? The service offerings are changing fast. Chances are that you can get more capacity and flexibility without a cost increase with MAN and WAN Network Services available now.


Note: Photo of Austin, Texas at night courtesy of Daniel Mayer on Wikimedia Commons.

Ethernet over Copper FAQ

Business bandwidth options have increased dramatically over the last few years. One new technology that is rapidly gaining popularity is Ethernet over Copper or EoC. Before you sign a contract or renew an existing one for the connectivity you have now, see if these FAQs pique your interest in this newer bandwidth service.

Q: What is Ethernet over Copper service?

A: Ethernet over Copper is a digital line service that transmits Ethernet network signals over twisted pair telecom cabling. It essentially transports your LAN traffic over metropolitan and wide area networks.

Q: How does EoC relate to T1 line service?

A: Both EoC and T1 use the same twisted pair telephone cable installed by the incumbent local telephone company. The modulation technology for EoC is different from what is used for T1, so the performance of the line services each have their own advantages and disadvantages.

Q: Why would you order Ethernet over Copper instead of T1?

A: The advantages of EoC include higher available bandwidth at lower cost that equivalent T1 line services and easy scalability. There are also Ethernet services available that T1 doesn’t support.

Q: Does T1 still make sense in light of EoC?

A: T1 has the advantages of nearly unlimited availability and a locked-in line speed that isn’t related to how far you are from the telco office. You can get T1 line service in rural areas where Ethernet over Copper does not yet reach. A special type of T1 line called ISDN PRI is popular for PBX telephone trunking. EoC is has no direct equivalent.

Q: What bandwidth levels are available with Ethernet over Copper?

A: Entry level service is typically 2 or 3 Mbps, compared with 1.5 Mbps for T1 lines. Just about any increment in service level is available. Popular bandwidths are 3, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 25 and 30 Mbps. In some cases, you can get as much as 50 or 100 Mbps over copper.

Q: Does this mean that EoC can replace fiber?

A: EoC and be a viable alternative to fiber optic service in the lower speeds that fiber operates. Some companies don’t need the full fiber bandwidth of OC3 at 155 Mbps or even DS3 (a fiber/copper hybrid) at 45 Mbps. For these applications, 10 or 20 Mbps may be fast enough and offer a considerable cost savings.

Q: How do you connect to EoC service?

A: The service provider will install a piece of CPE or Customer Premises Equipment at your location. This device will have an Ethernet port that is similar to what you find on any other piece of network equipment. You just plug it in to your edge router or switch and you’ll have connectivity.

Q: What is meant by easy scalability?

A: Traditional telecom services are designed for very specific bandwidths that aren’t easily changed. If you upgrade service, that means a “truck roll” to install a new interface and possibly a long wait while the carrier make the network changes necessary to support a higher bandwidth to your location. The Ethernet over Copper CPE has an Ethernet port with a maximum speed, typically 100 Mbps or 1 Gbps. As long as you don’t need more than the maximum bandwidth supported, you can change to a higher or lower speed service in a matter of hours or days, rather than weeks or months.

Does EoC sound like a service that might work for your business connectivity needs? If so, find out what Ethernet over Copper bandwidths and costs are available for your location.


You may also be interested in reading Ethernet over Copper FAQ (Part 2) and Ethernet over Copper FAQ (Part 3).

Increasing T1 Speed

T1 lines have been the mainstay of business network connections to the outside world for decades. In the beginning they offered more bandwidth than most companies could use. Now, like computer memory and processing speed, what used to be plenty is no longer nearly enough. So, what do you do? Do you have to bite the bullet and pay up for fiber? Not by a long shot.

The traditional upgrade path works for many companies. That’s a move up from T1 speed to T3 speed. T1 lines run at 1.5 Mbps. T3 runs at 45 Mbps. It’s a substantial move up and carries a substantial premium, although T3 doesn’t cost nearly what it used to.

If you want more speed than 1.5 Mbps but don’t need to go as high as 45 Mbps, there are now options to get incremental bandwidths delivered over twisted pair copper. The two competing technologies are T1 line bonding and Ethernet over Copper (EoC). T1 line bonding simply combines the bandwidth of two or more T1 lines into a single faster line. Ethernet over Copper uses a different modulation technology to deliver higher speed services.

Let’s take a look at bonded T1. If you decide to bond two T1 lines, you double the bandwidth from 1.5 Mbps to 3 Mbps. To do this, you need to order bonded T1 service from a single provider. Having two different providers won’t work. Each T1 line will come in on 1 or 2 copper pairs in your telecom cable bundle. This cable runs from your building back to the incumbent telephone company’s central office. The ILEC (Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier), as it is called, owns the copper in the ground. Once it gets to the CO, it can be connected to any number of competitive service providers.

Your selected bonded T1 service provider will have two T1 lines installed and run to their managed router, known as CPE or Customer Premises Equipment. It is here that the line bandwidth is combined. You have a single connection to the CPE that runs at 2x a single T1 line speed. How about the cost? It will be twice the cost of a single T1 line. There’s no real economy of scale with this approach. However, how much you pay for your T1 lines will depend on where you get them. This is where a bandwidth broker with access to a dozen or more carriers can get you the best pricing.

One nice feature of T1 lines is that they are almost universally available. You can get T1 and usually bonded T1 in the city, the suburbs or out in the countryside. Bonding T1 lines can be a lifesaver when there is no fiber for miles around. How much line speed can you get with line bonding? Double bonding for 3 Mbps is common. So is triple bonding for 4.5 Mbps and quad bonding for 6 Mbps. The practical limit to this process is somewhere around 10 or 12 Mbps, although in rare cases higher bandwidth have been achieved.

The other technology, Ethernet over Copper, offers a wider speed range and lower costs. The catch is that it is fairly new and not as widely available and trades distance for speed. Close to the CO, you can pretty much name your bandwidth between 2 and 45 Mbps. Miles away, you’ll have more limited choices.

EoC works somewhat similar to bonded T1 in that multiple twisted pair copper wires are used to transport the signals between the CO and your location. In fact, it uses the same telco wiring bundle that would otherwise be provisioned for T1 lines. Up to 8 copper pair can be bonded to create speeds of 10, 20, 30, or even 45 Mbps. Like T1, there is an upper limit to Ethernet over Copper, but EoC just starts picking up steam where bonded T1 tops out. In rare cases, EoC service at 100 and even 200 Mbps has been installed, but you almost need to be touching the central office for this to work.

How does EoC pricing compare with T1 and other traditional telecom services? You can generally get 2 or 3 Mbps EoC for the same price as 1.5 Mbps T1. If you want to go faster, 10 Mbps EoC can be had for about 3 times the price. Higher bandwidths can be had at a discount to what you pay for T3 lines on a per Mbps basis.

What if you need even more speed to run your business? This is the point where Ethernet over Fiber is the way to go if you can get it. EoF, as it is called, is a bargain compared to SONET fiber optic services. The available speeds range from 10 Mbps on up to 10 Gbps, with many increments in-between. Two particularly popular speeds are 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet and 1 Gbps Gigabit Ethernet or GigE. You’ll note that these speeds mirror the standard LAN speeds of 100 and 1000 Mbps.

Are you poking along at 1.5 Mbps but wishing you had more line speed? If so, check out Bonded T1 and Ethernet over Copper bandwidth services and prices for your business location.

T1 and EoC When There Is No Fiber

Fiber optic bandwidth is the future of business. Does anyone doubt this anymore? If so, they’ve completely missed the rise of video content and that rumbling sound that is the stampede to the cloud. The day will come when copper is seen as quaint, perhaps the topic of museum exhibits. That day is not today. Tomorrow doesn’t look too promising, either. So, what’s a business to do?

The best approach may well be to embrace the copper as long as you need to. But doesn’t that mean being stuck in low gear as far as bandwidth is concerned? Not at all. When T1 lines were first introduced to business, 1.5 Mbps was considered big time bandwidth. This was in an era where 64 Kbps modems ruled the day for data transfers. Nowadays, of course, that 1.5 Mbps is a service level that still works beautifully for many smaller businesses, but doesn’t begin to address the needs of larger operations. What’s important to note is that 1.5 Mbps is the low end of copper bandwidth services, not the top end.

The trick to getting higher bandwidth levels over copper twisted pair connections is to use more pairs. T1 lines were originally set up to use two pair of ordinary telephone cable that stretches between your facility and the nearest telco central office. That’s the same bundle of wires that brings in business telephone service. One pair is used for transmit, a separate pair is used for receive. Newer modulation schemes have allowed T1 to be provisioned on a single copper pair in many cases.

If you check out that cable bundle in the back room, you’ll find that it contains lots more unused copper wires. These are called dry pairs. They have no connection at either end. They’re just available for some future use. For many businesses, now is the time to press more of those unused pairs into service.

You can order up a second T1 line, but who wants to deal with two separate 1.5 Mbps line services? What you want is called bonded T1. This is an industry standard technique that connects the two T1 lines so that they act as one larger line with twice the bandwidth. For this to work, you’ll need to get all your T1 lines from the same service provider. That provider will install a piece of CPE (Customer Premises Equipment) that connects to 1, 2, 3 or more T1 lines and bonds them together as if they were one. You’ll have a single connection to your network at the higher speed.

What line speeds are practical? The next logical step up is two bonded T1 lines for 3 Mbps. Beyond that, you can bond in 3 lines for 4.5 Mbps, 4 lines for 6 Mbps, 5 lines for 7.5 Mbps, 6 lines for 9 Mbps, 7 lines for 10.5 Mbps, or 8 lines for 12 Mbps. On occasion, you can get even more T1 lines if you have the dry pairs available and your provider has the equipment available to support this at the CO.

The one fly in the ointment for bonded T1 is cost. Two lines are twice the price of 1 line, and so on. There is no economy of scale for T1 lines. Take the cost of a single T1 and multiply it by the number of lines you need to get the bandwidth you want and that is your monthly cost.

Ethernet over Copper offers a more cost effective approach to giving you the same higher bandwidth levels without the construction expense of bringing in fiber. That’s assuming there is fiber anywhere in the area to be had. There’s always copper available and it is already installed. What Ethernet over Copper does is take the same dry pairs that you would otherwise use for T1 and use them to transport a signal that is in the Ethernet protocol. Like T1, the more pairs you press into service, the higher the bandwidth you can achieve.

Here’s how the two services differ. T1 has a fixed bandwidth per line but almost unlimited range. Ethernet over Copper (EoC) is capable of much higher bandwidth per pair, but is very distance limited. You need to be within a few miles of the CO for this to even work. The closer the better. If you can get EoC services, you’ll find that you can have at least twice the bandwidth for the same cost.

Entry level EoC is 2 or 3 Mbps. Many companies are now opting for 10 Mbps Ethernet over Copper, which is very affordable. Need more bandwidth? 20, 30 and even 50 Mbps is not unreasonable over 8 copper pairs. In rare cases, this bandwidth can be pushed to 100 or even 200 Mbps. Those are fiber optic speeds, but running over ordinary copper telco wiring.

Are you crunched for bandwidth but lamenting the high cost or unavailability of fiber optic services for your location? Before you despair, get prices and availability for bonded T1 and Ethernet over Copper bandwidth services. You may be surprised by what is now available in your area.

What Ethernet over Copper Is All About

Ethernet over Copper (EoC) is perhaps the most exciting new business bandwidth service available. Any company currently using T1 lines, DS3 bandwidth or other connection services needs to compare what they have with Ethernet over Copper options. Why? Because the cost and bandwidth benefits are too great to ignore.

Let’s take a look at what’s behind EoC and how it compares with competing telecom services. First, let’s define Ethernet over Copper. You’re certainly familiar with Ethernet, the near universal standard protocol of local area networks. This is also Ethernet, but extended for metropolitan and wide area network transmission.

What’s special about Ethernet as a connection service? Other services, like the venerable T1 line, are products of telephone technology. They use transmission standards and technologies that aren’t directly compatible with computer networks. They can be interfaced, of course, with the appropriate protocol and signal conversions. This is why you can’t just plug a T1 line into any LAN switch or router. You need an interface card to make the two networks, LAN and telecom, compatible.

Ethernet over Copper is already in the right protocol. Your connection to the outside world is a common RJ-45 jack. It’s like extending your network over miles or even hundreds to thousands of miles. In practice, the service provider will often install a managed router as Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) to connect their network to yours. This way, they can monitor the MAN or WAN network automatically to ensure that everything is working the way it should and take corrective action if problems arise.

The term Ethernet over Copper may seem obvious, but there is an important distinction to be made. In this case copper doesn’t refer to Cat 5e or Cat 6 cabling. It is referring to the twisted copper pair telecom cable that connects your facility to the local telco office.

Telephone wire? Yes, indeed. This is one of the secrets to the general availability and low cost of Ethernet over Copper services. Nearly every company has multiple copper pair cabling already installed and hooked-up for telephone service. The pairs that aren’t used for telephone lines are available to supply T1, ISDN PRI or Ethernet over Copper.

For Ethernet over Copper service to be available, the central office that connects at the far end of the telco cable for your building needs to have EoC equipment installed. MegaPath, a major provider of Ethernet over Copper as well as other telecom services, has over 400 central offices (COs) nationwide already set to connect Ethernet over Copper. This includes major metropolitan areas such as Atlanta, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, Newark, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington DC. This year they are expanding to include Austin, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Newark New Jersey, Portland Oregon, Sacramento and Tamp. Other providers are equally aggressive and deploying EoC technology as fast as they can.

So, what’s all the excitement about Ethernet over Copper? It’s primarily more bandwidth at lower prices for businesses. This is a business service, not targeted for consumers. The primary competition is T1 lines and DS3 bandwidth connections. For instance, MegaPath’s basic 2 x 2 Mbps EoC directly replaces a 1.5 Mbps T1 line. You might think that you’d have to pay more for the extra bandwidth, but actually it’s less. Prices are about the same for T1 lines and 3 x 3 Mbps EoC. That’s twice the bandwidth for the same money.

What’s more, Ethernet technology is more easily scaled than T1. You can bond T1 lines together to get 3, 4.5, 6, 7.5, 9, 10.5 or 12 Mbps. The cost of the service is the cost of one T1 line times the number of lines bonded. Ethernet over Copper also uses multiple copper pair, but the bandwidth goes up much faster than the pricing. MegaPath is offering up to 45 Mbps EoC service in some areas. That’s equivalent to a DS3 connection supplied over fiber optic link at a higher cost.

Do you have proactive monitoring of your current telecom circuit? Are you guaranteed 99.99% reliability backed up by a Service Level Agreement (SLA)? Can you easily scale bandwidth to grow your business quickly? Are you paying more than you would have to by sticking with older technology?

If these questions have you wondering, you should see what you are missing. Why not get an instant online Ethernet over Copper price quote to see what bandwidths are available for your location and what they cost. If you like what you see, rapid ordering and provisioning service is readily available.

Gigabit Ethernet Port Scales WAN Bandwidth

When you are ready to make the move from copper to fiber bandwidth levels or upgrading an OC-3 SONET service, you are faced with a choice. What level of bandwidth do you install?

Why not give yourself flexibility for the future and the opportunity to pay only for what you need right now? This is what a Ethernet port strategy can do for you.

Scalability is a new idea in business telecom services. When you install a T1 line, it requires a very specific T1 interface that include a CSU/DSU circuit unique to the T1 line specifications. Upgrade to a T3 line (DS3 bandwidth) and you’ll find that you can’t just plug that T3 into your T1 router. The interface is completely different. Even the connecting cable is different. With DS3 you are looking at a pair of coaxial BNC connectors that don’t support any other service. Now, make yet another move on up to OC-3 service. Your router interfaces for T1 and T3 are no good. You need a fiber input to your router.

It doesn’t get any better when you start moving up the fiber optic hierarchy. You can’t just plug OC-12 or OC-48 into an OC-3 port and have everything spring to life. They are different services requiring modifications. You’ll likely need a new interface card and programming changes to your router. If you have a managed router, that probably means a truck roll to your premises to swap out the CPE (Customer Premises Equipment).

In the back of your mind, you must suspect it doesn’t have to be this way. Those new PCs have NICs (Network Interface Cards) labeled 10/100/1000 Mbps. That means that you can plug them into any LAN running at up to 1 Gbps and they’ll work just find. Even the connector takes the same RJ-45 patch cord. Wouldn’t that approach be far superior for WAN connections too?

This is the beauty of Carrier Ethernet, which includes Metro Ethernet, MPLS network access and long haul point to point connections. Ethernet beyond the LAN has been designed to be as flexible as Ethernet on the LAN.

One of Ethernet’s best features as a bandwidth service is ease of scaling. If you are running 50 Mbps service and find your needs have increased so that you now need 100 Mbps, you can just call up your service provider and request an upgrade. In a matter of hours or a day or two at the most, your WAN network speed will double. In that time, no one has knocked on the door with a new router under their arm. In fact, you haven’t seen anyone from the service provider. It was all done over the phone.

There is a trick to making this work. The magic is all in the installed Ethernet port. When you order Ethernet service, make sure that you have a port installed that will support the highest bandwidth you reasonably expect to be ordering down the road. Most ports are the standard Ethernet speeds of 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and 1,000 Mbps. It’s also possible to get a 10,000 Mbps or 10 GigE port with a suitably fast managed router if your needs are that high.

With Ethernet over Copper, you are probably looking at a 100 Mbps Ethernet port at most. Be sure you know just what your maximum speed will be, because EoC is distance limited and requires more copper pairs as speed increases. Ask what bandwidth your installation will support compared to what you are ordering initially.

With Ethernet over Fiber, it likely makes sense to install a Gigabit Ethernet port. The fiber itself has more capacity that you are ever likely to employ. The speed of the port will be the limiting factor, along with the capability of the carrier’s equipment that feeds that port. Once again, it is smart to plan for the future but buy for today. Get the bandwidth you need now, but be sure that the system is engineered to allow for fast and easy upgrades as you need them. That will be especially handy if you get hit with a sudden increase in traffic or a need to support massive amounts of video or enormous file transfers that you didn’t anticipate.

Are you ready for a bandwidth upgrade, but unsure of what commitment to make? Give yourself some breathing room with a Gigabit Ethernet port and the ability to scale up your bandwidth as needed. Get prices and availability of Ethernet ports and line speeds now.

Ethernet Ports In a Data Storm

You may have noticed that your WAN network requirements are getting hard to predict. In times of economic instability, it’s hard to know whether you have the right amount of bandwidth for your business activities next year or even next quarter. What makes this especially unnerving is the historically long provisioning times for telecom service upgrades. What you need is a way to pay for just the bandwidth you need today while ensuring that you can rapidly increase network speed if the need suddenly arises.

That capability is yours with an Ethernet service port. You have such a port installed by a service provider at your location. Often, this is in the form of an RJ45 jack or a fiber optic connector on the back of a managed router. You simply plug your LAN network into this WAN port and you have connectivity to the outside world. Because it’s a managed connection, you can have nearly any bandwidth level up to the capacity of that installed port.

Let’s contrast that with what’s standard practice for other telecommunication services. The popular T1 line is generally provisioned on what’s known as a “smart jack” This is a RJ48 socket mounted on a small electronics box. You connect from the smart jack to the T1 card in your router that contains special CSU/DSU circuitry to decode the T1 signals. What’s important to note about this setup is that it has a fixed bandwidth of 1.5 Mbps. It’s possible to get what’s known as fractional T1 at less than 1.5 Mbps, but this is rarely cost effective anymore.

What happens when you have a T1 line and run out of bandwidth? You call up your service provider and order another T1 line. These lines can be bonded to produce a 3 Mbps data line. The entire process involves ordering and installing another telecom service, however long that takes in your area.

Now, let’s see what happens when you have 10 Mbps Ethernet delivered on a 50 Mbps port. Like the situation with a congested T1 line, you run out of bandwidth on your 10 Mbps service. Unlike the previous scenario, however, you call up your service provider and tell them you want to increase your bandwidth to 20 Mbps. They say “fine” and simply turn up your service to 20 Mbps. You can often do this with nothing more than a phone call. Nobody needs to come and drill holes or string more wires. It’s all done with software commands to your Ethernet CPE or Customer Premises Equipment.

The thing to remember about Ethernet ports is that the speed of the port is the maximum speed that it can handle. If you top out at the max port speed, you will likely need an equipment change to get more bandwidth. For that reason, be sure you order a port that has some growth potential even though you don’t need it right now. Some bandwidth headroom gives you an agility to ramp up WAN network speed incrementally as business increases.

Are you ready for a bandwidth increase, but feeling stifled by the limitations or cost of the telecom options you have now? Check prices and availability of Ethernet ports and bandwidth for your business location. Save money now and be ready for when you need a service upgrade quickly.