Ethernet Ports In a Data Storm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ethernet Port At Your Door

There's an Ethernet port that connects to the outside world. Where is it? It could be as close as your back door. Actually, it could be right there in your telecom closet.

Ethernet WAN (Wide Area Network) service is a fairly new development. Most companies and other organizations are used to getting their outside connections using the traditional telecom network. The same technologies that carry telephone calls have been repurposed to transport digital signals from point to point and as access to the Internet.

You're no doubt familiar with T1 lines. Perhaps you also use DS3 connections or OC3, OC12 or OC48 SONET fiber optic services. Did you know that all of these services got their start carrying telephone calls between phone company central offices? Since they are digital in nature, specialized equipment can do a protocol conversion from the Ethernet that runs on your local networks to the TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) that runs on the public switched telephone network.

Say you want to connect the LANs at two of your business locations. You may order a point to point T1 line to transport the packets between locations at a rate of 1.5 Mbps. If you need more bandwidth to keep the LAN data from having to wait on the WAN connection, you can order DS3 service at 45 Mbps. The protocol conversion will be performed at each end, so that your LANs and the telecom network each have the data in a format they can use.

This methodology works fine, and has been doing so for decades. But now you have another choice. Why not just connect your two LANs together with a very, very long Ethernet connection?

You are probably saying, "Ethernet doesn't work that way. There are strict limitations as to how far you can extend the network."

That's true within your own building or campus. But there is another set of standards that apply to Ethernet that is transported by common carrier over long distances. These long haul connections come under the category of Carrier Ethernet. Within a city, they are often called Metro Ethernet.

There's practically no limit on how far you can connect using Carrier Ethernet. Do you have an office and factory in different parts of town? Connect their networks with a level 2 Metro Ethernet connection. That's right, level 2. You can use network switches to make the connection and keep everything on the same network. You can also set up mesh networks for multiple locations in-town or around the country. How about the Internet? Use a Carrier Ethernet connection to provide your access to the Internet.

But why do that if your old telecom services work just fine? How about paying less, maybe 50% less, for the same connectivity? The higher your bandwidth requirements, the more Ethernet WAN connections can save. The reasons are that Ethernet services are often provided by competitive carriers with modern networks designed from the ground up for efficient IP transport. When they can provide the complete network, including connections to your buildings using EoF (Ethernet over Fiber) or EoC (Ethernet over Copper), the cost savings can be astonishing.

How much can you save? Run a quick check and see what Ethernet WAN services are available for your location.