Comcast’s 100 Gbps Core Network Supports Business

Major telecom carriers have been in the process of upgrading their core networks from 40 Gbps to 100 Gbps over the last year. Comcast is the latest to make the move, fitting Ciena’s Wave Logic 3 interfaces to their current Ciena 6500 packet optical platforms. Why would a cable company do this and how can it benefit your business?

Comcast is best known as a Cable TV company or MSO (Multi-System Operator). They serve over 20 million residential and commercial customers in 40 states and the District of Columbia with video television, high speed Internet and telephone services. You may already know that Comcast broadband service is highly popular for home, home office and small business use. It comes in on a coaxial cable and is highly affordable. But did you also know that Comcast operates one of the largest fiber optic networks in the United States behind the scenes?

Many people think that cable companies still connect everything from their head-end towers and satellite dishes to locations around town using various size coax. That was true in the early days of analog TV cable systems and master antennas for large apartment buildings. The technology has long since moved on. Now everything is digital and the signals ride fiber optic cables most of the distance to your location. It’s that connection from the curb to your building that is still RG-6 coaxial copper wire.

Why? Because it works just fine and the cost of installation has already been paid. DOCSIS 3.0 modems offer broadband Internet in excess of 100 Mbps. That’s is well within the needs of most users. What’s really important to residential, home office and very small business users is low monthly cost combined with adequate performance. The shared asymmetrical bandwidth (higher download than upload speeds) and “best effort” performance is more than adequate for accessing the Internet and downloading documents, pictures and video.

Where HFC (Hybrid Fiber Cable) services run out of gas is when the need for bandwidth is high, dedicated low latency service is needed, symmetrical upload and download speeds are required, and an SLA (Service Level Agreement) is desired. These characteristics are common for traditional telecom services such as T1, DS3 and SONET fiber and the newer Ethernet services such as FastE at 100 Mbps, GigE at 1000 Mbps and 10 GigE at 10 Gbps.

What isn’t as well known is that Comcast operates an enterprise grade fiber optic core network to interconnect their many offices and provide high bandwidth connectivity to businesses. Would you be surprised to learn that Comcast operates a network that covers 147,000 fiber route miles? How about that business class services are available from 1 Mbps on up to 10 Gbps? Their business class services include dedicated Internet access, point to point Ethernet private lines, Ethernet LAN service to interconnect multiple business locations and converged layer 2 centric VPLS to support voice, video and data.

Comcast, like other major fiber optic carriers, recognizes the increasing demand for higher and higher bandwidth services. What’s driving these speed increases is more use of HD video, big data files and a rapid move to cloud computing services. The cloud, especially, present new challenges for businesses used to having all their processing in-house and connected over the corporate LAN. Cloud service providers offer the opportunity to rapidly scale resources up and down, pay only for what you use during the month, and avoid both capital investments and ongoing maintenance costs. The tradeoff is that you now need much higher and very reliable bandwidth to connect your employees to the cloud.

Comcast’s upgrade to 100 Gbps fiber optic bandwidth meets today’s perhaps tomorrow’s needs for their own use and in support of small, medium and large companies. When even this massive capability fills up, the Ciena system they’ve chosen has an upgrade path to 400 Gbps. It’s likely that we’ll see even higher speeds at 1 Tbps and beyond sooner than anyone expects.

Are you running short on bandwidth and wondering how much you can afford as an upgrade? Get multiple competitive fiber optic service quotes for Comcast Business and other high performance fiber optic carriers now. It’s likely that you can turn up your WAN bandwidth at little or no increase over your current monthly least cost.

The Samsung Epic 4G offers Epic Performance

What would you think of a smartphone that can run rings around a netbook computer? What if you politely declined WiFi hotspot service because it would slow you down? Can you handle that kind of speed in a cell phone?

There’s a lot that makes this phone special, but the Sprint WiMAX 4G network connectivity makes you believe it’s epic. Peak download speeds can exceed 10 Mbps. That’s an order of magnitude faster than 3G. Instead of being a WiFi user, you’ll be a WiFi provider with mobile hotspot capability to support other devices as long as you are in a 3G or 4G service area. Treat your unconnected friends or colleagues while you’re on the road. Or give yourself anywhere connectivity for the times you need a laptop, notebook or tablet computer.

If the speed of this Android 2.1 smartphone has you drooling, wait till you see the display. This is no ordinary touchscreen. The Super AMOLED thin touchscreen offers a near-HD display at 100x the contrast of other leading phones. It also features pinch-to-zoom, six axis motion and proximity sensors.

This advanced display is a good match with the 5 megapixel digital camera with camcorder mode, dual LED flash, auto-focus, live video share, and geo-tagging. Record in HD and easily playback wirelessly on your HDTV or other DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) certified devices. Oh, by the way, there’s another camera. It’s mounted on the face of the display so that you can enjoy video chats. This is a VGA camera, so you’ll look good in the picture.

Back to the blazing speed of this phone. In addition to WiFI, 4G and 3G connectivity, the processor in this smartphone is a 1 GHz Cortex A8 Hummingbird. In the 4G and WiFi modes, you’ll have simultaneous voice and data capability for increased multitasking. With many other phones, you have to switch back and forth.

The Samsung Epic is not only faster than a certain competing smartphone that rhymes with grapple, but it has something else eschewed in Cupertino. It’s a slide out QWERTY keyboard. That’s right, real keys for real typing. You also have an on-screen virtual keyboard and SWYPE typing options as a matter of personal choice. Text messaging, instant messaging, multimedia messaging, email and HTML Web browsing are all at your fingertips. Did I mention this thing moves like lightning?

The Samsung Epic isn’t for everyone. Just for everyone who can’t settle for lesser technology once they know the performance bar has been raised. If you are one of those who demands the latest and the best, you’ll enjoy a tremendous online discount when you order your Samsung Epic 4G with a new Sprint account.

Of course, there are many more heavily discounted and even free smartphones available for your perusal. Check out the daily specials now at Cell Phone Plans Finder.

Time to Move to HD Video Cameras

The sound of "Taps" you hear faintly emanating from your TV is for the end of the analog television era. It started with Herbert Hoover and ended with a giant thunk, as TV stations yanked the power supply breakers on their high power analog transmitters. Off to the recycler they go. With them should go the 4:3 video format. Yet, it eerily persists.

If you watch TV throughout the day, you'll notice that many program still have the black windowpane bands on either side of the picture. That includes everything from network shows to local newscasts. Odd, isn't it? Analog transmission is gone, but the programming is still analog.

Actually, the programming itself may well be digital in nature as it comes from the distributor. All satellite TV and an increasing amount of Cable programming is digital. What is changing more slowly is a move from the analog 4:3 aspect ratio to the new digital 16:9 wideband aspect ratio. Nearly all TVs being sold have 16:9 screens. So do many laptop computers and desktop displays. At some point 16:9 screens will be all you can buy for any application.

The reason that 4:3 programming persists is that so many viewers still have their old TV sets connected to converter boxes, satellite receivers and Cable TV set-top converters. To them, it's like nothing has changed. But it will, as the number of people with HDTV and HD computer screens grows, while 4:3 programming is replaced by 16:9 programming. When people with the older sets start seeing a majority of their programs with black bands top and bottom, called letterboxing, and those with new sets see the side bands disappear, replaced by full screen programs, the tipping point will have been reached.

The same is true for video you make yourself. Camcorders have used the 4:3 aspect ratio to be compatible with standard TV sets and computer screens. Now that we're in a wholesale upgrade to digital TVs with their 16:9 screens, it's time to be considering HDTV for your next video camera. Fortunately, that doesn't have to mean spending a fortune just to get a clearer picture that fills the screen without having to stretch it one way or another.

Consider the Flip Video MinoHD solid state camcorder. This is a HDTV compatible camcorder that fits in your pocket or conceals in your hand at just under 4 x 2 inches, and a little over half and inch thick. It records up to 60 minutes of HD quality video on its internal 4 GB of memory. No hard disk, no CD ROMs, no tapes. Actually, nothing mechanical at all.

But is it really HD? Yes. The MinoHD has a resolution of HD 720p (1280 x 720, 16:9 widescreen) at 30 fps (constant frame-rate) using progressive scan, not interlaced. Flip out the USB connector and download your HD video to your editing software on a PC or a Mac. You can preview video directly on a TV, but it will be in standard composite video format, not HDTV.

The more sophisticated Flip UltraHD camera has a built-in HDMI connector that you can plug right into your HD television to watch HD video with no computer involved.

Of course, there is a wealth of high definition camcorder offerings that give you additional features such as optical zoom, 1080P HD video, longer recording times, image stabilization and larger viewing screens. It's a tradeoff of size, features and cost, much like anything else electronic.