Cost Saving Shared Fiber, Wireless and Coax

By: John Shepler

You need connectivity but are feeling the pinch of inflation. Is there any way to get a business online and not break the bank? Sure there is. If they work for you, shared bandwidth wireless, cable coax and fiber optic connections are available at bargain prices. Let’s have a look at these.

What is Shared Bandwidth?
You are probably too young to remember telephone party lines, but how about roommates at school? That’s the sharing economy. It’s based on the idea that if something is expensive you can still have it as long as you join with others to foot the bill.

Internet connections can be had the same way. A fully dedicated high speed symmetrical fiber optic link can run into the big bucks every month. If that’s what you must have, then you’ll just have to come up with the lease fee. But, if your usage isn’t all that demanding, you can probably share the line with others, not limited to users within your company, to split the cost.

Now, this is where shared bandwidth services differ from the old party lines. Back in the day, a single analog phone line would serve multiple households in the same area. When you picked up the handset, you might hear a dial tone or you might hear someone else’s conversation already in progress.

The polite thing to do was hang up and wait awhile before you tried again. More often that not, curious individuals would simply cover the mouthpiece and eavesdrop on the call.

Shared bandwidth isn’t really like that… for the most part. You and another customer aren’t going to see each other’s traffic on your screen. The routing in the system keeps your data streams separate. However, all your bits are intermingled on the same line. A clever hacker can figure out how to monitor whatever traffic they can access.

The way around that limitation is encryption. Encrypt all your traffic and you’ve created a secure tunnel through the public Internet. That’s critical for using WiFi hotspots, but important for any shared access or easily tapped-into connection. Most websites and email services have gone to secure connections that are encrypted, but all your file transfers should also have this layer of security.

Shared Bandwidth Via Coax
Cable broadband is the originator of the coaxial copper connection. This standard was originally designed for analog cable TV and community antennas. Eventually a cable connector came standard on the back of TV sets. Later, Cable providers became Internet Service Providers by developing a modem that could connect to their coaxial line and share the bandwidth between TV and Internet.

The modem technology that does this is called DOCSIS for Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification. The most common version is 3.1, which is capable of multiple Gigabits on the downline side. The newest is 4.0, which can support 10 Gbps downstream and 6 Gbps upstream.

Shared Bandwidth Via Wireless
Smartphones have had excellent Internet service starting with 3G and 4G LTE. The small screen requirements are easily supported and were quite useful even with the old 2G standard. The standards also serve tablet computers, laptops and in some cases desktop computers, especially when other ISPs are offline. The bandwidth is often enough from a shared smartphone connection. The one limitation for desktop usage is that you might run up against monthly data limits.

With 5G service, cellular providers have begun promoting the use of their Internet service at fixed locations. They even have a name for this: Fixed Wireless Access. Instead of sharing your phone with your desktop, you buy a 5G gateway that may offer an Ethernet port for your network or WiFi hotspot. It connects to the provider like a phone, but without the mobility or voice service. There is simply an incremental charge to your cellphone bill each month. If you have good signal strength, you may get bandwidth of a hundred or two hundred Mbps without a wired connection.

Shared Bandwidth Via Fiber
Fiber optic service used to be only for major corporations and priced accordingly. Now fiber is so widespread that you can get Ethernet over Fiber Dedicated Internet Access in most reasonably populated areas. Bandwidths are available from 10 Mbps up to 10 Gbps and even 100 Gbps in major metro locations.

Fiber Internet is highly desirable and prices have dropped dramatically over the years. Even so, you may still want a lower cost option. Did you know that you can still have fiber for a bargain price? The technology involved is called PON or Passive Optical Networking. The provider takes that high bandwidth dedicated fiber line and divvies it up among 32 users using a passive splitter. Each customer still gets a fiber line, but the bandwidth on that line is being shared among multiple users just like cable broadband. In fact, cable companies are pioneers in building out this technology. You get fiber bandwidths, but with pricing that is more similar to cable services.

Limitations of Shared Bandwidth
While you won’t be seeing your neighbors messages popping up on your screen, you will likely still feel the effects of sharing. During periods of heavy usage, the service slows down. You might even detect congestion that brings everything to a crawl and then, just like with traffic jams, magically disappears. VoIP phone calls can break up. Video conferences can stutter or freeze. Cloud applications can become sluggish.

Another characteristic of shared bandwidth connections is that they are usually asymmetrical. That means that the download speed is much higher than the upload speed. Typically, a factor of ten or so. For Internet browsing or email, this may make no difference. It could impact video conferences and large file transfers up to cloud storage.

You can improve on this with a dedicated Internet access or with a software defined wide area network or SD-WAN. This is a technique for combining multiple Internet connections. The SD-WAN controller assigns traffic to the most appropriate link, with sensitive applications like phone calls getting the highest priority on the fastest paths. SD-WAN can let you combine a fast shared and low cost line with a small dedicated line. The result can be a service that gives you all the performance you need at a lower cost than a high speed dedicated fiber line.

What bandwidth service is most appropriate for your business? Find out what shared and dedicated Internet and private line services are available at better prices for your particular location.

Fiber Without The Fiber

By: John Shepler

You’re stretched for bandwidth. Perhaps the telco is telling you that they won’t renew your T1 or ISDN lines, as they are dropping their support for copper telecom services. You know the solution to either of these dilemmas is an upgrade to fiber optic bandwidth. Once it is installed, you can get all the bandwidth you need now and upgrade easily in the future. One problem. There are no fiber buildouts near you.

That leaves you with two unpleasant possibilities. Either pay a small fortune in construction costs to have fiber pulled-in, or forget fiber because there is none to be had for your location. Not so fast. There is another possibility. Get fiber performance without the actual fiber.

What Acts Like Fiber But Isn’t Fiber?

It isn’t those little glass strands that are so valuable to your business. It’s the bandwidth they carry. Your network doesn’t need to know or care how the traffic is carried in the metropolitan or wide area networks. There just needs to be enough bandwidth with low enough latency, jitter and packet loss. Anything that does that is virtually fiber.

Let’s take a look at two good options for high speed business Internet connectivity that can give you fiber optic performance but without the issue of having to install fiber where there isn’t any.

No fiber, No Wires At All
The first possibility is Fixed Wireless Access or FWA. Back in the day, this was known as microwave relay. Telephone companies put up massive towers with equally massive horn antennas to beam microwave signals from point to point. The traffic was bundles of telephone calls or television transmissions.

Today there are thousands of towers dotting the landscape in town and throughout rural areas. These were erected to support cell phone service. After several generations of technical advancement, we arrive at the newest standard: 5G or fifth generation. The 5G system uses a variety of bands in the megahertz and gigahertz range. The highest frequency or shortest wavelength equipment runs well into the microwave part of the spectrum and has massive bandwidth capability.

The higher the population density, the more 5G capability you’ll find. For smaller businesses, a fixed location cellular modem that plugs into your network can give you the reliable connection you need with lots of bandwidth available at reasonable prices. In other areas 4G LTE is a reasonable alternative and a very mature technology. If you need dozens of Mbps rather than hundreds or thousands, a 4G LTE modem with specially designed antennas for better signal capture can get the job done.

Not all fixed wireless is dedicated to the cellular phone industry. Some use licensed and unlicensed bands to deliver wireless Internet access over a limited area. You may have a small dish or other antenna installed on your building and aimed at the provider’s antenna. That gives you a strong signal regardless of weather conditions. Some private FWA providers can offer gigabit and higher bandwidths that feature low latency, jitter and packet loss just like fiber. Very high usage or even unlimited usage plans are available. Unlike new fiber installations, you can get service up and running in days rather than months or longer. Installation fees range from nothing to a reasonable one time fee.

It’s a Cable, But No Fiber Inside
The second good option to fiber optic service is cable broadband. Yes, this is the most recent incarnation of the Cable TV revolution. What’s new is that cable has gone far beyond its community antenna roots. Most of cable's infrastructure is now fiber. Surprised? Fiber is the only way these companies can transport all those TV channels and all the data.

So, if the cable companies use fiber why not just get them to connect you to their fiber network. They will, if you are close enough to a fiber access point and the construction issues aren’t too great. Otherwise, they’ll simply run the last few hundred feet or so with the familiar coaxial copper cable.

Can cable service on that coax really replace fiber? In a lot of cases, yes. The reason is that the cable modem standards have been massively upgraded over the years. Today’s DOCSIS 3.0, 3.1 and 4.0 modems deliver hundreds of Mbps up to 10 Gbps. That’s right. You can get some of the highest fiber optic speeds delivered via a DOCSIS 4.0 modem connected to a coax cable.

Will Non-Fiber Work For You?
In many, many cases, Fixed Wireless Access and cable broadband can make good substitutes for Ethernet over Fiber optic bandwidth. There are a couple of caveats, however. Wireless bandwidth isn’t as unlimited as what you can put through one or more fiber strands. As such, you may find that there are limits to your speed or usage, depending on what services are available for your location. Cable broadband is an inherently shared service, meaning that bandwidth may vary somewhat depending on how many users are on the cable and how much bandwidth they are using at any given time.

Even so, many businesses don’t need or need to pay for dedicated bandwidth of 1 to 100 Gbps. You may find that wireless and cable offer tremendous cost savings and can deliver all the performance you really need. Why not check out the range of bandwidth options available for your business now?

Two Flavors of Fast Ethernet Service

By: John Shepler

No need to let bandwidth limitations stifle your business. Here are two affordable options to acquire 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet service, likely as much as a small to medium size operation will need. I’ll tell you later how to upgrade that to Gigabit Ethernet when the time is right.

Fast Ethernet over Fiber
The gold standard in business bandwidth has shifted from legacy T1 lines to fiber optic service. Not the old expensive SONET telco fiber that you know as OC-3, OC-12 or OC-48. I’m talking about the modern Carrier Ethernet standard known as Ethernet over Fiber, also called Metro Ethernet.

Entry level fiber service typically starts at 10 Mbps. That’s enough for many small businesses with limited Internet or file transfer needs. With even a few employees or heavy use of cloud applications, you’ll be craving more performance. That’s where Fast Ethernet shines. It offers 100 Mbps x 100 Mbps dedicated bandwidth 100% of the time.

Features of Fast Ethernet over Fiber
Performance is much like your old T1 line or DS3 connection, but much faster. Symmetrical bandwidth means that your upload and download speeds are both 100 Mbps. That’s important if you run cloud applications that send large files in both directions. Backup to cloud storage is almost exclusively in the upload direction until you need to recover a file.

Fiber optic bandwidth is known for low latency, packet loss and jitter. Your service will be solid since all of the line bandwidth is dedicated to your business. Whatever capacity you aren’t using at the moment sits idle, much like the way a Local Area Network behaves.

That brings up another important advantage of Fast Ethernet over Fiber. It is directly compatible with your LAN. Just plug it in to your router or switch and it’s ready to use. Many business networks run at 100 Mbps, although new installations are typically 1000 Mbps and larger networks are 10,000 Mbps or 10 GigE.

Option #2 Fast Ethernet over Cable
Business Cable Broadband has come a long way over the years. Most systems are HFC or Hybrid Fiber Cable. That architecture employs a private fiber optic network for the long haul runs. Traditional 75 ohm coaxial copper cable connects from the curb to your building. The termination equipment is a DOCSIS modem. Most are DOCSIS 3.0, which easily provides 100 Mbps Internet service up to a maximum of 1.2 Gbps in the download direction. The newer standard is DOCSIS 3.1, which easily provides Gigabit Internet service with a growth path to as high as 10 Gbps in both directions.

Characteristics of Fast Ethernet over Cable
Two advantages of Cable broadband are availability and cost. You can get service if the cable runs past your building, and that’s most buildings in metro areas. The cost for 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet is likely a fraction of what you pay for Ethernet over Fiber. Construction costs are minimal, if at all. Simply plug your network into the Ethernet connector on the DOCSIS modem.

The cost difference is reflected in a difference in service level, although that may not make a difference depending on how you use the service. Cable bandwidth is shared, not dedicated, which can mean variations in line speed that depend on how many other users are online and how heavily they are using the service.

The bandwidth is asymmetrical, meaning that download is much faster than upload. A typical bandwidth service is 100 Mbps down and 10 Mbps to 25 Mbps up. Typically Internet usage is heavily in the download direction for web browsing and watching video. Email is both upload and download, but the files tend to be fairly small and not affected by the asymmetry. If you send to large mailing lists to deliver video from your own servers, the upload bandwidth could become a limitation.

Upgrading Bandwidth
One advantage that both fiber and cable service share is that they are easily scalable compared to the old T-Carrier and SONET telco standards. You simply need a port that can handle the maximum bandwidth you anticipate needing. For fiber, that’s a Gigabit Ethernet port on the Customer Premises Equipment. For cable it’s a DOCSIS 3.0 or 3.1 modem. With those in place, you can upgrade your speed with just a phone call and no equipment changes will be necessary.

Do you feel limited by your current point to point or Internet access speed? You may be surprised how affordable a major upgrade is. Check out Fast Ethernet service options for your business now.

Faster Internet Connectivity

By: John Shepler

More is often better when it comes to Internet access speed. Yes, at some point the bandwidth of the line is so wide and the latency so low that your connection appears to be transparent. That’s not the case for most of us. We’re bandwidth limited to what we can afford and what is available. So, do we have to settle for limited throughput? Not necessarily, and certainly not until we’ve checked out all the options now available.

Times Have Changed
One thing that holds us back in achieving faster Internet connectivity is the status quo. We’re comfortable with our Internet service provider and may not give it much thought. You might have just lucked into a good broadband service years ago or did a thorough search before selecting your current provider and service level. Just remember… that was years ago. In Internet years, that’s forever!

The Oldies: T1 and DSL
T1 lines and DSL were once the hot tech services. In fact, they may have been the only thing affordable at the time. Sure, there were T3 lines (also called DS3 service) and telco provided SONET fiber, but those were grossly expensive and only ordered if you REALLY needed them.

DSL is pretty much yesterday’s tech. T1 lines, however are still alive and well. They’re either on very old contracts that haven’t been reviewed in years or for special needs like rural locations where there isn’t much else. Todays T1 lines cost about half what they did a decade ago and you can bond them to create higher bandwidths. For most of us, though, there are better choices.

Cable Business Broadband
Today’s most popular entry level broadband service is business cable. It’s 10x to 20x the speed of a T1 line for less cost… if you can get it. In metro areas, no problem. Outside of town, not so much. The DOCSIS standard has been upgraded over the years so that 100 Mbps bandwidth is fairly easy to find. Even 1,000 Mbps is possible with DOCSIS 3.0, the current standard. A max speed of 10 Gbps is possible with the latest release, DOCSIS 3.1.

Note that these speeds are typically only available for download. Upstream capacity is often a tenth the downstream bandwidth. That works great for typical Internet access, but can be a limitation if you upload large files extensively. Also, cable broadband is a shared service. You share the available bandwidth with others on the cable rather than having it all to yourself.

Fiber Optic Ethernet
If future-proof highly reliable high speed Internet access with nearly unlimited dedicated bandwidth and low latency is what you really want, then fiber optic Internet connections are the real answer. The pioneering but expensive legacy SONET fiber services, such as OC-3, OC-12 and OC-48, are being quickly replaced by Ethernet over Fiber or EoF.

Carrier Ethernet is a perfect match to your local area network and offers scalable bandwidth from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps, and up to 100 Gbps in select areas. It’s the most cost effective service you can get in terms of $ per Mbps. You also have the option of starting with the bandwidth you need today and quickly scaling up as needed in the future, usually with no hardware changes required.

High Speed Wireless
While fiber is the most desirable connectivity, it isn’t available everywhere. This is especially true in rural areas or even just beyond the metro limits. If fiber lines run to or close by your building, then you are in luck. Otherwise construction costs might be totally unacceptable regardless of the monthly lease fees.

If wires, including cable and fiber, aren’t the answer for you, then wireless may get the job done. There are two good options to consider. One is fixed point business Internet that picks up the tower signal using a small antenna on your building. The other is two-way business satellite that uses a small dish pointed at the southern sky to do the same thing.

Fixed Point Wireless
These providers are also known as WISPs or Wireless Internet Service Providers. Small Business Internet is similar to cable broadband but without the cable. You may get up to 50/5 Mbps of shared bandwidth for a very reasonable monthly price with no data caps. Enterprise Business Internet offers symmetrical dedicated bandwidth like Ethernet Fiber from 10 Mbps up to 1 Gbps with low latency for sensitive traffic like voice and video. Like other services, you’ll need to be in a location that is served by a strong WISP signal.

Satellite Wireless
The one nearly universal Internet connectivity service is broadband business satellite. Perched thousands of miles over the equator, satellites the size of school busses beam strong signals that blanket the USA and beyond, including islands and ships at sea. Two-way satellite has long been used by gas stations, restaurants, bank branches and other small commercial locations that have limited access needs. The new generations of “birds” are serious contenders with wireline and fiber. Look for bandwidth options around 15 Mbps now and up to 100 Mbps soon. Latency is pretty much stuck around half a second due to the enormous distances involved. That may or may not be a factor depending on how sensitive your applications, like voice, video and cloud services, are to these time delays.

Did you know that there were so many options to get faster Internet connectivity for your business? Whether you are a large, medium or small organization, check out your options for high speed broadband Internet service at your location.

Fiber Internet Availability and Lower Prices

By: John Shepler

It’s high time that most businesses make the move from wireline to fiber optic Internet service. Easy to say, but just how available is fiber these days and can I afford it? You’d be surprised how often the answer is YES.

What’s New With Fiber?
A decade ago, fiber optic bandwidth was only for large companies with big, big budgets. It was provided mostly by the incumbent telephone companies over SONET services such as OC-3, OC-12 and OC-48. IF you were located near enough to a fiber run to even qualify, the monthly bill was enough to make your eyes pop out.

Oh, that’s changed dramatically over the last few years. Now the most popular fiber services are Ethernet and the prices are not that dramatically higher than what you used to pay for a T1 or T3 line… and you get a lot more bandwidth. Entry level is now typically 10 Mbps and goes up to 10 Gbps, with 100 Gbps available in some areas. Need more than that? Really?

More Providers Mean More Availability, Better Deals
One major change is in who is providing fiber Internet service now. Yes, the big name telcos are still in the game with classic SONET service. But they’ve also built out the capability for Ethernet over Fiber and lowered prices dramatically. The better pricing comes from technology advances, but mostly from more competition.

Who’s the competition? It’s independent carriers that have built their own regional and national all-fiber networks. All that twisted pair copper in the ground belongs to the local telephone company. But fiber is a different game. Many providers have their own POPs (Points of Presence) that do not go through the telephone central offices. They don’t have to negotiate to lease the last mile connections. They simply install the runs themselves.

What’s So Great About Ethernet?
Are you kidding? Just what protocol is your LAN running? Today’s networks are all about data packets, not telephone calls. In fact, most of the traffic is actually digitized video. The standard interface is an Ethernet port, so why not keep everything in the Ethernet protocol from end to end?

Carrier Ethernet, as it is called, has other advantages. The newer Ethernet over Fiber networks are designed to be a lot more scalable. The old SONET system is set up with discrete levels of bandwidth and each one needs its own unique interface. Ethernet is Ethernet. Only the speed varies, so the interface remains the same. There will be a hardware change if you want to switch from RJ-45 copper to fiber optic for 10 Gbps and 100 Gbps. Otherwise, if your service provider installs a Gigabit Ethernet port you can change the bandwidth of your service from 10 Mbps to 1 Gbps at will. Not only can you upgrade quicker than ever, you only pay for the bandwidth you are using, not the full speed the line is capable of.

What About Installation?
This can be a bugaboo out in the boonies where there just isn’t much network infrastructure yet. In most cities, there is plenty of fiber in the ground and easy to access nearby. If your building is already “lit” with fiber installed and operating, you can get service quickly and easily without external construction costs. Otherwise, it depends. If the POP is close enough and you, or you and other some other tenants of the building, want enough service, the carrier might just eat the construction cost themselves. However, you may be asked to kick in some, so you’ll need to weigh that as part of the decision on how valuable fiber broadband is to your business.

I should note that some of the most aggressive fiber optic providers now are the cable companies. You think of them for television and coaxial cable broadband (DOCSIS). Cable broadband service is very inexpensive because it is shared among many users with the performance variations you’d expect. Behind the scenes, cable companies run their own fiber optic networks. Most of your town is probably lit for fiber other than the last segment of coax to your building. The cable companies can also make that a fiber run and connect you to their fiber optic network with dedicated symmetrical Internet access just like the telephone company and other providers.

Pricing and Availability
If you are a larger organization or your business is heavily dependent on applications in the cloud, you NEED fiber optic Internet service. You may be surprised by how much bandwidth you can get today at reasonable prices. Want to find out? Let’s check out fiber optic service availability and pricing for your business location.

Gigabit Metro Fiber Ethernet Means Business

By: John Shepler

More and more companies are running out of bandwidth as demanding applications eat up every Mbps of LAN, MAN and WAN bandwidth they can access. Are you doomed to fight a losing battle or is there a good technical solution available?

More Bandwidth to the Rescue
Don’t expect to roll back the clock and be able to do business today and tomorrow with the connections you ordered yesterday. X.25 is long gone. T1 lines have about had their last hurrah. Ethernet over Copper is a temporary solution, at best, to buy you time for what you really need to do. That is, connect to the world via fiber optic bandwidth

But What About Cable?
Cable broadband, also called D3 or DOCSIS 3 for the technical standard, is actually a good solution for some applications. Just don’t kid yourself. That cable connection doesn’t really go very far until it hooks up with the cable company’s metro fiber plant. The junction box may be a few blocks away or it might be handing on the utility pole you can see from your office.

The same is true for T3 or DS3 bandwidth, the longstanding upgrade path from T1 lines. The connection to your equipment may be a pair of coaxial cables, but they only go out to the street. At they point they join up with a SONET fiber optic system owned and maintained by the local telephone company.

What’s Special About MetroE Fiber?
Ethernet is the newer and future-proof technology for carrying digital traffic on fiber optic systems. It is based on the same Ethernet standards used for your local area networks. Certain standards have been added to fit with carrier operations, but otherwise it is switched Ethernet.

That means the interface between your LAN and the carrier’s MAN or WAN is trivially simple. Just plug in and go, like you would with any router or switch. No special interface cards are needed. Chances are that the carrier who is providing your service will install a managed router at your business to define the network edge.

Metro vs Internet
Metro Ethernet, strictly speaking, is a network that serves a particular city or city plus suburbs. The most common use has been to interconnect business locations that are geographically close. These may include headquarters, data centers, warehouses and branch offices. Some companies choose to include suppliers and important customers on their MetroE network for high connection speed and security.

Metro Ethernet is a point to point or multipoint service that directly connects particular locations. You can elect to order ELAN service that actually extends your local network to the other locations. It’s just like you ran your own cables across town, but without the prohibitive expense of doing so.

The Internet is another animal. It’s actually a massive worldwide network made up of national, regional and city-wide networks that all agree to a common standard. Metro Ethernet is not the Internet, but it can connect to it. MetroE networks can also connect to each other over longer distances, especially when ordered through the same carrier.

Why Order Metro Ethernet?
You can think of Carrier Ethernet or Metro Ethernet as the new gold standard in telecommunications. It gives you high bandwidth connections that are easily scalable and low in latency, jitter and packet loss. You have exclusive use of the bandwidth you’ve ordered. It’s also generally covered by a service level agreement to ensure that you get the highest level of availability.

That’s important because the tradeoff between Metro Ethernet and Cable Broadband is not so much in the connection method. Cable provides you with a shared bandwidth service that varies in speed depending on how heavy the usage is. Service is generally on a “best effort” basis rather than any particular guarantees of performance or availability. Thus, the lower price for a given bandwidth level. Some businesses, especially smaller ones, find this tradeoff well worth making. Others with large user bases and critical applications may find that only dedicated service is acceptable.

By the way, many Cable companies also offer Metro Ethernet service on their fiber backbones. It’s a different class of service with a different pricing structure than the coax connected business broadband offering.

Is Metro Ethernet For You?
If you are running out of bandwidth or already at the limit, or simply want a service that can easily be upgraded in the future, you should take a serious look at Metro Ethernet for your business. You may be able to get a break on construction costs or even have them waived if you sign a long term contract, have high enough bandwidth requirements or can join forces with other business customers in your building. There are likely multiple carriers serving your area. Find out what each can offer with a set of competitive quotes for Metro Ethernet service now.