Why Your Telecom Lines Should Be Switched Ethernet

By: John Shepler

A major trend in telecom services is the massive migration from traditional circuit switched to packet switched networks. Right along with this has come the availability of Ethernet connections door to door and to the Internet. Even so, many organizations still embrace traditional technology and are loath to give up their trusty T1 lines and SONET fiber optic services. Why should they consider making change…. and to what?

Aren’t All Networks Ethernet?
Pretty much all Local Area Networks (LANs), including wireless networks, are based on the Ethernet protocol. There are exceptions, such as Fibre Channel that connects computers to Storage Area Networks (SANs), but the vast majority of networking equipment and software is based on supporting Ethernet.

So, What are T1, DS3 and SONET?
Traditional telecom standards were developed long before anyone thought of using packet technology to communicate. Their intended application was for bundling or trunking telephone lines between phone company offices. Their architecture is based on circuit switching instead of packet switching plus segmenting the line into many individual channels. Each channel carries a single phone conversation. The process for doing this is called TDM or Time Division Multiplexing.

Connecting TDM to Ethernet Networks
You can see there is a technology gap between TDM and Ethernet or IP networks. Fortunately, technology comes to the rescue to make this largely invisible to you, the user. All those little (64 Kbps) telephone channels can be combined on a given line to create one large bandwidth pipe. Plug in modules allow routers to connect to TDM lines going outside and LANs within the company. While this approach has allowed modern computer to computer communications to flourish, there are some good reasons to move on from this protocol conversion approach.

Ethernet vs Ethernet
The Ethernet protocol envisioned by Bob Metcalfe in the 70’s is a different animal than what we use today. The original Ethernet was based on a single wire channel with all packets from all systems vying for access in a giant “collision domain.” This technology is described by the mouthful, “Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection” or CSMA/CD for short. It’s a self-policing system where each connection to the network is responsible for making sure that the line is clear before launching a packet and recovering if the packet gets in a collision with another.

This system works, but network gets crowded fast as devices are added and lines interconnected with simple hubs. Communication is limited to half-duplex because only one connection can talk at a time. The big improvement to the technology, and one we still use today, is called switched Ethernet.

The Switched Advantage
The Ethernet switch directs traffic from source to destination rather than having a single party line for everybody. Transmission and reception paths are physically separate on different wire pairs. This alone doubles the network rate from half-duplex to full duplex because devices and talk and listen at the same time. There is no collision domain anymore. Each device has its own network port and the switch takes care of getting the packets to the right place.

Beyond the LAN
It seems logical that the way to connect networks across town should be the same as connecting multiple small networks into one LAN in-house. It hasn’t been because you lose control of the net when you leave your property. Two business locations across town have to be connected through a no-man’s land in-between by a common carrier. This was originally the role of the local phone company but competition has opened the carrier business to many other players.

Scaling Up Ethernet
For decades, the transportation of voice, data and video between locations has been done using legacy switched circuit telecom technologies. Ethernet, by design, was limited to the LAN because of fairly short distance limitations for each network line. To get around this, Carrier Ethernet was developed. It’s pretty much the same switched Ethernet, but with additional provisions for long distance transmission and the operation and maintenance features needed by the carriers to maintain the lines. Carrier Ethernet scales up switched Ethernet so that packets can be carried across town or even around the world.

Ethernet All the Way
Now it is possible to plug your edge router into a familiar Ethernet connection (copper or fiber) at each of your business locations. In-between, the common carrier reliably transports your packets from location to location. It’s Ethernet all the way with no protocol conversions required.

Switched Ethernet Service Advantages
Think of the world as your network. Well, at least your parts of the world. With switched Ethernet, you can bridge two or more locations to put their LANs on one larger network… just like you would in-house. Ethernet Line Service (E-Line) replaces T1, DS3, and SONET OCx lines one a one to one basis. Carrier Ethernet also adds a couple of new options. Ethernet LAN Service (E-LAN) creates a fully meshed network for you. All you need is an Ethernet line connection at each location. Ethernet Tree Service (E-Tree) is a one to many connection that is popular with content providers. One location generates the traffic to be used by many, many other locations.

The Ethernet Cost Advantage
Carrier Ethernet networks are designed to be both easily scalable and lower in cost than what you are used to with traditional telecom services. It is not uncommon to get Ethernet over Copper connections at 3 Mbps for the same price or less than T1 lines at 1.5 Mbps. At higher speeds, the difference in cost is even more dramatic. The scalability technology lets you upgrade the speed of your service quickly and easily, often without needing new equipment installed.

Switched Ethernet For You
Are you thinking that you may be missing out on service improvements and more bandwidth for your money that can be offered by switched Ethernet service? No need to wait. Copper and fiber optic Carrier Ethernet services are available coast to coast and worldwide right now. Discover your options now.

Mix and Match Interconnection Services With Telx

In the cloud, it’s all about connectivity. In fact, connectivity is becoming the weak link in the chain as cloud service providers establish larger, faster, more robust clouds. You may be able to compute at Terabits per second, but that doesn’t help if you can’t get the data in and the results out fast enough. Inadequate connections threaten to stifle innovation in the cloud. That threat is being met by a new suite of service options from Telx called the Connect Portfolio.

Telx made its name in colocation. Their 17 data centers nationwide offer world-class facilities for space & power, HVAC protection, redundancy, security & access controls. If Telx had remained a colocation center, they would be among the top choices for outsourcing data center facilities. But what Telx saw, that others are only now starting to realize, is how the cloud would so quickly become the service model of choice.

The other core competency that Telx has developed is connectivity. They were into connectivity before most companies realized how critical it would become in cloud-centric world. The original impetus for Telx’s connectivity portfolio was in support of their colocation customers. Moving your servers to a colo facility gets you off the hook for providing your own backup power, environmental control and security. You still need to worry about how you will connect to the world. That’s where having an extensive suite of connectivity options gives colocation a leg up on private data centers. The bigger the colo, the more carriers want access to the meet-me room. How many carriers are going to establish POPs in your company’s communications closet?

In a sense, Telx has captured the cloud. Instead of being satisfied with being a high bandwidth switchboard that connects many companies to many bandwidth providers, Telx has invited cloud service providers to move in to Telx facilities. With a suite of cloud providers in-house, businesses needing high performance cloud access are invited to do the logical thing and move right on into Telx facilities also. It doesn’t take long before there is a big cloud of providers and a large field of users that interconnect without ever leaving the building.

What’s the advantage of that? The big one is minimal latency along with nearly unlimited bandwidth. Connectivity is short runs of copper and fiber cabling run through a central patch panel. Latencies are measured in nanoseconds and microseconds. All the switch, router, regenerator claptrap associated with long haul networks is eliminated.

Another advantage is cost. Within a Telx facility there are multiple service providers for everything vying for your business. That’s a lot different from trying to convince a carrier to build out a fiber run to your facility and have them eat the cost. With the effort of in-house connections being almost trivial, construction costs disappear from the decision process. It’s then a buyer’s market for companies who’s equipment racks are surrounded by service providers.

So important is the cloud, that Telx has rebranded its colo facilities as C3 Cloud Connection Centers. Within those centers, customers can choose from a suite of connectivity options in the Telx Connect Portfolio. These are divided into four categories. Dynamic Connect includes EtherConnect, Video Conferencing Connect and Carrier Connect. The Direct Connect option offers ultra low latency connectivity through use of passive Cross Connect interconnection panels. The IP Connect option focuses on IP networks within the Telx C3 data centers, accessed through the Telx Internet Exchange and Dedicated Internet Access products. The Network Connect option lets businesses establish multiple location connectivity, including a Metro Connect option that connects multiple data centers within the same geographical area.

Are you frustrated with the limited connectivity options available to your company? You may be a candidate for high performance interconnection services from Telx and other high performance service providers.

600 Mbps Ethernet vs OC12 SONET

Organizations requiring fractional Gbps bandwidth have traditionally turned to OC12 SONET fiber optic service. It’s still an excellent high speed option, but you should also take a look at 600 Mbps Ethernet service. You may be surprised how the two competing connections compare.

OC-12 (622 Mbps) is the next step up from OC-3 (155 Mbps) in the SONET optical carrier hierarchy. You’ll find this service readily available in Metropolitan Area Networks (MAN) and as a dedicated Internet access connection for mid-size Internet service providers. Large organizations also have OC12 bandwidth connections, especially those with thousands of employees on-site or a need to support high bandwidth applications like medical image transmission or video production and distribution.

Not too many years ago, OC12 was considered a good choice for a carrier fiber optic core network. Now, most regional and national carriers have moved up to OC-48 at 2.5 Gbps or OC-192 at 10 Gbps. Long haul and undersea fiber lines are running at OC-768 (40 Gbps) and moving quickly to support 100 Gbps.

OC12 is most often deployed on a protected SONET ring topology, with two counter-rotating fiber rings. If something in one ring fails, either equipment or a cable break, the other ring will pick up 100% of the traffic within 50 mSec.

Note that an OC12 service is probably not the only traffic on a particular fiber strand. At 622 Mbps, OC12 comes nowhere near using available bandwidth of the fiber. SONET is designed as a Time Division Multiplexed (TDM) system that can easily add or drop common OC service levels such as OC3 and OC12. In addition to the electrically multiplexed services on the fiber, each fiber may also be optically multiplexed into a dozen or more wavelengths using Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) equipment.

Carrier Ethernet over fiber is based on packet switching rather than time division multiplexing. Without the strict synchronized channels of TDM, Ethernet is far more scalable. You can order 600 Mbps Ethernet as a replacement for OC12 SONET. You can also order 500 Mbps if that is all you reasonably need. Even more importantly, you can start increasing bandwidth to 700 Mbps, 800 Mbps, 900 Mbps and 1 Gbps as business requirements dictate.

With SONET, the service provider will install a managed router as Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) that includes an interface module specifically designed for the particular OC service level you have installed. The modules for OC3, OC12, and OC48 will plug into the same port on the router, but they are not interchangeable. You need to match the particular interface to the OC service level. That becomes important when you want to implement a service change. The provider will need to roll a truck to either swap out interface modules or completely replace the CPE router.

With Carrier Ethernet, your service provider will install a managed router that can support a particular port speed. For Ethernet over Copper, this is likely 100 Mbps. For fiber, you are likely looking at 1 Gbps, although you can often get equipment rated to 10 Gbps if you expect to be upgrading to that speed level in the foreseeable future. With a 1 Gbps port, you can order whatever service level you need between, say, 100 Mbps and 1 Gbps, in 100 Mbps or smaller increments. No equipment changes are needed as you change service levels within that range. You simply call your provider and tell them to increase bandwidth and you’ll see it happen within a few days, sometimes within a few hours.

Beyond scalability, Ethernet has a cost advantage over SONET in most situations. Sometimes the cost difference is dramatic, even half the cost, for Ethernet versus SONET of the same bandwidth. The one limitation that you’ll run into is that SONET has been around a lot longer and is more available than Ethernet over Fiber. Even so, competitive carriers have been aggressively building out their IP networks and may have fiber service closer than you think.

Do you require fractional Gigabit bandwidth services? If so, it is worth your while to compare 600 Mbps Ethernet to OC12 SONET for cost and availability. The same advice is true for other service levels from T1 copper bandwidth on up to 10 Gbps and higher.

Moving From OC-3 Bandwidth To Ethernet

Many medium size and larger businesses have been using OC-3 bandwidth over fiber optic connections for dedicated Internet access, video transport, remote data backup, large file transfers between sites and other high bandwidth applications. Now, there’s a newer lower cost option that can get you as much bandwidth or more for less money.

That solution is Carrier Ethernet. You may still think that Carrier Ethernet is a specialty service found in only a few areas by even fewer service providers. Not any more. Carrier Ethernet is mainstream. There is a mad dash underway to convert TDM based networks to IP packet networks. It may not be much longer that you’ll even be able to get OC-3 bandwidth services.

It’s all about the switch from telephone technology based on individual circuits to computer network technology based on packets. What’s happened in recent years is that the vast majority of traffic around the world has changed from voice to data to video. Voice is now thought of as one more service on a converged network that can transport voice, data or video with equal ease.

OC-3 is a TDM or Time Division Multiplexing technology. It has its roots in telephony, where everything revolves around small discrete channels that each carry one individual digitized telephone call. All of those channels are carefully synchronized by giving them each their own time slot in the bitstream.

So what’s wrong with that? Nothing other than the fact that using this methodology to transport packets that aren’t the same size as channels and don’t require the TDM synchronization unduly complicates the network interface and introduces inefficiencies. An OC-3 line runs at 155.52 Mbps with a payload of 148.608 Mbps.

Ethernet is the same protocol that runs on your corporate network. What Carrier Ethernet does is enable that same protocol to run for long distances on Metropolitan and Wide Area Networks.

Is there a direct Ethernet equivalent to OC-3? Not exactly. Ethernet does have standard LAN speeds of 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps, 1,000 Mbps and 10,000 Mbps. Carrier Ethernet is far more scalable, though. You can order just about any bandwidth you require. A 150 Mbps Ethernet service is pretty much equivalent to the OC-3 speed. You could, however, select 100 Mbps, 200 Mbps or some other bandwidth that more closely matches your true requirements.

Here’s something else that makes your life easier. Install a Gigabit Ethernet port and you can easily upgrade to any bandwidth up to 1 Gbps at any time. Start with 150 Mbps to match that OC-3 today and later move up to 300 Mbps, 500 Mbps, 750 Mbps or 1,000 Mbps when the need dictates. In the mean time, you’ll be paying for only what you need on that fiber optic link.

Moving from OC-3 to the next available standard of OC-12 means you’ll have to jump from 155 Mbps to 600 Mbps and wait for a technician to change out your router card or managed router. Moving from 150 Mbps Ethernet to 200 Mbps Ethernet or higher can be done with a phone call in hours or days, not potentially weeks or longer.

Best of all, Carrier Ethernet is almost always priced less per Mbps than OC-3 and similar telco services. The reasons are increased competition and a technology that is on the rise, not the decline. How much can you save by making the move from OC-3 bandwidth to Ethernet? Check fiber optic bandwidth prices and availability to find out how many competitive options are available for your business location.



Note: Graphic of router symbol courtesy of Tosaka on Wikimedia Commons.

Moving on From SONET To Ethernet

Technology change is something we’re all familiar with. Every year, there’s a new bevy of cell phone models that make the old ones look tired and obsolete. Tablets are moving into to take over from netbooks even before netbooks completed taking over from laptop computers. It’s only in the staid world of telecommunications that technology time stands still... or does it?

Actually, there’s been a revolution brewing in telecom for decades. It’s all about move from circuit switching to packet switching technologies. Circuit switching got established from the days of Alexander Graham Bell and only became more entrenched as capital investment in central office switches and digital transmission equipment accumulated.

So, what’s wrong with circuit switching? Technically, nothing. It’s a mature technology honed by a century of refinement. So what’s the motivation to move away from a sure thing?

It’s all about computer networks and especially the Internet. While once there were many architectures and protocols, now the lion’s share is Ethernet. Except for a few special situations that still benefit from non-IP network designs, everything is supporting Ethernet. The economy of scale in manufacturing has operated as a positive feedback loop to ensure that you need a very good reason and deep pockets to select anything but off-the-shelf Ethernet interfaces.

The battlefront is at the interface between LANs and the outside world. It’s Ethernet inside and something else outside. That something else is telecom standardized circuit switched wireline and fiber optics. The need to succeed has made the two compatible through specialized interface hardware and software. But how long will this standoff continue?

Not much longer by the looks of things. Competitive carriers have build their new networks with IP cores rather than adapting traditional SONET fiber optic switched circuit services to transport their Ethernet offerings. SONET/SDH is the high end of circuit switching development and likely the end of the line for this technology path. It has a maturity level and deployment that far exceeds the upstart Carrier Ethernet. Ethernet is the future, SONET is the present and, more and more, the past. At some point, the momentum will switch and the Ethernet takeover will ensue en-masse.

That point may be sooner than any of us think. As evidence, a major competitive carrier, XO Communications, has announced that they are not planning to buy any more SONET moving forward. That’s especially significant since XO is rolling out a major network upgrade over the next few years. This should put a smile on the face of product managers in charge of Ethernet switches, routers, multiplexers and the like. It should have the opposite effect on those planning development and production of SONET equipment. If more carriers follow suit, you’ll see Ethernet lines becoming more robust and SONET heading for end-of-life management.

You can see the handwriting on the wall by comparing Carrier Ethernet line services with their SONET equivalents. On a Mbps and Gbps basis, Ethernet is getting cheaper faster than SONET in most areas. As the price gap widens, IT managers will need more and more justification for choosing SONET over Ethernet. Even if there’s capital investment involved in switching over to all-Ethernet networking, it will increasingly be seen as a smart move.

How about your high bandwidth connections? Could you be benefiting from Carrier Ethernet right now and not realize it? Time is money, so don’t wait any longer to find out. Get Carrier Ethernet service prices and availability now. You, too, may become part of the stampede from SONET to Ethernet.



Note: Fisheye photo of data center courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

You’ll Believe This MAN Can Fly

Metropolitan Area Networks are becoming more important in connecting business sites within the same city or city and suburbs. That’s especially important for franchise operations or businesses with many nearby branch offices, such as banks, insurance sales, gas stations and so on. What’s been limiting so far is the speed of the network connections available. Not any more. Metro networks are ready to fly.

The MAN or Metro Area Network is the networking solution between LANs or Local Area Networks and the much larger WAN or Wide Area Network. The MAN serves an important function in transporting voice, data and video traffic within a limited geographical area. Without the MAN, you are left to concocting your own solution by piecing together a collection of individual point to point telecom lines. Many companies have done this over the years with T1 lines and their own central router. But the MAN offers more bandwidth options and a significant cost savings.

Where does the cost savings come from? It’s a function of amortizing the cost of operating the network among the customers who subscribe to it. The MAN service provider installs a protected SONET fiber optic ring or IP core network and enough access points to reach business locations within the metropolitan area. Fiber optic networks are well suited to this application. They have nearly unlimited bandwidth when you install multiple core cables and use wavelength division multiplexing. An add-drop multiplexer a key points of presence makes it easy to get traffic on and off the network. All you need then is access connections from each location to the MAN.

SONET metropolitan area networks were the first to be installed using proven technology from the telephone industry and operated by the incumbent local telephone companies. OC3 connections at 155 Mbps have been popular with enterprise companies. Those needing higher bandwidth levels can upgrade to OC12 at 622 Mbps and even OC48 at 2.5 Gbps.

The Ethernet MAN is newer and offers some advantages over SONET based networks. First, Ethernet is scalable in small increments, so you can generally get whatever level of service you need from 10 Mbps standard Ethernet on the low end through 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, 1000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet and now even 10 GigE running at 10 Gigabits/second. Need more than that? Lease wavelength services or a dark fiber and install as much bandwidth as you require.

Ethernet services include Ethernet line service for point to point connections between two locations or Ethernet LAN service to interconnect as many locations as you require. These are level 2 switched services to that you can treat your entire operations in the metro area as a single bridged LAN.

Finally, Ethernet MAN services generally have a significant cost advantage over traditional telecom services. Bandwidth cost per Mbps is sometimes a fraction of what you would otherwise pay. This is due to a high degree of competition in metropolitan areas among independent carriers that have installed their own metropolitan and long haul fiber optic networks.

Do you have a need for MAN connections to support your business or organization? If so, check Metropolitan Area Network prices and availability now.

Finding An Ethernet Internet Provider

You’ve heard that Ethernet Internet service offers advantages over traditional telecom services, such as T1 lines and DS3 bandwidth. But where do you go to find an Ethernet Internet provider? You go right here...



The Ethernet Internet Finder is your one-stop service for locating Ethernet Internet providers and getting competitive service quotes. It’s affiliated with Telarus, Inc., the renowned telecom services broker, and connects to their patented GeoQuote software and suite of expert consultants. All you do is enter some basic company contact information and you are good to go. Try to enter the main telephone number at the business rather than a cell phone, as the system uses this information to help find service availability and pricing.

Don’t worry about getting charged for any of this. The Ethernet Internet Finder is free to use for any serious business purpose. The friendly consultants will go over the range of services available for your location and make recommendations for how you can get the most bandwidth for the least cost. Yes, you need a location that is listed for business use for this to work. If you are working from a home office or want residential service, we recommend “Can I Get DSL?” to find your best options for DSL, Cable, 4G wireless, fiber to the home, and satellite broadband.

In case you are not familiar with Ethernet Internet access, this is a fairly new bandwidth service that is growing by leaps and bounds. It provides an Ethernet connection from your local area network, which is already running Ethernet, to the Internet, which is highly compatible with Ethernet. Traditional telecom connections were designed to transport telephone calls and are not as efficient as what’s known as Metro or Carrier Ethernet. There are also many new providers who specialize in Ethernet and IP networks that are anxious to compete for your business.

As a result, you can generally save money when you switch to Ethernet Internet service. How much? It’s not unusual to get twice the bandwidth for the same cost using Ethernet at 3 Mbps vs a T1 line at 1.5 Mbps. The higher the bandwidth, the lower the price per Mbps.

Also, new Ethernet over Copper (EoC) technology can deliver 10 Mbps Ethernet connections to your business using existing twisted pair copper wiring. You don’t necessarily have to bring in new fiber optic service to get the bandwidth you need. How much bandwidth can you get and for what cost? The easy way to find out is to use the Ethernet Internet Finder now.

What Is Lowering Gigabit Ethernet Bandwidth Pricing?

If you have recently gone out for quotes on Gigabit Ethernet bandwidth, you may have been surprised by how much prices have dropped the last few years. That’s one pleasant surprise for organizations that need higher levels of business bandwidth for cloud computing access, e-commerce, medical image transmission, video distribution and the like. But is this for real and what is driving these prices lower?

Yes, it’s for real alright. In fact, bandwidth services across the board can be had for a fraction of what you may have paid when you signed your last service contract. That applies to everything from T1 lines to DS3 connections and on up through OCx SONET/SDH fiber optic bandwidth. It also includes competing services like Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gig E. Plus multi-location cloud networks like MPLS. They’ve all dropped in price. But the cost per Mbps is often most dramatic for Ethernet services.

What’s behind the lowered prices? Two factors can be credited. First is the move from traditional switched circuit transport technologies to packet switched IP networks and services. Second is new levels of competition.

Both legacy service providers, the telephone companies, and new competitive carriers have built-out extensive networks based on IP or a networking technology that embraces IP, such as MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching. You can thank the Internet for that. The enormous volume of equipment and services to support near-universal demand access to the Internet has decreased the price of Ethernet and IP networking to a fraction of what it costs for competing technologies. The entire world is going to packet switched networks based on Internet Protocol.

When every LAN is running Ethernet, it just makes sense that the most efficient way to connect all those local area networks is with an Ethernet connection. Ethernet over Copper lets you do this from typically 3 Mbps on up to around 50 Mbps. Ethernet over Fiber is good for 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, and even 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Gigabit Ethernet is becoming a requirement for medium and large companies depending heavily on high productivity enterprise software or distributing media content, such as video. At the very highest levels, even 10 GigE is no longer out of the question.

The move from legacy telco technologies to IP based fiber optic networks has brought new players into the marketplace for WAN networking services. These competitive carriers have built their own regional or national fiber optic networks and established colocation facilities and points of presence in most major cities, even some mid-size cities. They can often bring their own fiber into business locations and bypass the telephone companies completely. Now instead of one option for service, you may have several or more even at the Gigabit Ethernet level. That spells competition and competition leads to lowered prices.

Could your organization benefit from the recent cost reductions in high bandwidth networks services? Don’t shake your head no until you check current prices and availability for Gigabit Ethernet bandwidth services and other bandwidth offerings. At the very least, your next service lease could cost you less than the one you have now.

Find The Ethernet Internet Connection

Are you interested in more bandwidth for your business, but concerned about the cost? You may be able to get just what you want with an Ethernet Internet connection.



Ethernet Internet connections are something new. Certainly, we’ve all been using Ethernet on our local area networks for as long as we can remember. The Internet itself is an IP service that is very compatible with your LAN Ethernet. The odd protocol in-between has been the telecom services available to link to the Ethernet itself.

You probably have T1 or DS3 service as your network access connection. Each of these requires a special CSU/DSU or router interface card at each end of the connection. These units and their associated software perform a protocol conversion and provide the proper signal interface to standard network Ethernet ports. But with Ethernet connections, none of that is needed. It’s Ethernet all the way. How do you connect to the Internet? How about just plugging into a standard RJ-45 connector?

In addition to simplicity of connection, Ethernet WAN or Wide Area Network services are also generally cheaper than T1 lines or DS3 bandwidth. In many areas, you can now get 3 Mbps Ethernet for the same price as 1.5 Mbps T1. 10 Mbps Ethernet is very popular for small to medium size businesses. It can be had for what T1 lines cost just a few years ago.

Ethernet Internet connections are also scalable. You can get bandwidths from 1 Mbps up to 1 Gbps. The lower speeds, from 1 Mbps to about 50 Mbps, can be provided over existing twisted pair copper telco cables. For the higher speeds, you’ll need a fiber optic connection. Those are also highly affordable compared to what you’ll pay for traditional telecom services at that level.

Are you interested in how you can increase your bandwidth and perhaps even save money at the same time. Take a minute now and use the Ethernet Internet Finder to get connection prices and availability for your business location.

Is Voice Over MPLS The New PSTN?

It’s clear that packet switched networks are taking over from circuit switched networks. So much so, that the FCC is considering pulling the plug on the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) at some point. It’s a clear omen that the end is near for the telephone system that has served us for over a century. But what will take its place? Will it be VoIP? How about cellular?

It’s likely that VoIP is going to be the answer, but not the VoIP that we know today. What VoIP has going for it is established standards for coding & decoding, signaling, and a packet protocol that is compatible with Ethernet data networks. What’s holding it back from taking over virally is a wide variety of incompatible implementations, fear by wireless carriers that it will bring down their networks, and unpredictable voice quality on the Internet.

That hasn’t stopped major organizations from switching to enterprise VoIP solutions. They avoid the problems that consumers face using Voice over the Internet by rigidly controlling the performance of their in-house networks. For calls that need to go outside the organization, enterprise users will terminate outside calls to the PSTN through ISDN PRI digital trunks or have a third party SIP trunking provider terminate the calls.

Clearly, the larger the organization, the higher the percentage of calls that can be kept in-house. When companies have multiple locations, they have a decision to make. Each location can have its own PBX telephone system and connect to the PSTN for calls leaving the building. Or, a corporate PBX telephone system can handle all facilities with private trunk lines running between locations.

Chances are that a multi-location business needs data connectivity between locations anyway. So, adding voice packets to the data stream makes sense. That way call quality can be assured while avoiding the per-minute costs of using the public telephone system. The question is what type of network will work best for this application.

MPLS is increasingly becoming the network architecture of choice for converged voice and data networks. MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching is designed from the ground up to handle whatever protocol you want to transport. But even if everything is IP, MPLS has some big advantages over rolling your own network with private lines.

MPLS are privately operated and available only to customers of the service. That gives the network operators the ability to ensure the availability of enough bandwidth to prevent congestion and the resulting latencies and dropped packets that slow data and destroy voice services. QoS or Quality of Service control ensure that voice packets get the priority treatment they need to maintain high audio quality.

MPLS networks are also mesh networks, which makes them ideal for interconnecting multiple business locations. You can do this yourself with a hub and spoke arrangement with headquarters at the hub and routing traffic among the other locations. But your costs will be higher and the latency between locations greater when everything has to go through a central routing hub on private point to point trunk lines.

MPLS makes so much sense that the large telecom carriers are converting their core networks to MPLS to handle today’s traffic and whatever will be coming through the pipes tomorrow. Data, voice and video are handled equally well and can be transported in traditional TDM channel as well as packet protocols. What we call the PSTN today may well become interconnected MPLS networks in the future.

In the meantime, you can be enjoying the quality, security and cost advantages that MPLS networks have to offer. Learn how MPLS for VoIP networks can work for your organization.

LAN to WAN Ethernet Connections

Within the LAN, or Local Area Network, the Ethernet protocol is ubiquitous. But once you have a need to connect beyond the corporate confines, you need a method to connect to telecom transport services. This has always required a protocol conversion due to the differences between the LAN and WAN environments. No more. Now you can connect seamlessly from LAN to WAN with Metro and Carrier Ethernet connections.

The advantage for packet based networks, especially IP networks, is that entire network topology runs on the same technology. This improves transmission efficiency and reduces the latency involved in converting between protocols at each end of the circuit. By extending Ethernet into the WAN, or Wide Area Network, it is possible to treat a multi-location network as if it were a single large network. That's true even if the various interconnected LANs are hundreds or thousands of miles apart.

So, what is available in the way of LAN to WAN Ethernet connections? There are two basic technologies available. Both are typically found in metro areas where competitive carriers offer Ethernet services on their own IP-based networks.

If your business is located within a few miles of a carrier POP, or Point of Presence, you may be able to get EoC or Ethernet over Copper access. New modulation technologies combined with multiple twisted copper pair allows carriers to provide Ethernet service via multi-pair telephone cable. This is the same cabling that is already installed at nearly all business locations, originally to provide multi-line analog telephone service. T1 and ISDN PRI services make use of the same cable to bring in digital voice and data services. Now Ethernet can be provided by bundling multiple dry copper pair driven by terminal equipment at each end of the loop.

What bandwidths are available from EoC technology? Anything from 1 to 45 Mbps, depending on the carrier's facilities and the distance to the POP. Ethernet over Copper bandwidths decrease rapidly over distance, so higher bandwidth services are available close to the POP. Even if you are a block away, though, it still can make economic sense to use existing copper facilities rather than install new fiber optic conduits.

Higher bandwidths, up to Gigabit Ethernet or even 10 Gig E, are available on fiber optic Ethernet connections. If your LAN is running at 1000 Mbps and you have a Gigabit Ethernet over fiber connection to a data center across town, the effect of sending data over the WAN is completely transparent.

Normally, the WAN presents a bottleneck for packet transmission. That's due to the high cost of WAN connections relative to LAN connections. Using traditional T-carrier or SONET line services, a company may well have to settle for a tenth the throughput over the WAN as on the LAN. That may not be true with Ethernet connections. Competitive carriers are pricing Ethernet WAN bandwidth a much lower cost per Mbps than other technologies. At higher speeds, the savings can be as much as half or better.

Would your company benefit from switching to high bandwidth Ethernet services? You owe it to yourself to find out how much you can save with LAN to WAN Ethernet Connections.

Profit From The Bandwidth Price Wars

There's a war underway, but it's not any of the ones you hear about on TV. This is a price war and it's all about commercial bandwidth. Far from getting hurt in the battle between carriers, you can be the one who profits from their skirmishing.

What's causing all this upset in what was once a staid and uncompromising telecommunications industry? Competition, that's what!

The competitive landscape shifted with the breakup of the Bell System in 1984, which allowed other companies to provide telephone service. Competitive long distance service, starting with companies like Sprint & MCI and more recently Opex, PNG, Pioneer, IBNtel, Covista and Total Call International let both businesses and consumers save money on their long distance calls while retaining their local phone service.

Two changes in technology have accelerated the advantages of competitive service providers. First is the introduction of VoIP that uses packet switched digital transmission over the Internet or private IP network instead of analog copper pair connections. The other is private regional and national fiber optic networks that can connect businesses without having to lease last mile connections from the incumbent local telephone companies.

These developments have resulted in a lot more competitors entering the lucrative telephone and Internet service marketplace. They also provide bandwidth in the form of T1 lines, SONET fiber optic services, MPLS networks, SIP trunking and Metro Ethernet. T1 and SONET offerings directly compete with similar telco offerings. SIP trunking, MPLS networks and Metro Ethernet are new on the scene and look to replace the older technologies completely.

All of these competitors, dozens in fact, have given businesses a mind boggling array of service options. They've also fueled the bandwidth war that has cut prices on many once prohibitively expensive telecom services down to levels that small, medium and larger companies can readily afford. It's not uncommon to find that the price of a T1 line or DS3 bandwidth has dropped by half or more since that service was first leased only a few years ago. Other options, such as Ethernet over Copper, can offer higher bandwidths, such as 3, 5, 10 or 45 Mbps at rates per Mbps that are mere fractions of what they would be with traditional line pricing.

This wealth of opportunity has resulted in one major dilemma, however. How can you be sure that you are getting the best rates when you are only familiar with a few of the possible suppliers? The answer to that is a telecom brokerage service that lets you enter a query online at any time and even get instant online quotes for T1 and similar line services. Consultants are available to handle queries for higher bandwidth services and special needs such as connecting multiple locations. All of this comes at no charge to the inquirer.

This rapidly expanding competitive landscape means that you can probably save on all of your voice and data communications needs. There's only one way to find out. Check the latest competitive telecom service prices and see.

Cheaper Optical Carrier Services

With business transactions becoming more and more electronic, there is a crying need for higher levels of WAN or Wide Area Network bandwidth. What usually stifles company ambitions is not that they can't make good use of faster digital network services. It's that they can't afford them. Or so they think.

Actually, there's been a dramatic reduction in the cost per Mbps of carrier services since many business leaders last got quotes and were so shocked and horrified by the results that they shelved the entire idea. It started with the bursting the famous "tech bubble" of the 1990's. Yes, back then bandwidth was jaw-dropping expensive and not all that widely available. But the collapse of technology sector growth resulted in an almost immediate bandwidth glut and prices did what you'd expect. They fell to a level that matched demand. So dire was the situation that for years conduits chock full of new fiber strands went unlit and unused.

That glut was gradually sopped up by an expanding economy, but costs have not returned to their earlier high levels as you might think would happen with a shrinking supply and increasing demand. The reason is that supply is not shrinking. It is expanding. It is expanding due to new companies entering the field and building out their own networks to the latest standards.

That's important because regional and nationwide fiber optic networks are incredibly expensive to deploy. All that fiber has to go in the ground, on overhead poles, or through unused pipelines. Plus the equipment that regenerates the signals as they get weak traveling hundreds and thousands of miles through the glass fibers, and multiplexes and demultiplexes the various services at each POP or Point of Presence, represents a huge capital investment. Once a carrier has installed a particular type of system, they want to pay it off and generate profits for as long as possible. They're not all that anxious to toss everything out in a "fork lift upgrade" and bring in all new technology.

This gives newer players an advantage because they don't have all that legacy equipment to amortize. They start fresh with the latest and most efficient systems. As as example, many competitive carriers have installed IP based optical networks while the telcos are still running TDM based networks designed for digitized telephone calls rather than packet traffic. With enough slicing and dicing, you can get any network to transport any protocol. But it's more efficient and less costly to match your network to the type of traffic you expect to handle now and in the future.

The result of an increasingly competitive marketplace for optical carrier services encouraged by a rapid growth in business demand for bandwidth to improve speed and efficiency is making for an attractive situation if you are the one buying the bandwidth. A further improvement in the process is the emergence of telecom brokers with sophisticated online comparison tools to gather rate information from many carriers and present them in an ordered list from cheapest to most expensive for the same service.

The best of these is the industry leader, Telarus, Inc., with its patented groundbreaking search tool called GeoQuote(tm) that you can access yourself through Gigapackets.com. This tool accesses the databases of a couple of dozen competitive carriers to generate accurate service quotes for lower speed services such as T1 lines in a matter of seconds.

Higher level services, such as SONET OC3, OC12, OC48 and OC192 fiber optic services or IP services, such as Carrier Ethernet to 10 GigE levels, and MPLS networks require some engineering input and may take a few hours. Telarus consultants usually have a good idea of typical costs for these services so you can get a budgetary figure quickly. Be sitting down when you ask. You may be shocked by the amount of bandwidth you can afford these days.

WAN Connection Strategies

Within the corporate environment, LAN networks have standardized on twisted pair copper and fiber optic Ethernet connectivity. But once you leave the building, it's a potpourri of telecommunication standards. How do you select the right service for your needs?

Technology has divided pretty much along two lines, so to speak. They are the traditional TDM or Time Division Multiplexing standards based on circuit switching and the newer IP or Internet Protocol standards based on packet switching. Even this division is blurred because TDM networks can transport IP services and IP networks can transport TDM services.

Core network technology may not matter unless you have a specific need. For instance, Metro Ethernet can offer you level 2 switching capability so that you can connect multiple sites around town as if they are on the same LAN.

A better approach may be to go after the lowest cost service that meets your requirements. Let's take a look at some of what's available.

T1 lines are still the best choice for many businesses that need dedicated Internet connections, point to point data exchange, or outside lines for PBX telephone systems. Yes, T1 is a TDM standard. But connecting a T1 line to a packet network is as simple as installing a managed router often supplied free by the carrier. Otherwise a plug-in CSU/DSU card may interface your router to the T1 demarcation point.

T1 has a variant called T1 PRI or ISDN PRI. This is a high capacity digital telephone trunk line that gives you up to 23 outside phone lines plus Caller ID. ISDN PRI is usually a much better deal than individual analog phone lines for more than 6 - 12 lines.

One huge advantage of T1 lines is that they are almost universally available in the U.S. This is valuable for businesses located in smaller towns or rural areas where T1 service may be all you can get. But heavy competition in metro areas also makes T1 a good choice for downtown and suburban companies. Line lease rates have plunged in recent years. Bonding lines to multiply bandwidth keeps T1 being the preferred choice for many businesses. T1 lines can also be used as SIP trunks to support enterprise VoIP phone systems using IP PBX.

DS3 and SONET are the larger TDM technology services. They use fiber optic rather than twisted pair copper for delivery. Availability is generally limited to metro areas when fiber is already "lit" or easily installed.

The direct competitor to T1 and DS3 is now Metro Ethernet, also known as Carrier Ethernet. This is inherently a packet based technology and directly compatible with Ethernet LANs. Ethernet can be delivered over copper at 10 to 45 Mbps bandwidths, but higher speeds require fiber. Where available, Ethernet WAN service is often much lower is cost than other services. It can be priced at half the cost per Mbps compared to equivalent TDM services.

MPLS or Multi Protocol Label Switching is an IP network technology that is quickly replacing older Frame Relay networks for meshed connections to multiple locations. The "multi" in MPLS means it is capable of transporting any protocol, including TDM services. Most often it is used to establish a secure private network among many business locations.

Still wondering what will work best for your company. The easy way to find out is to get a list of competitive telecom services available for your location and recommendations from experts who know the industry and aren't tied to any one particular carrier. You may be surprised at how many good options you have.