MPLS Networks Simplified

Have you been hearing a lot of buzz about MPLS networks lately but not exactly sure just what is a MPLS network and how it differs from other networks? Here’s the really simplified lowdown on MPLS technology in less than 3 minutes...


So, why go to all the trouble to set up a “bar coding technology” when IP networks are so prolific? IP works great within your organization where you have complete control of the network. You can manage the traffic, add and subtract resources, and set-up class of service mechanisms to ensure that time sensitive traffic like VoIP or video conferencing isn’t crushed by big data file transfers or backup and restore processes.

Not so on the Internet. Every packet gets the same handling as every other packet. The fault tolerant features of Internet technology pretty much ensure that if packets can’t take one particular path, they can find another more round about way to get to their destination. This is great for TCP/IP applications like file transfers, but deadly for two-way voice and video. No class of service distinctions combined with indeterminate routing wreak havoc in the form of latency and jitter.

This is where MPLS shines. There are no public MPLS networks like the public Internet. They are all owned and operated by particular service providers on a fee basis. You sign up for the MPLS network that you want to use and the provider makes sure that you get first class service.

How is that done? Remember those “bar code” tags? The tags have the extra information about class of service and routing that tell the network how to handle each packet. There is no need for equipment on the network to examine IP or other protocol headers. The tag is all the tag switches or routers need to handle the traffic.

The result of this tagging process is that packets are handled differently depending on their needs. Voice and video conferencing traffic gets priority. Non-critical file transfers get a lower priority. Most of the time, congestion, latency and jitter are not a problem. Since the service provider knows everyone using the network, adequate resources can be provisioned to ensure that traffic from one customer doesn’t interfere with traffic from any other.

There’s another benefit to this tagging technology. It completely frustrates anyone trying to spy on the network traffic using IP tools. They won’t work because the network isn’t running the Internet Protocol. It just transports IP packets from point A to point B. Non-IP traffic gets the same treatment. That’s why MPLS means multi-protocol label switching. Any protocol can be accommodated and all have enhanced security from label switching technology and no public access. MPLS networks are often referred to as MPLS VPN or virtually private network.

Today’s MPLS networks have regional, national and international service footprints. They are easily accessed from just about anywhere using copper wireline or fiber optic connections. Pricing is very attractive, even when you only want to connect two far-flung locations. For multiple sites that need to communicate, MPLS is the go-to technology today.

Does an MPLS network service make sense for your WAN communication needs? Get competitive pricing and features for MPLS networks that support your business needs.

VoIP Phone Service Provides Flexibility

Small to medium size businesses may be thinking about upgrading their aging phone systems, but uncertain about which way to go. Do they buy a modernized and expanded version of the Key Telephone or PBX system they are using and keep everything else the same, or make the jump to VoIP phone service? What many may not realize is the flexibility of options you gain with VoIP solutions.

What differentiates VoIP from traditional telephone equipment and service is that it is network based. True, even a single line analog desk phone or cell phone is part of a network - the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). The public telephone network is a very specific network that does one thing really well. It connects one telephone to another or perhaps one phone to a group of other phones for a conference call. It has its own technology and wiring standards. VoIP, on the other hand, is designed to share standard packet based computer networks.

There-in lies the flexibility of VoIP. You plug an IP phone into a network jack, just like you’d plug in a PC or printer. No separate wiring scheme is needed. It doesn’t even matter where the phone is located. IP phones are known by their unique addresses, not which pair of wires they happen to be connected to.

With analog telephones, you have a choice on whether to connect each of your phones to the telephone company on their own line or to install an in-house phone system to connect the phones and share the outside lines. With VoIP, you can also install an in-house phone system called an IP PBX or extend your network with all the phones to a service provider. This approach is called Hosted VoIP or Hosted PBX. The connection is called a SIP Trunk.

SIP Trunking gives smaller businesses the option of getting both their phone service and broadband service from the same provider. The SIP trunk can be divided so that voice packets and data packets don’t interfere. Your phone calls are never interrupted by someone download data at the same time. Using one trunk for both voice and data often results in a cost savings over having separate telephone lines and broadband connections.

Hosted PBX services give you the flexibility of locating your phones wherever you want them. This goes beyond just moving telephones around the building. You can have one phone sitting on a desk in New York and other in Seattle, both connected by SIP trunks to a hosted PBX in Dallas. From the caller’s perspective, all of this equipment could be in one building. They have no perception of how geographically spread out this operation is. This capability is also known as a virtual office.

For larger companies, enterprise level VoIP systems handle hundreds or even thousands of phones located at headquarters, regional sales offices and branch offices nationwide. Private SIP Trunks securely transport voice and data among the locations, avoiding telephone company toll charges for in-house calls. The PBX switching system can be located at any particular location or can be a hosted solution. The beauty of hosted VoIP is that you pay as you go. There is no need for an expensive investment in telephone switching equipment nor the staff to maintain and upgrade it. That’s all handled for you.

Can your company benefit from a more flexible communications system, perhaps including mobile phones as well as desk sets? If so, get pricing and features quotes for competing VoIP service providers. Then compare with what you have now and see if you can gain flexibility and perhaps cost savings as well.

MPLS Networks In Demand And Competitive

What’s the hottest telecommunications service that you may be missing out on? It’s MPLS networks. They’ve become highly in-demand and the source of competition among competitive carriers. Here’s what you need to know and how you can check to see if an MPLS network can save your company money.



What’s driving the proliferation of MPLS networks is that enterprise applications are becoming more sophisticated and more dependent on connectivity among multiple locations. There are big cost savings to be hand through network convergence, enterprise VoIP and mission critical processes running on high throughput server farms. But for these benefits to be realized, you need WAN connections that are a solid as your company LAN.

The Internet isn’t up to it. True, the worldwide connectivity of the public Internet is unmatched. But network performance leaves a lot to be desired. Security is certainly an issue. Look at the efforts you need to put up to prevent your systems being infected by malicious bots and viruses. Beyond that, there is no promise of predictable performance. Bandwidth, path congestion, latency, jitter, corrupted and dropped packets are all up for grabs. That’s the reason TCP/IP was chosen as a data transfer protocol in the first place. If a packet doesn’t succeed at traversing the Internet at first, simply try, try again.

Such inconsistency can be tolerated for Web pages, email and many data transfers. Even the security issue can be managed with encryption. But time sensitive applications like real-time voice and video need better treatment. Who wants to get off the public switched telephone network and risk garbled and dropped phone calls? Could any call center survive with those problems?

The need for controlled and predictable network performance is what promoted the growth of private network solutions, such as Frame Relay. But Frame Relay is a technology who’s time has come and gone. It’s too expensive and, for the most part, too low in bandwidth for today’s needs. What’s replacing Frame Relay is MPLS.

MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching networks are privately run networks that only serve their customer’s needs. Those needs typically demand secure point to point and multipoint connections with Class of Service (CoS) to make sure voice, video and data all have the network resources they need. Latency, jitter and packet loss are minimized. Bandwidth is sufficient to support all network requirements. If more customers come onboard, more resources are deployed to ensure quality performance for everyone.

MPLS services can be configured as point to point or fully meshed any-to-any connectivity. You specify how you want to connect and your service provider sets it up. New locations are easy to add or change. That makes MPLS networking an excellent option for businesses with many branch offices or retail locations. Two-way VSAT satellite has been the private networking solution for many retail stores, restaurants, gas stations and so on. But satellite bandwidth is limited, sometimes lost during heavy weather, and the cost isn’t necessarily cheap. It’s time to take a look at MPLS to see if this option makes more sense going forward.

MPLS Networks Today is a new service that makes it easy to get consultation and pricing for your multi-location network needs. With a quick inquiry, you’ll be connected to a team of expert consultants who have access to many MPLS service providers and access networks. Competition among IP network carriers with national and international service footprints has become intense. That means you’ll get highly competitive quotes that may be much lower than what you think this type of service will cost. Even if you aren’t currently in the market to upgrade your existing network, it could be well worth your while to check MPLS network pricing and availability. There’s a good chance you could be saving money with an MPLS solution.

From LAN to MAN to WAN

We’re in something of a network revolution right now. Computer networking has deployed many different protocols for communication. Some of these have been borrowed from the telephone industry. But there’s a consolidation underway that is moving toward a single IP networking standard. From LAN to MAN to WAN, it’s all headed toward IP.

The standardization really started in the LAN or Local Area Network. Nearly all LANs are now constructed using Ethernet network interfaces? It’s not that other network architectures don’t have merit. It’s simply economy of scale. Perhaps the PC, more than anything else, helped to settle the issue with 10/100 Mbps NICs (Network Interface Cards) being included as standard equipment. Today’s faster machines offer 10/100/1000 interfaces with RJ-45 as the standard connector. If you want anything else, you have to pay extra.

This economy of scale encompasses not only desktop computers, but laptops, network switches, routers, servers, cabling and various appliances. The higher the volume produced, the cheaper each interface circuit becomes. Until something very much better comes along, Ethernet is the low cost solution.

The situation has been quite different beyond the company premises. The telephone industry has about a 100 year lead on the computer industry. If you’ve wanted to connect two business locations together or join the Internet, you had to convert your Ethernet protocol to something the telephone system could understand. Remember dial-up modems? Today’s equivalent is the T1 line. It’s all digital and offers rock solid 1.5 Mbps connectivity, but it’s a telco standard service.

The LAN to MAN or WAN connection is most often made with an interface called a CSU/DSU. This can be a stand alone box or a card that plugs in an edge router. It provides the protocol and signal level conversion between Ethernet on the LAN and T1 line connecting through the central office.

More recently, the T1 connection and faster speed DS3 and OCx services have been challenged by the rise of Metro Ethernet services. With MetroE, you connect directly from your Ethernet LAN to an Ethernet MAN and back again at other locations around town. Since this is a Level 2 switched service, it’s like having a way to expand your LAN over a much larger area to include other offices, a factory, warehouses, and an offsite data center.

Metro Ethernet melds LAN and MAN with one common service protocol. But what about the WAN or wide area needs? WANs often encompass regional areas of the country or even the entire US. Very large WANs include locations around the world. These, too, can now be joined by Ethernet through MPLS networks. While MPLS has an IP core, it uses its own tag switching system instead of IP routing while on the network. But being a multi-protocol system, it can easily transport Ethernet. Some larger providers have national and international service footprints, making it easier than ever to connect from LAN to MAN to WAN.

Are you interested in maximizing the efficiency of your metropolitan and wide area network services while minimizing your costs? You should get a quick quote on MAN & WAN Network Bandwidth to see how much you could be saving.

1,000,000 Miles of Metro Ethernet Fiber And Growing

If you’ve been thinking that Metro Ethernet is just some little niche service that probably won’t catch on, here’s an eye opener. XO Communications alone has about a million miles of metro fiber and more than 3,000 fiber-fed buildings on net. That’s not even counting all the Ethernet over Copper delivered to buildings that aren’t yet lit for fiber. Oh, and that’s just one carrier.

Metro Ethernet and its long haul equivalent called Carrier Ethernet are no niche services. This is the future of telecommunications. Why? Because the whole world is transitioning from switched circuit TDM communications to packet switched IP networking. It’s happening faster than you might think or experience in your everyday telecom usage. You may currently be connected to the Internet by a T1 dedicated Internet connection. It’s a telco-based legacy service based on TDM channels. Yet once your packets are transported to the carrier’s point of presence, they are passed to an IP-based Internet backbone. Protocol conversion circuitry makes this process transparent to the end user, so your last mile connection can be just about anything.

This suggests that it would be more efficient to keep everything in the Internet Protocol from the computer on your desk all the way to the servers you are communicating with. That’s a correct assumption. Now that Ethernet in the WAN (Wide Area Network) is becoming as available as Ethernet for your LAN (Local Area Network), it is more efficient and generally less expensive to keep it Ethernet all the way.

How much less expensive? You can find that out with a quick check for Metro Ethernet prices and availability. The Ethernet Buildings site makes that as easy as it could possibly be. You simply enter your building’s address and check the map that comes up.



Even if your building isn’t already lit for fiber optic service, you may still have the options of getting service via Ethernet over Copper or wireless service. XO Communications owns 28-31 GHz spectrum in 75 markets specifically for this purpose. Other carriers also want to compete for your business and they are rapidly deploying their own Ethernet solutions nationwide.

Have you been missing out on the opportunity to save considerably on your monthly telecom lease costs? Well, there’s no time like the present to check your options. It only takes a few minutes and may save you as much as 50%. Can you think of a better way to spend the next few minutes? If not, check Ethernet service availability for your business location right now.

Trade In Your T1 Line For 10 Mbps Ethernet

Is your T1 line lease about to come up for renewal or has it already expired and you’re just paying month to month? Don’t be too quick to re-sign that agreement until you see if you can get 10 Mbps Ethernet for the same money.

What? How can that be? Business telecom services are priced on both bandwidth and distance from the carrier. How can you possibly expect to get 10 Mbps for the same price as 1.5 Mbps at the same location?

It is indeed possible for many business locations to upgrade from the T1 service they’ve had for years to much higher bandwidths. It’s all because of a revolution that has taken place in the telecommunications market recently. You’re aware that traditional landline telephone services are being quickly replaced by wireless and VoIP telephony. Well, the same thing has been happening with the underlying networks. They’re all being upgraded from switched circuit time division multiplexing technology to packet switched IP networking.

This revolution in wide area networking (WAN) technology has also opened the door for new competitive carriers who don’t have a legacy telephony switching system to support. They’ve hit the ground running with all-IP fiber optic networks with both fiber and copper access. In some cases, wireless access at speeds similar to T1 lines is also available.

To be fair, the pricing on both T1 lines and the newer Ethernet services have dropped substantially over the last few years. But you wouldn’t be aware of that unless you shopped competitively for bandwidth using a service such as GeoQuote. The Telarus GeoQuote search engine calculates the distance from your business address to the nearest carrier points of presence (POPs). It then accesses the carrier databases to get pricing information for various levels of service.

Now, here’s what’s really exciting about the quotes I’ve seen coming out of GeoQuote lately. T1 line prices have been on a steady and rapid decline over the last few years. At the same time, Ethernet services have been expanding at a rapid rate with both higher bandwidths and lower costs per Mbps. If you are a long time user of T1 line services, you may well be paying a small fortune on your T1 line lease. But I’ve seen some quotes for 10 x 10 Mbps Ethernet coming in at less than the quotes for standard T1 that were common only a few years ago. If you simply traded in your expired T1 line lease for Ethernet over Copper (EoC) service, you could easily double or triple your bandwidth for the same cost. It’s even possible in some cases to move from 1.5 Mbps to 10 Mbps without having to increase your telecom budget.

Like all business telecom services, Ethernet pricing and availability is highly dependent on location. In fact, two businesses across the street from each other could have different lease rates for exactly the same service. So, how do you find out what’s available and how much it is going to cost? The fast and easy way is to simply run an online check for business Ethernet service for your building’s address and see what shows up. A Telarus consultant will be happy to discuss your particular needs and budget and see if there are any current special offers that are available at even better than the standard rates.

Ethernet Bandwidth is Downright Cheap

You know that compared to consumer bandwidth solutions, such as DSL or Cable, business bandwidth is pricey. That's always been because business grade services are touted to provide exclusive use of the lines and that they are regulated services with guarantees of reliability (availability.) But it's also because professional grade telecommunication lines are individually engineered and almost always involve both a competitive carrier for the long haul and the incumbent local phone company for last mile connectivity.

In the past few years, fierce competition has driven the cost of dedicated T1 Internet connections from over a thousand dollars a month down to under four hundred dollars a month in major metropolitan areas. But higher bandwidth services needed for video transport, medical image transmission, and engineering data are still priced at eye-popping levels. Small and mid-size companies can find themselves bandwidth restricted if they can't pony up the monthly lease fees for fiber optic grade services.

On top of the high prices for legacy telecom services, changes in technology are making traditional TDM or Time Division Multiplexing protocols less desirable than packet based systems. TDM services such as T1, T3, DS3 and OCx were fielded starting in the 1950's at the behest of the phone companies. No surprise then that the TDM protocol is based on increments of 64 Kbps, the bandwidth needed to support one digital phone call. You want more bandwidth? Just pack in more channels. But today's data communications are based on packets, not channels. You can put packets into channels, but isn't it more efficient to just transmit them as packets all the way?

You bet it is. Nearly all computer generated information originates at an Ethernet interface. That's typically 10, 100 or 1,000 Mbps, but increasingly 10 Gbps on corporate networks. While Ethernet LANs are the defacto standard within organizations, TDM is the protocol of most WAN or Wide Area Networks. When you want your data or VoIP telephony to leave the building, it has to be transformed into TDM protocols for interface with the public telecom network. Well, that's how it's been. But that's changing rapidly.

All telecom carriers have recognized the need to move from TDM To IP based networks and are moving in that direction. The competitive (non-incumbent) carriers are especially aggressive in that transformation. It's partly because they don't have legacy TDM networks to support and partly because they need to get the jump on the deeply entrenched phone companies in order to grab market share.

Let's take a look at some representative pricing and you'll see the difference. You'll pay a national average of $450 a month for a T1 line supporting DS1 service at 1.54 Mbps. That's about $292 per Meg for long haul bandwidth. Move up to DS3 on a T1 line or fiber optic carrier and you get 45 Mbps for around $5,000 on average. The economy of scale brings your cost per Meg down to $111. Those prices are maybe half what they were five years ago, but still beyond the reach of many companies that could make good use of that bandwidth.

Now compare these established TDM services with native Ethernet or IP network services. A 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet connection will set you back $2,000 a month. Yeah. That's really less than half the cost for over twice the bandwidth of DS3. Your cost per Meg is down to $20. Gigabit Ethernet or GigE connections can be had for an average of $12,000 a month for 1,000 Mbps. That's a mere $12 per Meg. If you wanted GigE over SONET based OC48 fiber optic TDM service, the cost would likely be ten to twenty times as much.

Now the rub. While prices for Ethernet transport are downright cheap by traditional telecom pricing standards, you have to be where the carriers are. Trenching fiber out in the boonies is astronomically expensive regardless of who's doing it. The way to get bargain bandwidth prices is to go where the service is already available. That means locating in a building that is already lit or moving your servers to a colo center, also known as a carrier hotel. But how do you find these oases of high bandwidth?

That's been made easy now by a new service called "Shop For Ethernet." It's a service of Telarus, a master agency for many competitive carriers and innovator in automating the telecommunications services shopping experience. Telarus has wed the science of real-time access to carrier databases to Google Maps. In a matter of seconds, not days or weeks, you can enter the address of your current building location and find out if you've already been "lit" for Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet service. Plus you'll also get map markers that show the locations of other buildings in the area that are currently lit by major carriers. That's important because once a building is lit, or provisioned with fiber optic service, it's a LOT less expensive to provide businesses located there with high bandwidth services.

Want to give it a try? You've got 5 seconds, right? Go ahead and enter your building address now to find out instantly which buildings in your area have the Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet WAN services you want. If you wish, you can then enter your contact information to have an Ethernet specialist provide you with highly competitive pricing.