10 Mbps Ethernet T1 Line Replacement

By: John Shepler

Early in your business, you needed a robust connection as things were just ramping up on the Internet. Dial-up was too annoying. DSL was too flakey. SONET fiber was just way too expensive and had bandwidth you’d never need. T1 was the right solution at the right time. Always on. Always reliable. Low latency, low jitter and low packet loss. That 1.5 Mbps bandwidth may or may not still be getting the job done, but like all good things, T1 is coming to an end. What to do now?

It Still Works. Why Get Rid of It?
T1 lines were based on telephone lines. That is, twisted pair copper wires. That was the genius of the design. The phone companies could install T1 service using the same wiring they already had in place for multi-line business phones. Just about any business could get T1 and many, many did over the decades.

So, why not stick with a winner? Two reasons, really. First, the Internet today isn’t the nascent Internet of the ’90s. E-commerce is pretty much universal. Nearly every business has a website and most take online orders. A lot of businesses are online only. Those that aren’t still need to be connected for credit card verification, inventory control, supplies ordering and customer interaction. High definition graphics and video have supplemented email and text files that dominated early Internet use. A T1 line’s 1.5 Mbps bandwidth is getting to be a limitation for even small business operations.

The other reason is that copper telco lines are something like incandescent light bulbs. They’ve served us well for more than a century, but it’s time for new technology to take over. Phone companies own the copper lines in the ground and on poles. The costs of maintenance are getting too high considering the dwindling number of users. More and more areas of the country are seeing phone company notices that copper service is being discontinued. The replacement is generally fiber optic or, in some cases, wireless broadband.

A Sensible Replacement for T1 Internet
If you need a bandwidth upgrade or find yourself being cut-off from T1 service, you might be interested in an entry-level fiber optic bandwidth service called 10 Mbps Ethernet DIA or Dedicated Internet Access. What you get is 10 Mbps always on bandwidth versus the T1 line limit of 1.5 Mbps. It is also dedicated to your business only, so that you are not sharing this capacity with other companies. That means your speed won’t be varying depending on what others are doing. This is Carrier Ethernet service that is directly compatible with your Local Area Network. Just plug it into your router and go.

Oh, but how much more will you pay for this faster service? Thanks to extensive buildouts and more competition in fiber networks you may not pay any more for 10 Mbps Ethernet DIA than the old T1 contract you’ve kept renewing. Maybe even less.

Fiber Optic Ethernet is Easily Upgradeable
Once you have fiber installed, you should be good to go for the foreseeable future. That’s because the fiber itself has nearly unlimited bandwidth. What you are using is determined by the terminal equipment installed in your business and how much you want to pay each month. You may start off with 10 Mbps but then find you really need 50 Mbps or 100 Mbps to support your expanding business. These days Gigabit Ethernet is standard for many companies and more are bringing in 10 Gigabit service. In rare instances with unusually high Internet demand even 100 Gbps makes sense.

Typically the provider will install a GigE or 10 GigE port for your service. You can then order up to 1 Gigabit with the GigE port or 10 Gigabits with the 10 GigE port. Many providers will give you an online account that lets you change your bandwidth at will. You’ll automatically get billed for the higher rate when you upgrade. Unlike the old SONET days, upgrading bandwidth won’t generally require a truck roll and change of terminal equipment at your site. You can make the speed increase yourself almost instantly.

Private Lines Also
Ethernet over Fiber offers private lines as well as Internet access. A private line connects two locations directly and does not use the Internet. That means you are unaffected by Internet congestion or other Internet problems. Many businesses are choosing to host their business software in the cloud rather than run their own data centers on-site. A dedicated private line from your location to your cloud service provider, called a direct connection, helps to make the system run smoothly without lags and cutouts.

Are you ready for or in-need of a replacement for your aging T1 Internet line? If so, check competitive pricing on 10 Mbps and higher Ethernet over Fiber service now.

What Replaces DSL, T1, ISDN PRI, EoC?

By: John Shepler

Have you seen recent cost increases for your copper-based telecom services? Did you even get a letter saying that service will be discontinued? This situation will only get worse, as telcos sunset their aging copper wire assets in favor of more modern technologies such as fiber and wireless. It’s time to make a change.

The Copper That Isn’t Going Anywhere
The copper that’s in trouble is twisted-pair analog copper telephone lines. They started the electronic communication revolution over a century ago and have run their course from innovation to obsolescence. There is another copper network line, however, that is still going strong. That is cable broadband using coaxial copper cable as a curb to premises connection.

The copper nature of cable services is something of a fooler. The vast majority of the network is fiber optic based. Only the last few hundred feet is the well known RG-6 terminated with an F-type connector. You might think of this wiring as old-school, but with the latest DOCSIS modems, it can easily deliver Gigabit broadband up to 10 Gbps.

Cable companies offer television, broadband and telephone service over the same cable line at a very reasonable cost that is attractive for small businesses, especially those that can use the TV feature for their customer waiting rooms.

Fiber Optic: The New and Improved Copper
The telephone and network industry standard that is replacing twisted pair copper is Ethernet based fiber optic service. The original standard, SONET, is still the backbone of many networks, but has actually transitioned from carrying channelized telephone calls to packet based Ethernet network traffic. Newer networks are all Ethernet, to reflect the standard Ethernet protocol used in the majority of digital networks worldwide.

Ethernet over Fiber has the advantage that it plugs directly into company routers and is vastly scalable, from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps just about everywhere, and up to 100 Gbps in many metro locations. Fiber takes over from copper data services, include DSL, T1, DS3 and even the newer Ethernet over Copper. EoC was meant to provide higher bandwidth using the same twisted-pair infrastructure, but is falling victim to the decommissioning of the copper bundles themselves.

Business telephone, which standardized its own analog and digital networks, is largely switching to a computer networking standard of Voice over IP or VoIP. This offers the benefit of supporting many newer technology features and allows computers and phones to share the same company Local Area Network.

To make VoIP work, your phones need to connect to the Public Switched Telephone Network to make and receive outside calls. This is done using a standard called SIP or Session Initiated Protocol that runs on the network and connects to your phone service provider over an Ethernet WAN connection, using fiber. Both the Internet and direct connections can be employed. SIP trunks replace analog phone lines and ISDN PRI trunks to carry telephone traffic to the PSTN.

The Special Case of POTS Replacement
In many cases, the move to fiber optic private line and Dedicated Internet Access will handle business needs for voice, video and data traffic. There are special cases of FAX, fire alarms, burglar alarms, elevator phones, analog point of sale systems and some others that are specifically designed to phone company standards and don’t work well on packet based networks, such as the Internet.

For these uses, you may want to look into specialized POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) replacement options. These usually work wirelessly through private connections to the LTE cellular phone network and don’t traverse the Internet at all. An advantage of POTS replacement equipment is that it connects directly to the systems you already have.

Fixed Wireless Where There Is No Fiber
The day may come where fiber is everywhere, but today were are still in the build-out phase. Fiber is going into the ground at a rapid pace, but in more rural locations are still waiting for access. Even metro areas that don’t have lit fiber installed may be faced with huge construction costs to connect to the fiber access points.

The alternative is to skip the fiber but get high speed Ethernet bandwidth using Fixed Wireless Access. FWA is similar to cellular broadband but is intended to connect to in-house networks rather than cell phones. In fact, the major cellular companies are in competition to offer 5G Fixed Wireless broadband service to both residential and commercial users.

Other wireless companies, often called WISPs for Wireless Internet Service Providers, don’t handle cell traffic but have towers that serve a limited area with wireless Internet access.

Other microwave-based FWA providers focus on business customers with high bandwidths that can reach 10 Gbps. This can be private line as well and Internet service. An advantage to business FWA is that a small dish or other antenna can be installed on your building for reliable operation and service can get started in days rather than weeks or months for fiber construction.

Are you facing a loss of your traditional DSL, T1, ISDN PRI, EoC or analog telephone service and need replacement soon? If so, you may have an opportunity to upgrade your service and save money at the same time. Check out telephone and network replacement options now.

Ethernet Replacements For SONET

By: John Shepler

High bandwidth fiber optic Wide Area Networks have their basis in a decades old telephone company standard called SONET. Highly reliable, but highly expensive, SONET is giving way to the newer technology of Ethernet WAN. As demand for business bandwidth keeps increasing, so does the attractiveness of Ethernet for long distance connections.

Why SONET Ruled For So Long
SONET or Synchronous Optical Network was born out of a burgeoning demand for higher and higher levels of traffic. In this case, the traffic was long distance telephone calls. In the early days of telephony, this demand was met with dense webs of overhead copper lines.

Multi-channel analog technology made it possible for each copper pair to carry many phone conservations on a carrier-based system, much like many radio stations in a single band.

Digital technology eliminated the noise and crosstalk of carrier telephony by converting the analog conversations to pulse coded digital streams and multiplexing many together on a single pair. The transmission medium was still copper wire.

One thing about phone company standards is that they are all backwards compatible down to a single phone line. After all, that’s the telco business. So, the digital T1 lines were actually carrying 24 separate phone calls. A T3 line was 28 T1 lines or 672 phone calls.

When the fiber optic standard was developed, it picked up where copper left off. The OC3 SONET line is 155 Mbps and is equivalent to three T3 lines. Within all those multiplexed channels is the same 64 Kbps voice channel to support one phone call.

How did we get from really big phone lines to data transmission? Basically, SONET was the only game in town if you needed large amounts of bandwidth. So, all those voice channels in the line were combined to create one large data channel to carry packets of information. That requires protocol conversion circuitry to go from Ethernet network protocol to SONET telephone line protocol.

This works beautifully, but there are a few issues. For one thing, SONET levels are very specific and not scalable. If you want to move up from, say, a 155 Mbps OC3 to a 622 Mbps OC-12, you’ll at least need to swap out the termination controller or interface card in your router. Also, since analog phone traffic is now trivial compared to packet based data traffic, wouldn’t it be more efficient to just keep everything Ethernet from end to end? Indeed, it would.

Ethernet Replacements For SONET
Most competitive carriers and even many of the traditional telecom companies have adopted Ethernet as their network standard, as that’s where the traffic is. As a result, you can find much better pricing for Ethernet circuits than for traditional SONET. Ethernet WAN is also highly scalable. If you install a Gigabit Ethernet port, you can order service at any bandwidth level up to 1 Gbps. That covers OC-3 at 155 Mbps, OC-12 at 622 Mbps and pretty much OC-24 at 1.2 Gbps.

No hardware changes are needed until you require more 1 Gbps. At that point you may install a 10 Gbps port which will cover OC-24, plus OC-48 at 2.5 Gbps and OC-192 at 10 Gbps. Today, 100 Gbps is becoming more and more available to take the place of OC-768 at 40 Gbps.

If you are looking to upgrade your fiber optic WAN connections or are just curious about how much you might save by switching from SONET to Ethernet WAN service, you can easily get a set of competitive quotes from multiple service providers with no obligation. That applies to private line services, including cloud communications, as well as dedicated Internet access. Now would be a good time to make that inquiry.

Copper Decommissioning Expands Demand for Metro Ethernet

By: John Shepler

If you are still getting by with last mile Internet over DSL, T1 lines, or Ethernet over Copper, you should take a serious look at Metro Ethernet over Fiber. You’ll get more bandwidth, better pricing and… it will continue to be available.

Copper Decommissioning is Now
Copper based telecom services have been the go-to technology for the last century, but not this century. The ubiquitous twisted pair telephone line has supported our needs from the introduction of the telephone through the fevered growth of the commercial Internet. But, like cellphones the size of a brick, the technology has run its course. Copper just can’t keep up with today’s and tomorrow’s needs.

The phone companies know this. The network operators know this. They are well aware that we are way past “peak copper”. As you read this, copper lines nationwide are being retired or “decommissioned”. In some cases the copper is physically ripped out of conduits so that fiber optic cables can be pulled right back in. In other cases the copper bundles in the ground are simply disconnected and left to rust away on their own. In the coming years there will be fewer and fewer copper options available to order, until a copper wireline is as rare as a cranked telephone set.

Fiber is the Future AND the Present
The replacements for copper telco right now are Cable in the form of hybrid fiber/copper systems, Fixed Wireless Access, and Fiber Optic bandwidth. Fiber in cities is also called Metro Fiber or Metro Ethernet. Most urban, suburban and even small town businesses now have access to Metro Ethernet and its flexible options.

Fiber is your most flexible option for several reasons. First, fiber optic strands offer extremely high bandwidths, to 10 Gbps or more. With wavelength division multiplexing, you might get a dozen or more 10 Gbps lambdas, each a virtual fiber in itself. Now, consider that nearly all fiber cables have multiple strands, even dozens, and you can see how fiber bandwidth is nearly unlimited. Once installed, that fiber will likely last as long as you need.

Second, fiber, unlike cable or most wireless, can provide exclusive dedicated line services. You can order private point to point connections and have all of the bandwidth available for your traffic. Compare that to the consumer-oriented broadband services that share bandwidth among many users to keep the cost down. With dedicated Internet access or private point to point lines, you won’t be competing with everybody else for limited resources at high traffic times. This can be especially valuable in connecting your network to a distant cloud provider that hosts business critical applications.

In addition to massive available bandwidth, fiber service is also very scalable. You can typically start off as low as 10 Mbps at pricing comparable with a current T1 line, but with over 6x the bandwidth. Many smaller businesses find that 100 Mbps is plenty, but Gigabit bandwidth is easy to come by and very affordable. If your applications demand it or your workforce is substantial, 10 Gbps is easily available on fiber. Even 100 Gbps is now being offered to larger companies and hospital complexes, content developers, etc.

Why Ethernet over Fiber
The earlier implementations of fiber optic service were based on a telephone company standard called SONET that offered fixed bandwidth levels and was designed for voice calls, not data. While protocol conversion circuitry made SONET the backbone of the Internet, Carrier Ethernet is now the standard to be embraced. This is the same switched Ethernet that runs on your local network, but extended to transport packets over hundreds or thousands of miles.

Metro Ethernet uses the Carrier Ethernet standard running over fiber optic cabling. This makes it virtually plug-and-play with your network. You can even set it up so that your business locations all over the state or country act like they are on one big network. Metro Fiber Ethernet is the new standard for business connections. Network connections within the metro area are often referred to as MAN or Metropolitan Area Network, while those more distant are referred to as WAN or Wide Area Network.

Are you ready to replace aging T1, DS3, DSL or other network services with something more modern that is future-proof and likely less expensive? Check your Metro Fiber Ethernet options for one or more business locations now.

Ethernet Better Than a T3 Line

By: John Shepler

Not long ago, T3 voice and data lines were a mainstay of medium and larger size businesses. Today, that once impressive 45 Mbps doesn’t seem all that fast. Our business applications demand more like 100 Mbps or 1,000 Mbps. Medical campuses, design firms and video production houses are more interested in 10 Gbps and looking beyond even that. If you still have a T3 line contract, you may well find that you can get more bandwidth for the same or less cost right now.

What is a T3 Line?
The T3 designation is part of the T-Carrier system developed by Bell Labs in the post-war tech boom. It was originally designed to transport large numbers of simultaneous telephone conversations and still fills that role for some larger businesses and call centers. Prior to T-Carrier, telecom was based on analog technology. T1 and T3 changed that to digital and started us down the path to the Internet we have today.

T3 is specified at 45 Mbps, enough to transport 672 digitized phone calls. That makes it a lot more efficient than creating a bundle of 672 separate twisted pair copper wires as telephone lines. T3 was once transported through large coaxial cables or microwave relay stations. More recently, it has been bundled on SONET fiber optic cables and called DS3. DS3 is the data format that runs on the physical T3 line, so DS3 and T3 pretty much mean the same thing.

The channelized version of T3 is used to carry those 672 phone calls, each in a separate channel or time slot in the data stream. For data transmission, the unchannelized version of T3 carries 45 Mbps worth of data, including the familiar packet switched networks.

Ethernet Replaces T3
Most all communications these days done over digital networks and originates in the most popular protocol, Ethernet. Even telephones have switched to an Ethernet interface so they can hook to the same network as computers instead of having separate wiring. This is called VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol. With computers and phones on the same network, it makes sense to transport everything over Ethernet on both the local and wide area networks.

This is exactly what is happening. Carrier Ethernet, the long haul version, is replacing other telecom protocols such as T-Carrier for copper line and SONET for fiber optic. It’s pretty much going all Fiber optic Ethernet now. This is often referred to as Ethernet WAN for Wide Area Network.

Cost and Performance Advantages of Ethernet
The first advantage of long haul Ethernet transmission is that it is directly compatible with most all company networks. You simply plug the Carrier’s Ethernet into your router. There is no need for separate protocol conversion boxes or modules as required to support T1 and T3 lines.

A second advantage is that Ethernet is easily scalable. You can run at any speed up to the limit of the physical port from the Carrier. T-Carrier and SONET protocols were designed for specific speeds and needed to have hardware replaced to upgrade. The bandwidth of your line is set by the Carrier based on your contract. You can easily increase or decrease that as your needs change and it will be reflected in your billing.

Perhaps the biggest incentive to switch to Ethernet WAN service is pricing. You may be shocked at how much your can save by switching from an older telecom service to Ethernet WAN. Ethernet is almost always lower in cost on a per-Mbps basis. Sometimes the difference can be a factor of two or more.

Much of the cost savings comes from a more competitive environment for fiber optic Ethernet versus the old telco services with one provider. There may be several companies offering Ethernet bandwidth for your business at competitive rates.

Fiber is also more available than ever before. The upgrade of cellphone towers to 4G LTE and 5G has demanded a rapid expansion of fiber optic networks. Copper is yesterday’s news and, more and more, it is being left to rust in the ground. Fiber and wireless are the future for networking.

Do you have legacy T3 or DS3 service and want to see if you can get a better deal? That’s easy. Just check prices and availability of Ethernet WAN service for your business address. Chances are good that you can get more bandwidth for the same or less cost than what you pay now.

Upgrade your ISP to GigE and 10GigE

By: John Shepler

Regardless of whether your business is strictly e-commerce or a traditional bricks and mortar operation, Internet access is essential to conducting business these days. One thing we never seem to have enough of is bandwidth. This is the right time to upgrade your broadband connection to handle the throughput you really need to efficiently get the job done. Surprisingly, it may be more affordable than you think.

How Much Do You Need?
Small businesses, including home offices, single person professional offices, small retail stores and the like, may find that 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet service is plenty. You might even get by with less than that… for now. For every other situation, you’ll want to look at bandwidth fast enough to be transparent. Transparent means you don’t even know it is there. There’s always enough that you won’t get slowed down no matter what you are doing. That’s the gigabit range. Consider Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) and 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GigE).

Why speeds so much higher than you’ve expected over the years? Today’s business is different. Much of what we call content is high consumption video versus email messaging. Images are much larger, if not in physical size then in Mbps. Databases are huge. They don’t call it “big data” for no reason. On top of all this, most processing has moved or is moving to the cloud. Those high speed Ethernet cables that connected you in-house have to be replicated between you and your cloud provider.

Really Fast Connections Readily Available
Fortunately, the networking industry is keeping pace. The incentives of greater business demand, 4G and 5G wireless, and consumer cord cutting has pushed providers to expand their networks and lower the cost per Mbps and Gbps. You likely have multiple options to get the bandwidth you need at a price you can afford.

You should know that Internet Server Provider (ISP) bandwidth comes in multiple flavors, each with its own characteristics and pricing. There’s a reason why they don’t all cost the same. The first reason is provider competition. The more options that are available in a particular area, the more competitive pricing will be, especially on the higher end business connections.

Another reason is whether you can live with shared bandwidth or need to have exclusive use. Your lower cost options, of which cable is the biggest provider by far, have the bandwidth multiplexed or shared among many users. You’ll notice that your bandwidth is “up to 1 Gbps” rather than guaranteed to be that speed at all times. The idea is that not everyone is using the line to full capacity at all times. In fact, that’s highly unlikely. So, while you are reading something online, somebody else is downloading a file… and vice versa.

If you are running a server or running business critical software in the cloud that needs to hesitate as little as possible, you’ll want Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) at a minimum. In fact, you may even need to upgrade to a direct connection between you and your cloud provider to get the performance you desire. That gets you off the Internet and its vagaries completely. Dedicated Internet Access keeps you on the Internet, but you don’t share your “last mile” bandwidth. That’s where most of the congestion occurs anyway.

Another consideration is whether you need symmetrical bandwidth or not. Most Internet services that offer shared bandwidth are also asymmetrical. That means the download speed is much higher, sometimes 10x higher, than the upload speed. It makes sense if you are mostly accessing web sites or downloading videos, like most consumers. However, if you run cloud processes where you upload as much as you download or do large backups to remote storage, you’ll want symmetrical bandwidth options.

Your ISP Bandwidth Options
So, what’s available? Cable broadband using DOCSIS 3.0 or 3.1 standards will get you 100 to 1000 Mbps shared bandwidth Internet access, usually asymmetrical. It’s quite reliable these days and you can’t beat the price.

If you are out in the boonies where there is no cable, you might get by with 4G or 5G wireless broadband. Yes, it’s the same broadband that runs your smartphone, but with a special modem that connects an office network. Another option is satellite business broadband. This will work just about anywhere and offers decent bandwidth. Latency can be an issue, especially for VoIP telephony and video conferencing, but otherwise may be just the ticket. Note that both of these wireless options have limited resources so that you may run into usage limits.

Fiber optic bandwidth is the gold standard these days. It’s more available than ever before and you can generally get as much bandwidth as you care to. This is where you find DIA and symmetrical options. You'll also find the services to directly connect you to your cloud provider or other business locations.

Fixed Wireless Access used to be very limited and only in major downtown metro areas. It’s expanded quite a bit recently and can often function as fiber optic without the fiber. That works to your advantage when fiber construction costs are high or you can’t wait long for service installation.

Should you upgrade your ISP to GigE or 10 GigE? Perhaps even 100 GigE? If your current Internet service is stifling your business you really can’t afford not to. Check high speed business Internet and direct connection prices and availability now to see what is available for your business locations.

Ethernet WAN to Complement Your LAN

By: John Shepler

Traffic on your company’s Local Area Network (LAN) zips along at 1 Gbps or more. In most cases that’s so fast it seems like the network is transparent. Yet, access a resource outside your building and things just seem to creep along. Wouldn’t it be nice to just stretch that LAN across town or to one of your remote locations? Well, maybe you can.

Yes, The WAN is Ethernet
Networks can be divided into two categories: The ones you own and the one’s you lease. You typically install and administrate your company network, called the LAN. When you leave the premises, you connect to another network that operates as a utility. That's the WAN or Wide Area Network. Originally, this WAN was owned and operated by the telephone companies and implemented their proprietary standards. That includes your phone voice lines, ISDN dial-up, T1, DS3, and SONET fiber optic. Connecting to any of these standards requires specialized equipment to do the protocol conversion to and from the Ethernet that runs on the LAN.

These days, most outside lines connect directly to Ethernet without any protocol conversions. The suppliers can be telephone companies or competitive carriers who run their own fiber optic networks. Interoperability is made easy by Carrier Ethernet Standards established the MEF (Metro Ethernet Forum) industry consortium.

Ethernet WAN Services
There are three services typically offered by Ethernet service providers that you’ll want to know about.

E-Line or Ethernet Virtual Private Line is a point to point service that connects two locations as if there was a really, really long Ethernet cable in-between.

E-LAN or Ethernet Virtual Private LAN is for multiple locations that want to communicate as if they are on a private bridged Ethernet network.

E-Tree or Ethernet Virtual Private Tree is also a multipoint service, but used more for broadcasting, streaming or content distribution. It is a one-to-many service with a single root and multiple leaves.

Getting Ethernet WAN Service
Within a metropolitan area, the service is called Ethernet MAN or Metropolitan Area Network. Over longer distances that leave the area, Ethernet WAN or Wide Area Network is the term used.

You’ll contract with a service provider or carrier that has points of presence in the locations you want to connect. You may have several to choose from.

The equipment installed at your location consists of terminal equipment with an Ethernet port that supports the network speed you desire. Unlike older systems that require equipment changes for every change in service level, you can order Ethernet service at many different speeds up to the limit of the installed port. This has the advantage of letting you pay for the service level you need now and then upgrade easily as you need more capacity. Often that’s as easy as making a change via your online service portal or with a simple phone call.

Ethernet to the Internet
The Internet is the ultimate Wide Area Network, connecting just about everybody, everywhere. You can order an Ethernet Dedicated Internet Access to connect your company to the Internet at whatever bandwidth you desire. The advantage of a dedicated connection is that the full bandwidth of the line is at your disposal and not affected by the carrier’s other customers. These lines are also typically symmetrical, meaning that upload and download speeds are identical.

Why not just use the Internet to connect your far flung locations as well as connecting to customers? Many companies do. it’s likely your lowest cost option. What you give up is the ability to establish Class of Service so that sensitive applications like VoIP phone calls and video conferences have priority over less critical applications such as file transfers and backups. Internet performance is also somewhat unpredictable because of unexpected congestion, indeterminate packet routing, jitter, latency and packet loss.

For companies with multiple locations, a hybrid arrangement may work best. Use dedicated Ethernet services to interconnect business locations and the Internet to communicate with supplier and customers.

Does Ethernet WAN sound right for your business? Get a suite of competitive quotes for Ethernet WAN or MAN services now with a single inquiry.

100, 1000, 10000 Mbps Internet Speed

By: John Shepler

Business Internet speed requirements have increased dramatically as computer and software technology has advanced. It’s also true that our long distance WANs (Wide Area Networks) have become more like umbilical cords than transmission pipes. Today, 100 Mbps, 1000 Mbps and even 10000 Mbps Internet connections are common and necessary. Fortunately, pricing has plunged as speed has jumped, making these bandwidth levels affordable.

100 Mbps Fast Ethernet
100 Mbps is the new benchmark bandwidth, replacing the traditional DS3 bandwidth at 45 Mbps. DS3 is part of the telco TDM standard as an upgrade to slower T1 lines. At one time, DS3 could be supplied on a T3 coaxial copper line or microwave signal, but is now demultiplexed or “dropped off" by a SONET OC3 legacy fiber optic service.

The lower cost option for 100 Mbps bandwidth is cable broadband running DOCSIS on small diameter coaxial lines. These are the familiar “cables” installed for cable TV and broadband. In most cases, 100 Mbps is the download speed. The upload speed may be 10 Mbps or less. The service is also multiplexed or shared among subscribers, so actual bandwidth may vary somewhat. Even so, 100 Mbps cable broadband works very well for many work from home situations, home based businesses, small offices and small retail businesses.

For larger or technically more demanding applications, 100 Mbps Ethernet over Fiber gives you 100 Mbps upload and download speeds or symmetrical service. This service is also dedicated or private. You and you alone have access to all the bandwidth and it is consistent at 100 Mbps. While this service requires a fiber drop rather than cable, pricing is quite reasonable and readily available for most business locations.

1000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet
Gigabit Ethernet or GigE provides 10x the bandwidth of Fast Ethernet. Like the 100 Mbps service, you can now get this level of service through a cable broadband provider in many areas. The step up in speed makes it easier for many users to connect in your office. It also facilitates more demanding applications like heavy video streaming or conferencing.

Gigabit Ethernet over Fiber is a premium service that is getting more affordable every day. Many medium and larger businesses opt for this service as it is highly reliable, with low latency, jitter and packet loss combined with high enough bandwidth to be transparent even with many concurrent users. The symmetrical bandwidth enhances the performance of cloud based applications and remote backup where upload speed is important.

10,000 Mbps Gigabit 10 Gig Ethernet
10 Gigabit Ethernet or 10GigE is the fastest bandwidth service available to most business users. At this level, you can connect large offices, factories, warehouses and retail stores to the Internet or as point to point private lines. Bandwidth is symmetrical and private, as you would expect. While DOCSIS cable is theoretical capable of supporting 10 gigabits, this is currently a fiber optic service almost exclusively.

When you get to these bandwidth levels, some other options become available. You can opt for the standard fiber optic connection or lease an entire wavelength or lambda on the fiber. This increases your privacy and, thus, security level. For even greater control, you can lease an entire dark fiber and light it yourself or have the carrier do that.

Advancing Bandwidth Levels
Like processing speed and number of cores on a chip, metropolitan and wide area network bandwidths are continuously increasing. In select areas, 100 Gigabit Ethernet over Fiber service is now available for business. With Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing, you can easily achieve that by lighting dark fiber and, perhaps, even move up to Terabit per second bandwidth levels if the budget allows.

Are you looking for reasonable high business bandwidth levels at your current location or needing to connect a new facility? Know that high bandwidth broadband and private line services are more available and affordable than ever before. Get quotes from multiple providers and decide the best option for you.

10 Gbps Dedicated Internet Access Has the Speed You Need

By John Shepler

Gigabit Internet is something of a gold standard for high speed business connections. Sometimes, though, even 1 Gbps doesn’t get the job done. At that point you need to consider a move up… to 10 Gigabit Internet.

Who Needs 10 Gbps Bandwidth?
Most small businesses and probably all residential Internet users have no real need for this performance. The bragging rights are far offset by significant monthly lease fees. This is serious bandwidth for demanding applications that make having it more than worth the cost.

Not long ago the only place you’d find 10 Gbps pipes were in the backbones of carrier networks, including the Internet itself. Time marches on and what was adequate a decade ago is marginal performance today. Those 10 Gbps lines have gone from rare and hard to get to fairly common and readily available to business.

Cloud services and colocation centers certainly need access to gigabit, 10 gigabit and even higher connection speeds. Large corporations with thousands of employees, all connected, can also justify this speed. High tech firms and those using high tech tools may also require higher speeds. Content providers? Absolutely. Hospital and medical centers with large imaging requirements certainly can’t be waiting around for file transfers.

What’s Involved In Acquiring 10 Gigabit Service?
Speeds this high are almost always going to be delivered on fiber optic cable. The interesting thing about fiber is that once you have it installed it is as easy to get high speeds as it is to get much more modest service. That’s because the fiber itself is capable of tremendous throughput. The limiting factors are the number of strands in the fiber bundle and the termination equipment on both ends.

The first standard for high speed fiber transmission was developed by the telephone companies and called SONET for Synchronous Optical NETwork. You may have heard of OC-192, which is the 10 Gbps SONET Optical Carrier level. Nowadays, most competitive networks and even the telcos are moving to Carrier Ethernet. Ethernet is directly compatible with nearly all local area networks. It is also easily scalable from typically 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps and even higher speeds. What’s even more important for most business users is that Carrier Ethernet, also called Ethernet over Fiber, is generally far more available and far less costly than the older SONET technology.

Many competitive regional, national and international carriers now offer 10 Gig Ethernet access as well as point to point private lines. That means you may have several competitive offers to consider.

Why 10 Gbps Dedicated Internet Access?
Think of the Internet as the proverbial electronic superhighway with a backbone of major interstate and international roadways and millions of on-ramps. Unless you are part of the Internet itself, you will be connecting through one of these on-ramps. They vary greatly in performance.

The best performance you can expect on the Internet is to connect to the network backbone through a high tier provider using a dedicated connection. Dedicated means that you and you alone have use of the bandwidth you have leased. That sounds like the way it should be, but most Internet connections designed for consumers and smaller businesses are shared, not dedicated. By multiplexing many customers on the same line, cable, satellite and cellular wireless companies can offer low cost reasonable speed connections to their customers.

The other characteristic to look for is symmetric bandwidth. That means 10 Gbps in both the upstream and downstream connections. Those low cost options are usually asymmetrical, with download speed high and upload speed low.

Bandwidth to Grow With Your Needs
Since Carrier Ethernet is so scalable, you can often order the bandwidth you need today with the option of upgrading incrementally as your needs grow. With a 10 Gbps port, you can order 1 Gbps, 5 Gbps or some other speed and pay for the performance you are actually using. As long as you have enough port speed, you can often upgrade with just a phone call to your supplier or even through your online account.

Are you cramped for bandwidth but concerned that what you really need is not available or too expensive? You’re likely in for a pleasant surprise, so go ahead and request competitive quotes from Dedicated Internet Access providers serving your business address.

Gigabit Internet Near Your Business

By: John Shepler

No doubt about it, you need more broadband speed to conduct business than you ever have. Most businesses have an online presence now. The few that don’t still need the Internet for business processes and to offer WiFi hotspots for their customers. If yesterday’s connection solutions seem to have slowed to a crawl, you clearly need an upgrade. Gigabit Internet broadband could be exactly what you need now and for the foreseeable future.

Is Gigabit Internet Really Right for Me?
What you really need is invisible connectivity. No matter what you are doing, the speed of the line shouldn’t be getting in your way. In fact, you should completely forget about how you get to the Internet. It should just be there.

You probably need more speed than you think. Over the last 20 years, the “Internet” has evolved from email and some very simple HTML brochure-type websites to fully functional online operations. Many of your customers never set foot in your place of business anymore. They do everything online. It’s second nature. Their phone is really a web browser that is always in their pocket. Their desktop computer has relatively little boxed software anymore. Most everything is done online and in real time. Your phone system? Probably VoIP technology these days and more likely, integrated with a video conferencing system for unified communications.

How about your business processes? Do you keep manual books? How about customer or patient records? Your customer relationship management systems are all software based and most likely cloud based. In fact, fewer and fewer companies host their own data centers anymore. It’s all about the cloud and what isn’t cloud related is all about connecting to the outside world, especially customers and suppliers.

Making your connection invisible to you and your employees involves certain technical characteristics. The line must run fast enough. That’s speed or bandwidth. It also must respond quickly. That’s latency as much as speed. Long latency in the system means sluggish response. It must also be accurate and efficient in the sense that it doesn’t lose bits. That integrity is essential in the case of voice and video streams. Dropped bits garble conversations and make video distorted and even jerky. A high quality Gigabit Internet connection can go a long way to making all of this fairly easy to accomplish.

Your Gigabit Internet Connection
Is Gigabit Internet near you? Most likely, yes. Perhaps you checked around a few years ago and found nothing available. It’s highly likely that situation has changed. The demand for higher and higher speeds, especially 4G and 5G wireless broadband speeds, has resulted in a building boom for fiber optic and microwave circuits. In addition, new technology modems have enabled cable broadband systems to be able to deliver Gigabit speeds over their existing fiber and coaxial copper infrastructure.

Even if you don’t think you really need Gigabit speeds right now, you should seriously consider having that capability. You’ll need them sooner than you think. What you want is a DOCSIS 3.1 modem or a Gigabit Ethernet port to deliver your Internet connection. That way you can start out with, say 100 Mbps business broadband, and upgrade to as much as 1,000 Mbps, a Gigabit, later.

Know Your Broadband Types
You should know that there are two basic types of Internet broadband services. They are called dedicated and shared. Dedicated Internet Access has the highest prices, but is the most solid, reliable connection you can get. The "dedicated" name means the bandwidth is 100% dedicated to your use only. Whatever you don't use remains available when you need it. A dedicated connection also tends to be symmetrical, with upload and download speeds identical.

Shared connections, like what you get with cable broadband and 4G and 5G wireless, are far less costly, but are shared among multiple users. You many notice this as fluctuating line speed throughout the day. Shared connections also tend to be asymmetrical with download speeds about ten times upload speeds. Whether either of these characteristics matter depend on how you are using the service.

What Internet connection is best for your business? Find out now what Gigabit Internet broadband services are available near you.

Fiber Optic Ethernet Transport Offers Huge Advantages

By: John Shepler

There are many ways to transport your data from one place to another. The new gold standard has become Fiber Optic Ethernet lines, also known as EoF or Ethernet over Fiber. You’ll have a hard time beating this solution on a cost/performance basis.

What is Fiber Optic Ethernet Transport?
Ethernet wasn’t part of the equation when fiber optic lines started to be buried in the ground and strung of utility poles for the telecom industry. The original standard was SONET (Synchronous Optical NETworking). This standard was designed to be backwards compatible with existing DS1 and DS3 multiplexed telephone calls in order to carry them on fiber. Why fiber? There's much more bandwidth in a single pair of optic fibers compared with legacy copper twisted pair, microwave and coaxial copper line.

Ethernet was born in the computer industry for local area networking. Transmitting this data outside the wired building or campus required a protocol conversion so that T-carrier and SONET fiber could carry packets instead of digitized phone calls. Decades later the efficiency of carrying Ethernet directly instead of first converting to an older protocol was standardized. Two varieties emerged. Ethernet over Copper and Ethernet over Fiber. For shorter distances, wireless Ethernet over line of sight microwave, laser, and radio systems such as WiFi and WiMAX were also developed.

The Immense Advantage of Fiber Optic Ethernet
Carrier Ethernet has been adopted by competitive telecom providers as well as the legacy telco companies. The first advantage is that it is directly compatible with computer networks. It’s Ethernet, after all. There is no need to deal with the inefficiency of converting back and forth between some other protocol. Just plug in your network and go. If you order a service such as E-LAN, you can interconnect your LANs at multiple locations as if they were on one big network.

The second big advantage is that Ethernet is easily scalable. When you order traditional MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) or WAN (Wide Area Network) services, you get a line with a fixed speed. T1 is 1.5 Mbps, DS3 is 45 Mbps and OC3 is 155 Mbps. That speed determines how much data you can transmit per unit of time and it also determines the price you pay. What’s more, if you outgrow your line service, you have to upgrade to another line standard and get all new termination equipment. A higher speed service may or may not even be available for upgrade.

With Fiber Ethernet you really don’t have an upper limit. Each fiber strand can carry maybe 10 Gbps and could be wavelength multiplexed with dozens or even hundreds of 10 Gbps channels. Fibers are so small that cable bundles might have over a hundred fiber strands. It’s going to be pretty hard to run out of capacity.

The nice part is that you don’t have to pay for all of that capacity. You order a service level, say 100 Mbps or 1 Gbps, and that’s what you are charged for. If you find that you need more, you can get upgraded to a higher service level with a phone call or even with an online portal. You can get as much bandwidth as the port capacity that is installed at your location. That’s typically 1 Gbps minimum, with options for 10 Gbps or even 100 Gbps.

Best Advantage of All
Thanks to competition in the marketplace and the enormous inherent capacity of optic fibers, the price you pay per Mbps is lower than it has ever been, and usually far better than with older SONET technology. That price is for highly reliable circuits, often with service level guarantees. The bandwidth is both symmetrical, same upload and download speed, and dedicated for your use only.

Competing Bandwidth Options
If you only need bandwidths of 10 or 25 Mbps, Ethernet over Copper can give you similar advantages to Ethernet over Fiber. At lower speeds, 1.5 or 3 Mbps, a T1 line is still attractive.

The bargain basement bandwidth options include business cable broadband, wireless Internet service providers, Satellite broadband, telephone DSL lines, and cellular broadband. All of these were developed for the price sensitive consumer market and then offered to small businesses with needs that aren’t too demanding. Prices per Mbps are very attractive. Most of this comes from the fact that bandwidth is shared among users and not dedicated to a single customer. Bandwidth is also non-symmetrical. Download speeds are typically 10x upload speeds.

Wireless services tend to have pretty restrictive usage limits and are not suitable for downloading big software updates or transferring large files. Satellite is available nearly everywhere, but has latency issues that make it difficult to use for telephone and other real-time services.

Note that these services are almost always Internet access only. Fiber Ethernet can be set up as dedicated Internet access or point to point private lines.

What bandwidth service is best for your business? You have many more options that you may realize and pricing that could be better than expected. Find out now, what Fiber Optic Ethernet services are available for your business locations.

20/20 Mbps Speed on Copper and Fiber

By: John Shepler


Business broadband bandwidth requirements have been on a steady slope upward. Some of this is the change from mostly text based information to graphical and video content. More is due to moving business processes from local desktop computers and company servers to cloud providers. Simple T1 lines and other low speed connections are no longer adequate. Entry level WAN (Wide Area Network) speeds, including Internet broadband, are now in the tens of Megabits per second.

A popular service level for smaller businesses and remote workers is 20/20 Mbps. This is fast enough to support a single user, small team or small retail location while still being very affordable. Let’s take a look at the options available.

What is 20/20 Mbps?
The term 20/20 Mbps means 20 Mbps bandwidth in both directions. That’s 20 Mbps upload and 20 Mbps download. When the upload and download speeds are the same, the connection is said to be symmetrical. It makes no difference if you are watching a video clip or backing up files to cloud storage, the bandwidth is the same. In fact, if the connection is full-duplex, as most business grade lines are, you can be downloading and uploading at the same time without slowing down.

Wireline Connections
The 20 Mbps line speed, or bandwidth, is way beyond the capability of a T1 line that runs flat out at 1.5 Mbps. It’s also too much to achieve by bonding multiple T1 lines together. Does that mean that delivery over standard multi-pair telco lines is impossible? Not at all. Newer technology called Ethernet over Copper (EoC) can easily deliver that speed and perhaps even more provided that your business location is close enough to the telephone company office.

Telephone companies own all that twisted pair copper that connects telephone desk sets. The same bundles can carry T1 service and the newer Ethernet over Copper. Regardless of which service provider offers you the EoC service, it will come in on those telco lines. So, the phone company has to have the right termination equipment and you need to be within a couple of miles or so of the office. In populous areas, that’s generally the case.

Fiber Optic Connections
The whole world is converting to fiber at a rapid pace. One of the main drivers is the need for high bandwidth to cellular towers to support 4G and 5G broadband services. The other driver is the ever higher bandwidth requirements of business as cloud services expand.

Fiber is the gold standard of bandwidth connectivity. If you have a fiber optic line installed to your business location, you’ve pretty much future-proofed your business. It’s almost impossible to need more bandwidth than the fiber can support. Even if that happened, there are usually many fiber strands within a fiber optic cable.

Ethernet over Fiber (EoF) is the upgrade to EoC. You can get 20/20 Mbps dedicated, symmetrical bandwidth at a very reasonable price anywhere that fiber is available. Dedicated means that it is for your use only and the line speed doesn’t vary. Both EoF and EoC are dedicated services, although other types of bandwidth might not be.

Another advantage of Ethernet over Fiber is that it is easily scalable. That means that if you get 20/20 Mbps service now and in a few years need to move up to, say 50/50 Mbps because of a growing business, that can be done with a simple phone call to your provider and likely no equipment changes. Some carriers even offer user control panels that let you change bandwidth levels at will.

How about Cable, Satellite and Wireless?
Cable, Satellite and Wireless services have evolved to offer 20/20 Mbps bandwidth and beyond. These services may be less expensive that EoC or EoF, but they are likely to be shared, not dedicated bandwidth and asymmetrical (different upload and download speeds) rather than symmetrical. Satellite and Wireless tend to have some usage limits due to limited resources. In some locations you can get dedicated symmetrical microwave delivery that offers similar performance to EoC or EoF but without the wires.

Are you ready for a bandwidth upgrade but unsure what is the best option for your business? Our knowledgeable consultants can give you good advice and get you the best price on the service you need. Find business bandwidth options over copper, fiber, cable, satellite and wireless now.

Can SD-WAN Solve Your Low Bandwidth Problem?

By: John Shepler

Can SDN or SD-WAN solve your low and unreliable bandwidth problem? Hey, you can probably solve your bandwidth problems right now by upgrading to a dedicated higher bandwidth service with a service level agreement, such as Ethernet over Fiber from a top-tier carrier. A better question is how can SD-WAN give you faster and better bandwidth at a more affordable price point?

The Cause of Low & Unreliable Bandwidth
Companies with bandwidth woes generally fall into one of two categories. The first is being stuck with bargain basement options because of very limited budgets. The other is being frustrated because the service needed isn’t available in that particular location at any cost.

The really low cost options tend to be broadband services that were designed for the cost sensitive consumer market and then re-branded for business. These include DSL and cable broadband certainly, but may also include cellular wireless and some two-way satellite.

What these services have in common is that the bandwidth pool is shared among however many users are online at the moment. That makes your speed fluctuate during the day. They also tend to be Internet only. If you want point to point you have to set up an encrypted tunnel with VPN or take your chances on security. Finally, they tend to be offered as “best effort” information services with no uptime or performance guarantees.

Are All Non-Telecom Regulated Services Low Quality?
No. That’s unfair and untrue. Cable speed and performance has grown by leaps and bounds, especially since the introduction of DOCSIS 3.0 and now 3.1. You can get fiber speeds at bargain prices in most populated areas. Reliability tends to depend on the local service provider. Some have almost perfect uptime. Others are less dependable.

Likewise, cellular wireless and satellite have experienced technology upgrades over the years. Both suffered from low bandwidth, congestion and spotty service. That’s not much of a problem anymore. With 4G and now 5G wireless, fiber-like bandwidths are becoming commonplace with solid service. Satellite, too, is now 100 Mbps nationwide with gigabit service on the way. Spot beams provide highly reliable fade margins.

Both cellular and satellite do have limitations, however, Satellite has a latency issue that won’t be overcome until the Low Earth Orbit constellations are in place. Both services are bandwidth limited by the amount of spectrum available, so there is only so much to go around. That means data limits to keep some users from hogging the scarce resources. If you hit the limit, you either pay more or have your bandwidth throttled for the remainder of the month.

Just What Can SD-WAN Do About These Limitations?
SD-WAN or Software Defined Wide Area Network, part of the Software Defined Network (SDN) technologies, can’t change the laws of physics, provider unreliability, or service availability. What it can do is manage a collection of limited performance bandwidth options to create a single higher performing network.

This works because not every connection you have will have the same latency, packet loss, speed or reliability. Besides the inherent differences in technology, performance often varies moment to moment. Sometimes the cable runs blindingly fast. Sometimes it’s all clogged up. Same with wireless, satellite and even DSL.

No human can sit there with a switch and direct traffic fast enough to send each packet down the best or most appropriate path by the instant. A computer can. That’s what SD-WAN is all about. A processor running software monitors multiple links. It then follows a plan for where to route traffic and it keeps track of it all.

The Other SD-WAN Secret
Another thing that makes SD-WAN effective is that not all traffic is equally demanding. VoIP voice calls are extremely sensitive to latency and packet loss. Data file backups aren’t. Many cloud based business applications need high performance all the time. Some aren’t all that fussy. With that in mind, a SD-WAN controller can see what demands there are for service, what paths are available and with what instantaneous performances. It can pick and choose where to route traffic for the most optimum use of the resources you have provided.

Your choice of SD-WAN links might include DSL, cable, T1 lines, satellite, 4G or 5G wireless, point to point microwave, Ethernet over Copper or Ethernet over Fiber, and even SONET fiber optic lines. The right mix depends on what performance you must have, what connections are available and your budget for bandwidth.

Are you struggling to do business because your current bandwidth solution just isn’t getting the job done? You should know that you have more options now than ever before, especially since SD-WAN became available. Tell a network bandwidth consultant about your particular business needs and see if you can do a lot better than what you are living with now.






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Replacements for GigaMAN and Other Discontinued Line Services

By: John Shepler

AT&T announced that it is going to discontinue some of its line services because the demand just isn’t there anymore. “Ho, Hum,” you say, “Who needs telegraph lines anymore anyway?”

Not So Old-Timey
Well, it turns out that the services in question are not corroding copper lines in the middle of nowhere. They are cutting edge technology from not so long ago. I’m talking about GigaMAN Gigabit Ethernet point to point service and DecaMAN 10 Gigabit Ethernet service that interconnects geographically separate LANs.

The affected customers include those in 11 states: Arkansas, California, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas and Wisconsin.

Take a second and pick your jaw up off the floor. How is it possible that high speed fiber optic Ethernet service could be on the discontinue list so soon? Even more important, what replacement options are available?

Replacement Technology
It turns out that technology really is moving this fast. GigaMAN and DecaMAN serve very useful purposes for companies that need dedicated high bandwidth, low latency connections they can count on. AT&T has come up with an even better technical solution called ADE or AT&T Dedicated Ethernet that goes beyond the GigaMAN and DecaMAN solutions. ADE offers speeds ranging from 1 Gbps up to 100 Gbps.

The new AT&T technology supports not only Ethernet formats, but other protocols as well. Their system embeds data signals within an Optical Transport Network (OTN). That network offers a standardized way to “wrap” various protocols in containers that can all be carried on the same industry standard format fiber optic wavelengths.

Where is This All Going
The two digital transport technologies that are growing rapidly are fiber and wireless. Fiber demand is being pushed by ever increasing amounts of video content being generated and exchanged. It is being pushed even more by the move from local data centers to remote cloud services. High connection speeds with low latency are essential if you want the same or better productivity from your applications when they are cloud hosted as when they are in the server room down the hall.

Ironically, perhaps, another huge demand for fiber optic transport capacity is the move to higher speed wireless services. Older generation cell towers could be served well by copper-based T1 lines that were almost universally available and provisioned over the same twisted pair cables that provide landline telephone service. LTE 4G and the coming 5G bandwidths far exceed the capacity of even multiple bonded T1 lines. Only point to point wireless and fiber optic lines have the necessary bandwidth to support 4G, 5G and beyond.

Is Copper a Goner?
Twisted pair copper connections have served the telecommunications industry well for over a century. Even T1 digital has been widely deployed for half a century. Will it still be with us half a century from now? I seriously doubt it.

Cellular phones are now so ubiquitous that the majority of consumers see no need for the old wired landline anymore. Businesses are dropping POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) for VoIP telephony and Unified Communications. Both of these newer protocols run on computer networks, not traditional telephone wiring. Smaller companies may opt to connect to their service providers via cable broadband, but medium and larger companies connect directly with fiber optic lines.

It has gotten so bad that telephone companies are petitioning the FCC to let them abandon their old copper lines in the ground rather than having to deal with ever corroding connections for fewer and fewer paying customers. It will no doubt begin as a refusal to connect new locations, but how long before even existing customers are told that they’ll no longer have dial tone? Months? A few years?

That leaves the interesting situation of businesses who still have analog POTS phone service, ISDN PRI multiple phone lines, T1 dedicated data lines and Ethernet over Copper point to point and dedicated Internet service. These connections may still be widely available while demand is high. You know, though, as more and more buildings are lit for fiber, business will quickly jump on the fiber links that offer higher bandwidth options and lower costs per Mbps. It’s likely that line of sight and 5G cellular wireless will fill the gaps where fiber construction costs are just too high for some locations.

How To Ensure Continuing Service
The best way to ensure that your business will have the voice, data and video transport services that you need is to make sure you have options. That’s easier today than ever before. A generation ago, the incumbent local telephone companies ruled the roost and you took whatever they had available and paid whatever the bill said. No more.

Deregulation has spawned a wealth of competition. Initially that meant new companies renting those same telephone company lines to deliver alternative service, often at a better price. Fiber optics has changed that landscape. Now there are many fiber optic network companies that own the fiber in the ground and will connect you directly to their networks, avoiding the phone company facilities completely. The result is price competition that is reducing the cost of bandwidth by an order of magnitude or more. Get 10 Mbps Ethernet for what you used to pay for a 1.5 Mbps T1 line. Get 100 Mbps for a few times that price. Gigabit Ethernet is now affordable for many if not most businesses. Even 10 Gbps and 100 Gbps are within reason if you need that much capacity.

Are you concerned about upcoming loss of your voice, video or data connections or what might be in the planning stages? How would you like to get more bandwidth for less cost that you pay now? If that sounds interesting, see just how many competitive bandwidth options are available right now for your business locations.

Internet and Ethernet, The Perfect Broadband Match

By John Shepler

Broadband Internet connections come in many flavors. These include DSL, 3G & 4G cellular, PTP microwave wireless, cable DOCSIS, two-way satellite, T1 lines, DS3 bandwidth, SONET fiber optic, and both Ethernet over Copper and Ethernet over Fiber. Each of these has cost and performance advantages and disadvantages. One technology, however, offers the best match for most business applications. It’s the combination of Internet and Ethernet.

Why Ethernet?
What makes Ethernet so attractive is the fact that it has almost completely taken over wired networks large and small. Do you have a LAN? What protocol are you running? Unless it’s something specialized for storage or industrial control, the answer is almost certainly Ethernet.

Being dominant has it’s advantages. From a technical standpoint, dominance means that nearly every piece of network equipment comes with Ethernet connectors built-in. In most cases, these are 10/100/1000 Mbps RJ-45 jacks. At higher speeds, 10 GigE and higher for sure, fiber optic connectors will be included.

It’s also not just that Ethernet standards permeate every network such that you have a hard time building one to some other protocol. How much do those alternative networks cost? The dominance of Ethernet has led to economics of scale. Ethernet is now the low cost solution by far. It’s also the solution that is sourced everywhere. You have no trouble picking up cable, connectors, switches, routers, and everything that plays on a network.

The One Laggard… The WAN
Local Area Networks are firmly ensconced with Ethernet technology. Outside the plant, however, it’s not so clear-cut. Wide Area Networks evolved from different standards pioneered by the telephone companies and were not originally intended for computers. Telephone networks were invented first and they were all analog, both wired and wireless. Then, starting mid-20th century, the T1 digital standard was introduced for multiplexing phone lines and long distance transmission. T1 expanded into T3/DS3 for higher speed, followed by fiber optic standards based on the same TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) protocol.

Since the phone companies pretty much owned all telecommunications networks, Ethernet packets had to learn to ride on what was available. That meant protocol conversion from Ethernet to T1, and so on. This is still the case for traditional telecom networks, although that’s changing fast.

Carrier Ethernet Moves to the Front
The old collision domains are long gone for the most part. Networks now are switched Ethernet. It turns out that the switched Ethernet protocol are quite compatible with long distance networks with a few additions to the standard for operations and maintenance. Those standards have been created and go by the name of Carrier Ethernet.

As you might suspect, Carrier Ethernet is merely an extension of LAN Ethernet. There really is no protocol-conversion speed bump traversing from one to the other. You plug your network into the carrier’s premises equipment and your packets travel seamlessly for hundreds or thousands of miles.

Ethernet and the Internet
The Internet was designed as a computer to computer network from the get-go. When we talk about IP networks, the IP means Internet Protocol. When we talk about Ethernet protocol, we are generally referring to IP and perhaps the file transfer standard, TCP/IP.

When the Internet started, there were only the telephone company networks available, so the Internet began running on legacy telco standards, particularly SONET fiber optic. That’s changing now. More and more networks are Ethernet at their core. Most newer networking providers design their networks as IP from the start and don’t go depend on handoffs to the telephone company central offices.

Either way, as long as you have Ethernet to your premises, you can ignore what’s going on at the core of the network.

Ethernet’s Big Advantages
Carrier Ethernet services come in a wide variety of speeds, but they all stick to the same Ethernet standard. You simply specify the maximum speed of the port that is installed at your location. That’s generally 1 Gbps these days, although you can also opt for 10 Gbps and, in some cases, 100 Gbps. The port sets the maximum, not the minimum, broadband speed you can order. In fact, many companies start at 10 or 100 Mbps and then upgrade to Gigabit Ethernet or beyond when they need to. That means they only pay for the bandwidth they need.

Ethernet services also tend to be less expensive than traditional telco services for the same bandwidth. It’s fairly common to get 3 Mbps for the same or less cost than a single 1.5 Mbps T1 line. You might even get 10 Mbps for the budget you originally set for T1 Internet service.

That last mile connection to the Internet via dedicate Ethernet Internet access means that your bandwidth is symmetrical, or the same in the upload and download directions. It is also dedicated to your use 100% of the time. With other services, such as cable or cellular broadband, the bandwidth is shared among customers. That makes it cheaper, but also means that your share will vary depending on how many others are using the service at the same time.

Ordering Ethernet Internet Service
The best place to get your business broadband service is from a bandwidth broker, like Telarus, who has relationships with many carriers. You’ll likely have multiple options to choose from. The two flavors you’ll most likely encounter are Ethernet over Copper for lower speed options and Ethernet over Fiber for 50 Mbps and up. Fiber is highly desirable if your building is already lit or construction costs are low. Otherwise, you can almost always get some type of copper based delivery.

Interested in finding out what options you have and what they cost? Run a quick search for fiber optic Ethernet service here and see what pops up.

Ethernet Everywhere? We’re Almost There!

By John Shepler

It’s been brewing for a long time, now. The prediction is that all of those networking standards will finally settle on just one. No more T1, DS3, OCx and whatever. It’s all going to be just Ethernet one day. How close are we to that day? Why, we’re almost there!

Network Standards Have Already Embraced Ethernet
Telcos are doing something once thought heresy. They’re abandoning their proprietary standards in favor of Ethernet services.

Why? Because that’s what the market wants. Once upon a time, there were all sorts of Local Area Network standards. Can you remember when Token Ring was the coming thing? How about AppleTalk?

Today, virtually all network equipment has one connector and it is for Ethernet. There are really only two flavors: copper and fiber. Virtually all office equipment is either 10/100 or Gigabit Ethernet over twisted pair copper. Networking equipment may have fiber connections for GigE, 10 GigE or 100 GigE.

This standardization has make connectivity extremely easy. The standardization on switched Ethernet versus the original collision domains makes networking a fairly easy plug-and-play.

The same thing has happened to networking software. The Internet standard, TCP/IP has become the THE standard, further enhancing the ease of setting up and running networks.

Getting LANs to Talk Telco
When you own the network, you get to decide how it works. There’s nobody to tell you otherwise when you come up with a design that’s based on off-the-shelf massed produced switches, routers and cabling. The big problem comes when you try to connect to the outside world.

The Internet may have been based on TCP/IP, but the wide area networks that carried it were not. Telephone company standards evolved from the world of voice only channels for telephone calls. What T1, T3 (DS3) and OCx did was simply bundle the smallest channels, 64 Kbps PCM coded telephone calls.

Digital being digital, the solution was to perform a protocol conversion at each end so that Ethernet LAN would be converted to, say, T1 for transmission over some distance and then back to Ethernet at the other end. That process still works great and many T1 lines remain in use because they are sometimes all that is available in rural areas.

What’s Going Bye-Bye?
The major telecom companies have been quietly converting their networks to Ethernet for years. In many cases, this can be simply running Ethernet over some underlying fiber protocol like SONET. Competitive carriers have built out their facilities using Ethernet in the network core and never going through the TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) evolution.

What’s going on now is that telcos are asking the FCC for permission to sunset some of their older services, especially those that run on copper and don’t have many customers anymore. The standard POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) is an endangered species. Fewer and fewer residential users have the traditional “home phone.” They either get their phone service bundled with TV and Internet or simply depend on cellular for voice communications.

Businesses are following suit. Smaller companies may get voice and data bundles from cable companies or incumbent telcos that are acting like cable companies. Larger companies are moving rapidly to enterprise VoIP and Unified Communications. These don’t need traditional telephone wiring inside or outside the facility. Everything runs on the network. Outside connectivity is by SIP trunking, dedicated private line, MPLS networks or Dedicated Internet Access.

Is Copper a Goner?
Copper is still going, but who knows for how long. The telcos want to rid their plants of those thick copper bundles, especially the individual POTS lines.

T1 lines are still popular, but the 1.5 Mbps bandwidth is becoming more and more of a limitation. A newer standard, Ethernet over Copper, is highly competitive and offers an order of magnitude or more higher bandwidth at lower cost per Mbps.

Even so, fiber optic connections are reaching more and more business buildings as well as cellular towers. 4G and 5G wireless needs bandwidth beyond what is practical with twisted pair copper. It’s likely that all twisted pair copper may be abandoned to corrode in the ground or pulled out of conduits and sold for scrap. That’s not today in most areas, but it’s not that far away.

So, Where Can I Get Ethernet?
You can order Ethernet over Copper or Ethernet over Fiber in most populous areas right now. In rural locations, Ethernet over DS1 uses a T1 line to deliver Ethernet.

Don’t forget that Cable broadband is delivered to you as an Ethernet connection and FTTP (Fiber to the Premises) is also Ethernet at typically 1 Gbps.

Satellite and wireless Internet services are also delivered as Ethernet. That includes 3G and 4G cellular services designed for business use.

If you’ve been living with a legacy Internet or telecom connection and wondering if there is something better to choose from, there probably is now. Find out with a quick check of Ethernet services in your area and complementary consultation to help you choose the best solution for your business.

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.