Asymmetric Bandwidth is Hot for Business

By: John Shepler

What has characterized serious bandwidth for business applications has been symmetry, or having the same Mbps capacity in both the up (transmit) and down (receive) directions. That’s being challenged, now, by new service products that promote asymmetry. Asymmetry means having a different bandwidth available depending on whether you are uploading or downloading. Let’s have a look at why this is happening and if it can be advantageous for your business.

Symmetry has its roots in telecom services that go back to the development of digital line transmission a half-century ago. The inventor of the T-Carrier standards, including the ubiquitous T1 line, was Bell Labs. Bell’s mission was to serve the telephone companies, so the digitization of telephone calls preceded computer to computer communications by decades. Switching from analog to digital long lines virtually eliminated the noise, distortion and crosstalk effects that plagued domestic long distance and international phone calls. It also enabled systems that could transmit hundreds and thousands of simultaneous phone calls on a single circuit.

Why symmetrical operation? Phone calls are bi-directional in nature. It doesn’t matter which end of the call you are on. You need the same line characteristics so that you can talk and listen simultaneously. This results in transmit and receive paths that are identical in design.

When T1 lines, DS3 connections and fiber optic circuits were pressed into service to meet the demand for computer communications, they automatically came with symmetrical bandwidth as well as dedicated circuits, synchronized channels and low latency and jitter. These features of Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) get the job done, but at a price.

Asymmetry has its roots in the rise of the Internet and consumer based Internet Service Providers (ISPs). When you access a web site, you send a small burst of packets to tell the server what you want and get back a large burst of packets that carry text, images, audio and video. Nearly all web access by users requires a lot more bandwidth in the download direction than in the upload direction.

This works well for telephone companies providing DSL over shared phone lines and cable companies using spare channels to deliver broadband Internet. Cable, especially, is a one-way medium. When TV was the only service, all channel content went from the head end to the consumer. For asymmetrical broadband, many fewer channels have to be allocated for the upload direction. That leaves the rest available for higher download speeds at premium pricing.

What some businesses, especially the smaller ones, have found is that asymmetrical DSL, cable, wireless and satellite broadband meet their needs just fine. This is especially true when their employees use the Internet primarily for web access and occasional email. Cable broadband is readily available and gives you higher download speeds for a fraction of the cost of a T1 line. When you get into higher bandwidths, say 10 to 100 Mbps, the cost differences are like night and day.

There are some hitches in this rosy scenario. Asymmetry is only one reason why DSL and Cable are cheaper than T1, DS3, Ethernet over Copper and fiber. A big driver in this cost reduction is shared rather than dedicated bandwidth. With shared bandwidth, the Mbps you have in either direction varies constantly depending on what your neighbors are doing. It’s one big bandwidth pool and the more users who are swimming in it, the less bandwidth is available to each user. This can get annoying when you have a critical project in the works and you can’t get much done because other people are downloading high definition videos.

Another difference between the symmetrical and asymmetrical services is that the symmetrical ones tend to be tariffed telecom services with Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that specify repair times for circuit outages, usually in a matter of a few hours. The consumer oriented asymmetrical services tend to be classified as “data services” and are provided on a best effort basis. The carrier will take your complaints seriously, but they may not be able to get the line fixed for some time.

Asymmetry doesn’t work for everyone. Applications like disaster backup and recovery, video conferencing, PBX & enterprise VoIP telephony, cloud computing and large file transfers between multiple business sites really need line symmetry for optimum performance. Companies running these applications also tend to need dedicated bandwidth and service level agreements to ensure maximum productivity.

Even so, the heavy competition from cable and other service providers is causing some major telecom carriers to rethink their service offerings. MegaPath, for instance, is rolling out asymmetrical service to customers at a cost savings. They are still differentiating their service with dedicated bandwidth, SLAs and Quality of Service (QoS) options for business applications that need these characteristics. Other big telecom carriers are expected to follow suit.

With so many service providers and connectivity options, how do you choose the optimum service that gives you the performance you need for the least expense? The best way is to get help from a bandwidth broker who works with many service providers and has the volume to get you the best discounts. Get instant online pricing and available consulting for bandwidth services available for your business locations.

Fiber Optic Speed Using Ethernet over Copper

In the future, perhaps the near future, all connectivity will be by fiber optic communication lines. The largest companies already have fiber assets in place. Some smaller but bandwidth intensive companies have also moved from their traditional copper lines to fiber optic connections. Fiber offers nearly unlimited bandwidth growth once installed. The issue is what to do if there is no fiber available at your location yet.

A few years ago your options were limited. You probably started with a T1 line. This service is available everywhere and easily affordable. T1 lines offered plenty of bandwidth for most businesses when they were first made available decades ago. Today, 1.5 Mbps still works for very small companies but is very limiting for larger organizations or any business with high bandwidth demands.

The reason T1 is available to nearly every business location is that it is provided over standard twisted pair telco lines. These are the same wires that bring in multiline telephone service. Extra pairs in the bundle are available for T1 use.

This offers a growth path for many companies. There are often many unused copper pairs in the telecom cable. Those extra pairs can be pressed into service to bring in multiple T1 lines. A process called bonding combines the bandwidth of those lines into one larger pipe. Bonding 2 T1 lines gives you 3 Mbps, 4 lines are good for 6 Mbps and 8 lines boost that to 12 Mbps.

That’s about the best you can do with T1 service. If you need more bandwidth, your next best bet is DS3, another longstanding telecom service. It offers 45 Mbps. DS3 is fairly common in most business areas, but it no longer strictly a copper wireline service. Most of the distance between the central office and your location is covered by fiber optic lines. The DS3 rides on this fiber until it is terminated at your building. If suitable fiber is available, great. Otherwise you are out of luck.

A new technology has been developed to bridge the gap between T1 lines and dedicated fiber optic connections. It’s called Ethernet over Copper or EoC. This technology uses the same twisted pair copper telco wiring as T1, but supercharges the bandwidth. The way it does this is by using a more advanced digital modulation technique with special terminal equipment at both ends of the connection.

Ethernet over Copper has caught on so fast that it is now the preferred bandwidth solution for low to mid level line speeds. Entry level is typically 3 Mbps, twice the bandwidth of a T1 line for about the same monthly cost. Many companies are now moving to 10 Mbps EoC to support higher business bandwidth demands. The cost of 10 Mbps EoC is only a fraction of what you’d pay for 10 Mbps bonded T1.

An even bigger advantage of Ethernet over Copper is that it can support higher speeds than 10 Mbps. If 10 Mbps isn’t enough, you can often move up to 15 or 20 Mbps. Another desirable speed level is 45 Mbps. This is the same bandwidth as a DS3 connection but without any fiber needed to deliver the signal.

Two competitive carriers are now announcing even higher speed service levels using EoC technology. Integra Telecom has debuted 60 Mbps symmetrical Ethernet over Copper service. That’s 60 Mbps in both the upload and download directions. This service can be provided up to 2,500 feet from the central office that terminates the copper bundle. This is enough to reach over 400,000 businesses.

The technical tradeoff for speed is distance when you employ EoC technology. The higher the line speed, the closer you have to be to the CO and the termination equipment. T1 doesn’t have this distance limitation but is limited to 1.5 Mbps per T1 line.

XO Communications has upped the capability of Ethernet over Copper connections even further. Their newest level is 100 Mbps. This compares favorably with the 155 Mbps bandwidth of the lowest available SONET fiber optic speed, a commonly used fiber service.

Ethernet over Copper is now an established and widely available connectivity service with speeds ranging from 3 to 100 Mbps. It’s certainly a viable replacement for T1 or bonded T1 lines. It also makes sense for companies that need higher bandwidths but can’t wait for their buildings to be lit for fiber. In some cases, the 50 or 100 Mbps line speeds are all they really need and the upgrade to fiber can be delayed until sometime in the future.

Is your business bandwidth limited or do you have an interest in cutting costs on your monthly telecom expense? If so, you should get the latest competitive prices on Ethernet over Copper bandwidth services.

T3 Bandwidth And Its Competitors

When T1 bandwidth isn’t enough anymore, the next logical step is to move up to T3. But just what is T3 bandwidth and is it the best option for businesses looking for increased WAN network bandwidth options?

Both T1 and T3 are part of the same family of telephone industry technical standards called T-Carrier. This technology was invented after WWII when it started making sense to use digital carriers to replace analog carrier telephony. What carrier telephony does is let one pair of telephone wires transport multiple conversations. Analog implementations set up a multiplexed arrangement much like radio stations on the AM or FM band. Each phone call was loaded into its own channel on the carrier system. At the far end, they were demultiplexed to extract them into individual telephone lines.

Analog carrier telephony had its issues. One was that the lines tended to get noisy and crosstalk between channels over long distances. If you are old enough to remember long distance services in, say, the 1960s, you remember hearing hiss and garbled conversations in the background. Once digital carriers were deployed, all that noise and crosstalk disappeared. A long distance call is every bit as quiet as a local call.

As technology progressed, the need for long distance digital lines to carry computer data became important. T-Carrier technology was already in place to digitize phone conversations and transport them as bits instead of varying voltages and currents. The logical move was to use these digital line services to also carry computer bits and bytes. The demand for digital circuits really took off when the Internet was commercialized in the 1990’s. Since the lowest speed standard T-Carrier is T1 at 1.5 Mbps, it was T1 that became the choice for business connectivity.

Most businesses were fine starting with T1 private lines and dedicated Internet access. Some needed more bandwidth immediately and others outgrew their T1 bandwidth. The next step up is T3. However, T3 is not 3x T1 bandwidth as you might suspect. It is 28x the bandwidth when you round off the actual bandwidth numbers. A T3 line runs at 45 Mbps.

T1 and T3 differ by more than just line speed. T1 is provisioned over ordinary twisted pair telco wiring like you’d have for multiple line telephone service. There really isn’t a T3 line that runs from your business to the telco central office. That’s more of a colloquialism. T3 is delivered on two small diameter coaxial cables with BNC connectors. That interface has a relatively short maximum run, so it is mostly used within the building or for a short run from the curb to the demarcation point in the building. The actual T3 “line” to the service provider is most likely a fiber optic run.

The terms T3 and DS3 are used interchangeably, but there is a fine line of difference. T3 is a physical line. DS3 is a data service that runs on T3. DS3 can also be multiplexed onto a OC-3 or other fiber optic service and be transported that way. That may sound like splitting hairs, and for many purposes it is, but it can be a problem when go you to order service. For instance, if you order a T3 line you’ll be getting DS3 if it is available. That will depend on having fiber optic service running nearby. If not, you probably won’t be able to get T3 or DS3 at all.

Does that mean that you are stuck with T1 bandwidth? No, not necessarily. Technology advances since the invention of T-Carrier have created more options. The first is a process called bonding that combines the bandwidth of two or more T1 lines. A double bonded T1 circuit delivers 3 Mbps. Triple bonding takes you up to 4.5 Mbps, and so on up to the practical limit of 10 or 12 Mbps. That’s not T3 capacity, of course, but it meets the needs of many companies that don’t need the full 45 Mbps T3 bandwidth.

Another advance is called Ethernet over Copper. This is the familiar LAN protocol extended to run over telecom lines. Ethernet over Copper (EoC) also uses multiple twisted pair copper wiring, so it is easy to connect as long as the proper terminal equipment is in place at your central office. EoC is distance sensitive, but if you are within a few miles of the central office you can get bandwidths of 2 to 45 Mbps over copper. What’s more, Ethernet over Copper bandwidth is less expensive than T-Carrier on a per-Mbps basis. You may well get T3 bandwidth levels for as little as half the cost, depending on your location.

Is your company tight on bandwidth and considering an upgrade to your T1 line service? If so, get a complete set of competitive quotes for bonded T1, Ethernet over Copper and T3 service options specific to your business location.

Shopping For High Speed Options

Business broadband isn’t what it used to be. Years ago you had the choice of an expensive T1 line, a very expensive DS3 connection or a very, very expensive SONET fiber optic service. Right now those very services are a lot more affordable than they’ve ever been. What’s more, a number of other competing bandwidth options have come the market to serve business rather than residential customers. If you haven’t shopped for high speed options in a while, I’ll bet you will by the time you see what’s available. If you’d like to get right to it, check high speed bandwidth pricing and availability right now.

Let’s see what’s happened to T1 over the years. T1 for dedicated Internet access is now available just about anywhere you can get a phone line installed. The pricing has dropped from well over $1,000 to somewhere in the $300 range for most locations. Those off the beaten path will cost more, but nothing like they used to. If 1.5 Mbps isn’t enough, you can generally bond T1 lines together to get 3 Mbps or higher.

For the same price as a T1 line at 1.5 Mbps, you may also be able to get a newer service called Ethernet over Copper or EoC. The difference is that EoC will give you 2 or 3 Mbps for that price. Companies now are switching from T1 to EoC as a way to increase their Internet access bandwidth while keeping their broadband budget the same. Once the switch is made, it is much easier and less expensive to continue increasing bandwidth to 5, 10, 15, 20 and higher Mbps levels. The growth path for T1 is bonded T1 followed by DS3, which is a serious jump in both speed and cost to get to 45 Mbps.

What else can you get for your T1 line budget? Smaller retail stores that have traditionally relied on large and pricey satellite systems are turning to 3G fixed wireless at about 1 Mbps. That’s not much different than T1 bandwidth for about half the price. Like T1, 3G is available for nearly all business locations. Is works very well for Point of Sale (POS) transactions as well as general Internet access. A higher speed service, 4G fixed wireless, is starting to be deployed now and is a logical growth path from 3G.

How would you like a lot of bandwidth, say 100 Mbps, for that T1 price? That’s not impossible anymore. It’s the result of Cable business broadband that’s delivered over a standard Cable TV coaxial copper line. This is a shared bandwidth service that is very similar to home broadband but designed to meet the needs of business, including such things as static IPs if needed. A very popular service is 100 Mbps download, 10 Mbps upload. You need to have the cable passing your business to be hooked up, but if that’s the case you can get a lot of speed for your bandwidth dollar.

What happens if you need even higher speeds with dedicated access, very low latency, service level agreements and other features? The traditional approach is to move on up to SONET / SDH fiber optic service, starting with OC-3 at 155 Mbps. A less expensive competing service is now Ethernet over Fiber or EoF. The popular entry level is 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet that matches the speed of many Local Area Networks. FastE, as it is called, is an almost direct replacement for OC-3 even though the bandwidth is lower. Many times OC-3 was installed because DS3 at 45 Mbps was too little and 155 Mbps was way more than enough.

Like Ethernet over Copper, Ethernet over Fiber is easily scaled up as requirements expand. You can work your way up to 250 Mbps, 500 Mbps, 750 Mbps and 1 Gbps or Gigabit Ethernet. There are often more intermediate bandwidth steps in-between these levels. With SONET, your choices are OC-12 at 622 Mbps, OC-24 at 1.2 Gbps and OC-48 at 2.5 Gbps. Ethernet over Fiber goes up to 10 Gbps to match OC-192 that is also 10 Gbps.

How much bandwidth do you need now and what sort of budget do you need to meet? Save yourself the time and trouble of chasing all over to get pricing from multiple vendors. The GeoQuote broker pricing engine will give you instant competitive prices for bandwidth services up to 1 Gbps, with other services quoted by experienced bandwidth experts and sent to you via email or over the phone. If you haven’t gotten pricing lately, be ready for a shock... and a pleasant shock indeed.



Note: Photo of high speed traffic courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Will You Save With Fractional Line Services?

If you need and want professional-grade telecom line services but don’t need the full line rates, can you save by ordering fractional rates? Conventional wisdom says yes. Reality may be different.

The idea behind fractional bandwidth is that it ought to be cheaper to buy less than the full line rated bandwidth. For instance, the smallest line service you can generally get with dedicated bandwidth and a service level agreement is the T1 line. These used to be very expensive and cost over $1,000 even in metro areas. At the same time, bandwidth demands in many smaller companies weren’t all that high. Something like 500 or 750 Kbps was plenty for email and text file transfers. Seemed a shame to have to pay for 1.5 Mbps and not make full use of it.

That’s where the idea of fractional T1 lines came from. If you don’t need and can’t afford 1.5 Mbps, then why not order a T1 line but only have it deliver a fraction of the full bandwidth? There should be a cost savings, since the service provider didn’t need as large a backbone network to serve many customers who are only running fractional T1 lines.

Well, yes and no. It’s true that Internet access has a port cost of so much per Mbps. But what about point to point dedicated lines? Is there really any savings to throttling back a line that’s used for only one customer? Plus there is the basic cost of the line itself. A T1 line runs synchronously at 1.544 Mbps whether it is carrying any traffic or not. That’s the basic technology. The pipe, if you will, has a certain diameter regardless of how much is flowing through it.

At any rate, many telecom service providers have offered fractional T1 lines and fractional DS3 service to accommodate customers who can’t pony up the cost of full line speed. This may have as much to do with marketing as anything else. The cost has never been scaled as much as the fraction of maximum rate. In other words, you can order a half-speed fractional T1 line but pay three-fourths or more of the price for a full T1 line.

Now it’s becoming more expensive in some areas to get fractional line speeds as it is to simply order a full T1 line. Why? It’s because a T1 line is a standard product and the fractional service is a special order that needs additional engineering. In that case, you might as well order the full T1 line and just not use all the capacity. It’s cheaper.

Traditional switched circuit telecom services such as T1 lines, DS3 connections, OC3 fiber optic service and the like never were very scalable. They were designed as a technology family with large standard increments between the service levels. But there is a newer service that may be just what you are look for in the way of bandwidth scalability. That’s Carrier Ethernet.

Carrier Ethernet, also called Metro Ethernet, was designed from the beginning to be highly scalable. There are standard network speeds, such as 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and 1000 Mbps, but there are a plethora of in-between bandwidth levels available. Popular Ethernet service levels are 2 Mbps, 5 Mbps, 10 Mbps, 20 Mbps, 50 Mbps, 100 Mbps and above.

What’s important with Ethernet is to have a port installed that can handle the maximum speed you expect to want. Then buy just the bandwidth you need right now and upgrade later. If you’ve got the right port in place, you can often upgrade your bandwidth quickly and easily with just a phone call to your service provider.

Are you looking to get just the bandwidth you need and not pay extra for unused capacity? Compare pricing for fractional T1, DS3 and OC3 services with Ethernet over Copper and Ethernet over Fiber and see what is most cost effective for your applications. Prices will vary with location, so you need a specific quote for your business address.



Note: Image of fraction dice courtesy of Arjan on Wikimedia Commons.

Metro Ethernet MPLS Combo

Two of the hottest networking technologies now are Metro Ethernet and MPLS networks. We normally think of using one or the other. But what advantages are gained when you combine the two?

Metro Ethernet is the familiar Ethernet protocol that we’ve come to know and love on our LAN networks. It’s not exactly the same, because it needs to be adapted to work over longer distances than typical building and campus runs.

This, and other service enhancements, have been standardized by the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF), an industry group comprised of over 170 companies and more than 75 service providers. The MEF has defined five attributes that distinguish what they call Carrier Ethernet from the familiar LAN based Ethernet. These are standardized services, scalability, reliability, service management and quality of service.

What carriers get is a set of certified network elements that work to connect users on a local or worldwide basis. They also have services that can be transported over whatever physical networks they have available, including legacy TDM networks originally designed for telephony.

Metro Ethernet is Carrier Ethernet implemented within a city or metropolitan area. Two of the popular standardized services are Ethernet Line Service, a point to point connection, and Ethernet LAN Service, a multipoint connection. Companies use Metro Ethernet to link branch office buildings, factories, warehouses, data centers and other locations in the area.

Ethernet can also be used as a last mile access connection to larger private networks or the public Internet. These links have traditionally been T1 lines, DS3 connections, or SONET/SDH fiber optic services. Ethernet is growing in popularity as a network access service because it is lower in cost and more scalable than legacy telecom services.

At the same time that Carrier Ethernet has soared in popularity, MPLS networks have seen a similar growth in demand. Most networks have a defined protocol that they run. This can be TDM, IP, Frame Relay, or something else. The beauty of MPLS networks is that they are designed to support all protocols. Hence, the name Multi-Protocol Label Switching. The label switching part has to do with a tagging system that is used to encapsulate and route packets while they are on the network. Since the MPLS network doesn’t need to use the internal packet structure for routing, it doesn’t matter what those labels are attached to.

Most new large scale networks are based on MPLS. It doesn’t matter what’s running as the core network. It might be IP. It might be SONET. What the user sees is a privately run network that can securely transport voice, data, video or converged network traffic within a city, between cities or around the world. MPLS networks have all but completely replaced the older Frame Relay networks that were once used to link computers over wide areas.

What you probably have guessed is that Ethernet and MPLS are very compatible. Many carriers have nationwide or international MPLS network service footprints. You can combine Ethernet access with a large MPLS network and create a very cost effective way to link your geographically diverse business locations.

Large scale Carrier Ethernet networks are also on the ascendency. A new interconnection standard called ENNI or Ethernet Network to Network Interface connects Carrier Ethernet service providers so they can share traffic and effectively increase their service footprints. The underlying transport networks may or may not be MPLS networks themselves.

What’s combination of Ethernet and MPLS offers the highest performance at the lowest cost for your applications? There are network consultants available right now to provide you with Metro Ethernet and MPLS service options and pricing at no charge for serious business and organizational users.

Cheaper DS3 Connections

You need higher bandwidth for your business operations, but the cost of DS3 is killing you. If you are running out of capacity on your T1 line and looking to upgrade, you may wince at even the thought of a DS3 line lease. Well, relax. DS3 connections are cheaper than they've ever been. Even in these challenging economic times, you may well be able to afford the DS3 connection you need.

DS3 or Data Service level 3 is a standard digital telecommunications service first developed for telephone trunking applications. It is standardized as part of the T-Carrier system, and works seemlessly with SONET fiber optic carriers. DS3 is nominally a 45 Mbps line service. Once provisioned on coaxial copper cable, most DS3 connections now come in on fiber optic cables. A single DS3 uses only a fraction of the capability of the fiber, but it can be multiplexed with other DS3s and transported cross country with ease.

What does one use DS3 for? Larger companies will use a DS3 dedicated Internet connection to serve dozens or even hundreds of employees. Configured as a digital telephone trunk, a single DS3 connection will support up to 672 simultaneous telephone calls. Who makes that many? A large corporation or a major call center can easily make good use of DS3 telephone service.

How much does a DS3 connection cost? You'll see nominal quotes of $5,000 a month. But you may well pay half that, depending on your location and lease length. The more densely populated your business location, the more likely it is that DS3 service will be available and the more competitive the pricing among multiple providers. You can get a DS3 quote in less than a minute online for business addresses.

What if a fiber optic drop is not really cost effective for your location? There is another service available, called EoC or Ethernet over Copper that is becoming very popular in metropolitan areas. Bandwidth varies with distance from the carrier's POP or Point of Presence, but can range up to DS3 levels of 45 Mbps. Get a quote on Ethernet over Copper bandwidth. If available, this service is generally cheaper than DS3 on a Mbps basis.

Finally, if your business is out in the boonies where fiber has not dared to tread, there are still voice and data connections available to you. Bonded T1 lines can deliver 10 Mbps or more using multiple pair of ordinary telephone cable. Since you can select the number of lines to bond, you can control the cost of your service to match your needs and budget and upgrade as demand grows. Get a quote on bonded T1 service for your location and see how affordable it really is.

GigE For Business Not So Far-Fetched

Online technologies have been getting more and more resource demanding. Much of this is due to the sophistication of the applications, the move from plain text to graphical solutions, and the extensive use of video. The promise of improved productivity and additional sales opportunities are coming at a price. That price is increased WAN bandwidth requirements. Yesterday, ordering a T1 line was a big decision. Tomorrow you may be leasing a Gigabit Ethernet connection.

Gigabit Ethernet in business? Wow! We normally think of that kind of throughput, 1,000 Mbps, as needed for carrier backbones or interconnecting supercomputers. How would it apply to business situations?

Think about the corporate LAN. What started out as 10 Mbps Ethernet has been upgraded to 100 Mbps to the desktop and GigE over copper or fiber between wiring closets. You know that 10 Gigabit Ethernet isn't far off. It's just a matter of the production learning curve bringing the price down enough to spark mass adoption. So is GigE to the desktop.

The laggard in these increasing speed levels has been the WAN or Wide Area Network connection. You may have hundreds of employees on your networks at various plant sites and office complexes. Files zip around these nets without delay inside each facility. You may have already deployed enterprise VoIP solutions to converge your telephone and computer networks. But what happens when you try to send something outside? Are you still poking along with a 45 Mbps DS3 connection?

Smaller and medium size companies may wince at the thought of "poking" along at 45 Mbps. But when hundreds or thousands of employees are accessing the Internet as an essential part of doing their jobs, that DS3 can easily become a bottleneck. A few seconds delay here, a few seconds there. Pretty soon we're talking some serious lost productivity.

The situation is more dire for companies on the cutting edge of HDTV video production, medical imaging, animation rendering, or CAD simulation. The WAN bandwidth between your company and your customer may well limit how much "product" you can ship in a day. Collaboration on product design can become an exercise in futility. The only way to make the operation of the tools invisible in the process is to take bandwidth limitations out of the loop.

In case you are still thinking that 1,000 Mbps WAN connections are way beyond reason, consider that South Korea is planning to bring Gigabit Ethernet to all Koreans within 5 years. They're looking at implementing this infrastructure as a strategic advantage for the country.

In the United States, such a public infrastructure is well down the road. But Gigabit Ethernet is here for business users, and prices have dropped dramatically over what they were a few years ago. Thanks to competitive service providers who now offer GigE connections on their own fiber optic networks and DS3 level connections over twisted pair copper, bandwidth upgrades are within reason for most companies. Are prices at the level where you should be considering GigE WAN connections? Find out by seeing what's available in your area for Gigabit Ethernet and Ethernet over Copper WAN bandwidth.