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.

Is 1 Tbps The Next Optical Network Standard?

For residential and corporate users just getting comfortable with 100 Mbps broadband, the need for bandwidths in the Terabit per second range seem very far in the future. Not so for network operators. The discussion is getting lively right now as to whether the next optical networking standard speed will be 400 Gbps or 1 Tbps.

What’s driving the need for new higher standards? It’s the inevitable march of technology from Kbps to Mbps to Gbps and soon to Tbps. The last lively discussion was whether to move up from 10 Gbps to 40 Gbps or go all the way to 100 Gbps. You’ll notice that the new proposed standards are 10x or one order of magnitude above those levels.

That makes sense because there is something of a “Moore’s Law” that applies to bandwidth as well as computer processing. Moore’s Law, formulated by Gordon Moore of Intel, proposed that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every year. Despite the fact that no one knew exactly how to do this more than a increment or two into the future, technology advancements have come along on schedule to keep Moore’s law viable for decades. The latest announcement of 3D transistors looks to keep the processing improvements going for the foreseeable future.

What about bandwidth? There is a prediction called Butter’s Law formulated by Gerald Butters of Bell Labs that says the amount of data coming from an optical fiber doubles every nine months. This is complemented by Nielsen’s Law, from consultant Jakob Nielsen, that says that bandwidth available to users increases 50% per year.

Based on this, getting standards in place for faster optical networks needs to proceed quickly. There’s little time to waste before we start talking about 10 and 100 Tbps networks and thinking ahead to Petabit per second networks.

What on Earth is driving these requirements? Is it simply technology gone wild on its own development cycle or is there a real need for such bandwidths. If there isn’t now, there soon will be. It can be summed up in one word: Video.

Video traffic now dominates the Internet. It’s said the Netflix alone may be the largest single application. Netflix might have been first out of the chute when it comes to streaming video content on a massive scale, but it won’t be in that position alone for long. Most new televisions and set top boxes have Internet connectivity built-in. The same is true for gaming consoles, which also make nice video set top boxes.

But don’t most people get their video programming over the air, through cable or satellite dishes? They do for now because those are the mature technologies. The bit switch from analog to digital OTA broadcasting has had a unexpected side effect. Having to buy new sets and make tricky antenna adjustments to receive the digital broadcasts has caused some TV viewers to rethink their options. The latest trend is to forego over the air broadcasts in favor of Netflix and video downloads directly from the Internet.

Far from being horrified, the FCC is considering auctioning off more of the TV spectrum to wireless broadband services. Smartphones and now tablet computers, particularly the iPad, are creating an almost insatiable demand for 3G and 4G bandwidth to support high definition video. There’s a proposal being floated to allow broadcasters to share frequencies taking advantage of the multiple program capability of each channel.

Likewise, Ethernet over Copper and DOCSIS Cable are easily capable of 100 Mbps broadband but start to strain above that. Further technical advances may push the upper limit on copper delivery but it’s just a matter of time before we have fiber to every premises. Verizon is leading the way with its FiOS passive optical service to the home and most medium and large business that don’t have fiber yet are taking a hard look at the lower cost of Gigabit Ethernet, where available.

How about your business? Are you feeling pinched by bandwidth services that are no longer as capable as they were when you installed them? You should know that business bandwidth prices have dropped significantly in the last few years, fueled by new technology developments and high levels of competition in metro areas. You may be able to get a lot more for your bandwidth dollar than you think. If you haven’t checked in awhile, this is a good time to get prices and availability on fiber optic bandwidth services. You may be surprised about what is available today.