Carrier Ethernet Providers Expand

One of the big developments in network connectivity the last couple of years has been the emergence of Carrier Ethernet services nationwide. That move is accelerating. Here’s why you should more and less costly metro, long haul and last mile connections running the Ethernet protocol.

You may be wondering what all the hoopla is about Carrier Ethernet. After all, bonded T1, DS3 and SONET fiber optic services have been around for years and steadily decreasing in price. Do we really need yet another technical standard?

Yes, if for no other reason than Ethernet-everywhere is the future. The legacy transport technology, T1, DS3 and SONET, was developed by the telephone companies long before computer to computer communications became the dominant network traffic worldwide. As such, they are based on a design that makes it easy to carry lots and lots of small bandwidth telephone conversations. Each channel is 64 Kbps. You string together multiple channels, like cars on a freight train, to create T1 lines at 1.5 Mbps, DS3 bandwidth at 45 Mbps and SONET fiber optic services from 155 Mbps on up to 10 or 40 Gbps. That’s called TDM or Time Division Multiplexing.

Digitized phone calls are no longer the primary traffic carried on networks. Today it is data, VoIP voice and video. The protocols are all based on IP, a packet-switching technology that also forms the basis of Ethernet. Thus, in the modernization of networks to support packet protocols rather than switched circuit TDM, the core networks are being re-engineered to support IP directly. Carrier Ethernet has emerged as a standard carrier service to replace the earlier telco-provided options.

Solidifying this move to Carrier Ethernet is the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF). This is the standards body that provides the technical specs to ensure that providers are compatible with one another. Otherwise, you’d have chaos and few networks could connect to each other to exchange traffic.

That’s one of the big secrets driving Carrier Ethernet. The MEF has defined a E-NNI or Ethernet Network to Network Interface standard. Any carrier that implements E-NNI can easily exchange traffic with other E-NNI carriers so that each expands its reach into the other’s territory. This turns many small regional or national carriers into much larger worldwide carriers without the need for every provider to have assets in every possible location.

Most carriers are in an expansion mode now. Two notable ones are tw telecom and Integra Telecom. tw telecom is now offering national Ethernet service that includes their E-Access product, a “one to many” connection. This is particularly valuable to content producers and others who need to distribute large amounts of data quickly and at reasonable cost. As a wholesale service, it is also valuable to carriers who want to connect to businesses nationwide without having to build their own fiber plants.

Integra Telecom is now offering E-LAN or Ethernet LAN service. This is a standardized MEF Ethernet service that offers multipoint to multipoint Layer 2 VPN. Connecting multiple LANs at multiple locations at the OSI Layer 2 level allows corporations and others to create large bridged networks that include locations all over the country.

Other providers offer low latency fiber optic connections to Europe and Asia from the United States. Running point to point Ethernet connection or E-LAN allows multinational corporations to easily do business worldwide.

Would you be interested in the improved performance and lower cost of Carrier Ethernet services? You’ll likely find that the Carrier Ethernet Provider expansions of recent years give you more options than you might expect.

Dark Fiber Services to 400 Gbps

It’s clear that bandwidth demands are on the rise. Even the smallest companies are swapping out their 1.5 Mbps T1 lines for 10 Mbps Ethernet over Copper. Medium size companies are increasingly moving up to 50 or 100 Mbps connections. Large companies are climbing the Gigabit ladder higher and higher.

Usually we expect available bandwidth to top out at 5 or 10 Gbps. Sometimes carriers can support 40 Gbps on their networks while they move up to 100 Gbps themselves. Now, one competitive carrier is setting a new benchmark at 400 Gbps.

Integra Telecom is one of the country’s leading providers of fiber optic networking solutions. They own and operate a long-haul fiber network that stretches for 5,000 route miles. This is expanded by 3,000 miles of metropolitan fiber connecting more than 2,200 enterprise buildings and data centers.

This describes only the lit and operational fiber assets provided by Integra. Among their 160,000 miles of fiber assets are dark fiber pairs just waiting to be pressed into service. If your requirements go beyond the usual WAN requirements, dark fiber may be the answer to your high bandwidth needs.

What is dark fiber? It is essentially fiber optic strands in a fiber bundle that are not in use. Fiber itself is cheap compared to the cost of burying it in the ground. That’s why anyone installing fiber cables over any distance makes sure that there are many, many extra fiber strands beyond those they expect to use. If you install too small a cable and see your traffic grow in the future, it gets very expensive to duplicate your network by installing more fiber. Since fiber strands are about the size of thick hairs, why not install a cable that has 100 or more pair even if you are planning to light only a dozen?

Integra has lots of fiber beyond their immediate or expected needs. Rather than let all of that unused capacity sit idle, they are offering it to large enterprises, healthcare organizations, governmental agencies and educational institutions that can put it to good use. Their options include bundles, lease and Indefeasible Rights of Use (IRU) that offer complete fiber pairs dedicated to your exclusive use.

Why would you choose to use dark fiber instead of other bandwidth services? Bandwidth is certainly a driver. A single pair of dark fiber supports up to 400 Gbps of lit transport. A pair is used to provide protection against failure in a single fiber or the equipment it connects.

How is it possible to get this much bandwidth from one fiber pair? It has to do with how you transmit your data. The glass fiber itself has nearly unlimited bandwidth, at least for any applications we can envision now. The inefficient way to transport data is to feed one end of the fiber with a laser of a certain color and modulate that beam with your data. Sure, you could get 5 Gbps or more using this technique. You certainly won’t get 400 Gbps. For that massive capacity you need to use the fiber more efficiently.

Right now, the go-to technology for increasing fiber capacity is called DWDM or Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing. Instead of sending one beam down the fiber core, you send dozens or even a hundred or more beams simultaneously. Each is a different wavelength or color called a Lambda. You split up your data stream at the sending end and recombine it at the receiving end.

Of course, you can treat each wavelength as a separate and individual transmission path. This is most often how DWDM systems are set up. Each channel is a high bandwidth communications link completely independent of the others. There is no requirement that the channels use the same protocol or run at the same speed.

Another big advantage of dark fiber is network security. You and you alone have use of the fiber strands. There are no other customer’s signals multiplexed with yours as they generally are on the usual data services. This can be especially advantageous for companies with very high security requirements, such as banks and governmental agencies.

You should also know that there is another step between fiber optic bandwidth services and dark fiber. This involves leasing a complete wavelength on a lit fiber link. You have the security of being the only traffic on that wavelength and avoid the cost of buying and operating your own terminal equipment.

Are your bandwidth needs well beyond the services that are being offered commercially? Dark fiber pairs may be the solution to your demanding requirements. It’s readily available in many business locations.



Note: Picture of glowing fiber optic strands courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Fiber Optic Speed Using Ethernet over Copper

In the future, perhaps the near future, all connectivity will be by fiber optic communication lines. The largest companies already have fiber assets in place. Some smaller but bandwidth intensive companies have also moved from their traditional copper lines to fiber optic connections. Fiber offers nearly unlimited bandwidth growth once installed. The issue is what to do if there is no fiber available at your location yet.

A few years ago your options were limited. You probably started with a T1 line. This service is available everywhere and easily affordable. T1 lines offered plenty of bandwidth for most businesses when they were first made available decades ago. Today, 1.5 Mbps still works for very small companies but is very limiting for larger organizations or any business with high bandwidth demands.

The reason T1 is available to nearly every business location is that it is provided over standard twisted pair telco lines. These are the same wires that bring in multiline telephone service. Extra pairs in the bundle are available for T1 use.

This offers a growth path for many companies. There are often many unused copper pairs in the telecom cable. Those extra pairs can be pressed into service to bring in multiple T1 lines. A process called bonding combines the bandwidth of those lines into one larger pipe. Bonding 2 T1 lines gives you 3 Mbps, 4 lines are good for 6 Mbps and 8 lines boost that to 12 Mbps.

That’s about the best you can do with T1 service. If you need more bandwidth, your next best bet is DS3, another longstanding telecom service. It offers 45 Mbps. DS3 is fairly common in most business areas, but it no longer strictly a copper wireline service. Most of the distance between the central office and your location is covered by fiber optic lines. The DS3 rides on this fiber until it is terminated at your building. If suitable fiber is available, great. Otherwise you are out of luck.

A new technology has been developed to bridge the gap between T1 lines and dedicated fiber optic connections. It’s called Ethernet over Copper or EoC. This technology uses the same twisted pair copper telco wiring as T1, but supercharges the bandwidth. The way it does this is by using a more advanced digital modulation technique with special terminal equipment at both ends of the connection.

Ethernet over Copper has caught on so fast that it is now the preferred bandwidth solution for low to mid level line speeds. Entry level is typically 3 Mbps, twice the bandwidth of a T1 line for about the same monthly cost. Many companies are now moving to 10 Mbps EoC to support higher business bandwidth demands. The cost of 10 Mbps EoC is only a fraction of what you’d pay for 10 Mbps bonded T1.

An even bigger advantage of Ethernet over Copper is that it can support higher speeds than 10 Mbps. If 10 Mbps isn’t enough, you can often move up to 15 or 20 Mbps. Another desirable speed level is 45 Mbps. This is the same bandwidth as a DS3 connection but without any fiber needed to deliver the signal.

Two competitive carriers are now announcing even higher speed service levels using EoC technology. Integra Telecom has debuted 60 Mbps symmetrical Ethernet over Copper service. That’s 60 Mbps in both the upload and download directions. This service can be provided up to 2,500 feet from the central office that terminates the copper bundle. This is enough to reach over 400,000 businesses.

The technical tradeoff for speed is distance when you employ EoC technology. The higher the line speed, the closer you have to be to the CO and the termination equipment. T1 doesn’t have this distance limitation but is limited to 1.5 Mbps per T1 line.

XO Communications has upped the capability of Ethernet over Copper connections even further. Their newest level is 100 Mbps. This compares favorably with the 155 Mbps bandwidth of the lowest available SONET fiber optic speed, a commonly used fiber service.

Ethernet over Copper is now an established and widely available connectivity service with speeds ranging from 3 to 100 Mbps. It’s certainly a viable replacement for T1 or bonded T1 lines. It also makes sense for companies that need higher bandwidths but can’t wait for their buildings to be lit for fiber. In some cases, the 50 or 100 Mbps line speeds are all they really need and the upgrade to fiber can be delayed until sometime in the future.

Is your business bandwidth limited or do you have an interest in cutting costs on your monthly telecom expense? If so, you should get the latest competitive prices on Ethernet over Copper bandwidth services.

Private Networking With Wavelength Services

There comes a time in the growth of a company when standard telecom services just won’t get it done anymore. This is when the IT department starts contemplating buying or renting dark fiber to get the bandwidth, latency and control they need. There’s another alternative that should be considered, however. That’s managed wavelength services.

What’s a wavelength? It’s one color or lambda on a fiber optic strand. That’s right, fiber optic lines have more than one light beam running through them. Each color represents a different wavelength or frequency of laser light. Because they are different colors, these light beams will mix within the optical fiber strand but one will not interfere with another. It’s like they are completely different pairs of wires in a copper bundle or channels on a cable system.

Why have multiple wavelengths? It’s a matter of efficiency. The cost of the equipment to transmit and receive multiple lambdas is far less than the cost to trench or fly hundreds or thousands of miles of fiber optic cable. Each cable has multiple strands. Each strand has multiple wavelengths. Because of this, each fiber installation has massive bandwidth capability available for commercial use.

The technology that makes wavelengths possible is called DWDM or Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing. The “dense” designation means that many wavelengths are loaded onto the fiber with close spacing between them. DWDM terminal equipment must have precise and stable control of the grid of light wavelengths on the fiber. There is an ITU (International Telecommunications Union) standard for this so that equipment is common for the industry. There can be as many as 160 channels or wavelengths, all in the infrared C and L bands, on each fiber strand.

What carriers who own fiber assets are doing is offering entire wavelengths for lease to companies that need high levels of bandwidth. Integra Telecom is a good example of a company offering wavelength services on their metropolitan and long haul fiber optic network. One of the nice features of wavelengths is that you can pick your protocol. Integra offers traditional SONET Interface options of 2.5 Gbps and 10 Gbps. You can also get Ethernet Interface options of 1 GigE and 10 GigE.

What Integra is offering is called managed wavelength services. That differs from dark fiber, where you are responsible for all the terminal equipment on each end of the fiber, or unmanaged wavelengths where the carrier simply feeds a wavelength with the signals and perhaps interface modules that you supply. A managed solution means that Integra is responsible for providing the terminal equipment and monitoring the network 24/7 with surveillance and network alarms from their Network Operations Center (NOC).

What you get is a highly reliable, high bandwidth, low latency point to point optical wavelength service for long haul or metropolitan connections. Integra operates a 5,000 mile high speed long haul network with metro services in many major cities of the Western United States and connections to Chicago, New York City, Ashburn, VA, and Dallas. Within the 35 markets across 11 Western states, they operate a 3,000 mile metro access network that includes more than 1900 fiber-fed buildings. If your business is located in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah or Washington, you can benefit from the Integra best-in-class fiber optic network, including wavelength services.

What types of businesses are ideal for wavelength services? Companies needing business continuity and disaster recovery solutions, Ethernet transport and optical storage connectivity or data storage connectivity. If you have more than one data center, chances are you need the “big pipes” that wavelengths can provide.

Can your business do better using wavelengths than what you have now for telecom services? Get competitive quotes for managed wavelength services from Integra and other high performance competitive carriers to see for yourself.



Note: Image of light spectrum from prisms courtesy of Marcellus Wallace on Wikimedia Commons.

Hosted SharePoint For Content and Collaboration

Microsoft SharePoint is popular with large corporations for content management, document management and collaboration. Could small and medium size companies benefit from the productivity improvements possible with office productivity systems like SharePoint? You bet they could, if only there was a way to use these advanced automation tools without having to invest in a major IT infrastructure expansion...

You’re in luck! Microsoft SharePoint 2010 is now available as a hosted solution through Integra Telecom. This is cloud computing scaled appropriately so that it also works for small and mid-size companies. Using Integra as your cloud service provider for SharePoint has a double advantage. You have access to their robust data center and computing platform and you also have dedicated high performance connectivity through the Integra fiber optic network. They offer everything from T1 lines through SONET OC48, Ethernet fiber optic services, and MPLS & VPLS network connections to serve multiple business locations.

Don’t discount the value of the connection network. Some companies are finding to their dismay that moving their IT operations to the cloud has a hidden “gotcha.” They failed to consider the effect of moving the majority of their traffic from the LAN to the WAN and wound up with a reliable but slow and unresponsive system. By having a single provider for your cloud services and connectivity, you have a single point contact to ensure that MAN, WAN and cloud are compatible.

Hosted SharePoint, itself, is a real-time application, call it SaaS or Software as a Service, that boosts employee productivity through ease of document management and collaboration. It consists of six integrated functions or capabilities. These include Sites, Communities, Content, Search, Insights and Composites.

Sites refers to web sites. With SharePoint 2010, you can create web sites quickly and easily without having to become an accomplished designer. These can be either internal or external web sites, with multiple sites managed from a single location. Share your documents with colleagues, publish information to customers and manage projects with partners.

Communities are groups formed around teams, projects, clients, locations, departments, and so on. They are based on collaboration within the group through social media features.

Content is your central library. There is where files, documents and general information is located. SharePoint makes it easy to find and manage all this information with a massive, smart search engine. You can access and modify content with a web browser, client application like Microsoft Office or a smartphone.

The Search capability can be tailored depending on who is doing the searching. Some content is reserved for internal use. Other content is available for clients. Still more is intended for the general public.

Insights is your business intelligence function. It integrates data and generates reports that give you, well, insights on how your business is running and where the trouble spots and opportunities lie.

Composites is for extending and customizing SharePoint. If you have a need or desire to go beyond what’s offered off-the-shelf, then you can use SharePoint Designer or Microsoft Visual Studio to create your own business solutions customized to your particular environment.

You can expand the capabilities of SharePoint with hosted Microsoft Exchange to store documents online, protect files, run blogs and wikis, and manage projects. Running everything in the cloud means you can scale resources to meet your needs without capital investment or lengthy approval and procurement cycles.

Do you have that nagging feeling that your business would benefit from the automation and productivity boosts offered by SharePoint and like the idea of paying as you go versus making a large capital outlay, then check out pricing and options for Hosted Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and high performance connectivity from cloud service and networking providers like Integra Telecom.

Microsoft Communication In The Integra Cloud

There’s no doubt that business communication is getting more sophisticated. A multi-line telephone and a FAX machine might have sufficed years ago. Now, email is so last century. If you want to be on top of the productivity curve, you need have collaboration and unified communications in your tool set.

Sounds great, but how are you set up to support all the latest business communication services? Larger enterprises have dedicated staff to handle hardware, software, mobility, VPNs and everything else needed to support their electronic communication needs. Small and medium size companies aren’t so flush. If they can afford the cost of the servers and software packages, they may well need to depend on outside consultants to get everything working together and fight fires as they pop up. Otherwise, it’s get by as best you can. Seems like there ought to be a better way.

The cloud may well be that better way. The idea of cloud communications is that all the intricacies involved in multi-media electronic communication is hidden from the user. The provider takes care of the servers, the software, the maintenance, the integration, the setup and the troubleshooting. As a user, you do just that: You use the service. When you have trouble or need some extra feature, you call the service provider and they take care of it for you. Because they specialize in the cloud services they are offering, they have the resources to handle everything efficiently. Instead of investing and operating, you simply use and pay by the month for each user you have on-board.

A powerful combination of service and provider is Microsoft Communication Services and Integra Telecom. You are no doubt familiar with Microsoft software such as Outlook, Exchange, Lync and SharePoint. Are you aware that these services have been integrated with Microsoft Office Communications Server as a bundled cloud-based resource? Have a look at this video for a quick introduction:



Have you been toying with the idea of Hosted Microsoft Exchange or Hosted Outlook because you really don’t want to run your own data center? Why not go with the whole package of Microsoft Communication Services and leap to the cutting edge in one fell swoop? By the time you factor in what it will cost you to do everything this suite of communication services does in a piecemeal fashion, you might as well go with the cloud service and a solid provider.

How do you find a good provider? Start with Integra Telecom. They are more than just a cloud service provider. They are actually a competitive telecommunications carrier that has expanded their domain to include cloud services as well as connectivity. With Integra you have one point of contact and all the expertise to ensure that the services work correctly, plus assurance that you are efficiently connected at all times.

Integra runs an 11 state fiber optic network with 1,900 fiber fed buildings and many more connected via Ethernet over Copper. They provide high bandwidth services to customers in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah and Washington. They offer a complete range of telecom services that includes business phone lines and trunks, hosted PBX services, private networking including MPLS VPN and private line services, high speed Internet access, server colocation and cloud-based collaboration and messaging.

Have you reached the limits of what you can afford to purchase or support, yet need the productivity improvements that come with the latest unified communications services? You may find that cloud hosted solutions can give you far more for your dollar than doing it all yourself. Before you give up in frustration, get a quick quote for cloud communications services scaled to the size of your business. You may be able to afford a lot more than you think.

Ethernet Networks Interconnect in Arizona

Ethernet is rapidly becoming the new metropolitan and wide area network protocol of choice. Indications are that IP networks transporting standard Ethernet services will eventually supplant the century old Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). What’s holding that back is that many Ethernet service providers are a diverse mix of incumbent and competitive carriers with service footprints that only cover a given metro area or regional group of states. E-NNI is the technology that is linking them all together.

E-NNI is an Ethernet Network to Network Interface. Network interfacing is the cross-connection that allows different networks to exchange traffic. Each has to advertise the other’s routes so that users on either network can reach destinations on the other network as easily as they do on their own network. The result is an interconnected network with a service footprint the size of both networks combined.

An excellent example of an Ethernet to Ethernet network connection is taking place in the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area. Integra Telecom and Saddleback Communications are connecting their fiber networks using enterprise-class Carrier Ethernet technology so that they can easily exchange data at high transmission rates.

Saddleback Communications is an Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier (ILEC) serving the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community (SRPMIC) in the Phoenix metropolitan area, bordered by Scottsdale, Mesa, Tempe and Fountain Hills. Their core network infrastructure is comprised of multiple fiber optic rings and two Class 5 Soft Switch Central Offices. Unlike most commercial areas, 100% of the commercial developments on the Pima corridor of the SRPMIC are fed with both fiber optic and copper facility connections.

Saddleback’s business services include dedicated Ethernet Internet access, Ethernet transport services and private line services. Their BusinessLAN Ethernet Transport transparently connects business locations via native Ethernet at speeds from 5 Mbps to 1000 Mbps (GigE) with scalability in 5 Mbps or 100 Mbps over the same interface.

What Integra Telecom brings to the table is an extensive fiber optic network that serves 11 Western states, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah and Washington. Their 5,000 mile long haul network is one of the largest in the U.S., complemented by a 3,000 route mile (160,000 fiber miles) metropolitan area network that serves 200 business communities including 1,700 fiber-fed buildings. Integra is the 4th largest Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC) in the United States.

Integra offers Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) standardized Ethernet services that include Ethernet Private Line (EPL) and Ethernet Virtual Private Line (EVPL), as well as a layer 2 configuration for high performance Wide Area Networks (WANs). Class of Service (CoS) technology makes voice/data/video converged networks possible so that sensitive real time packets aren’t overwhelmed by less critical but more numerous data packets.

Both Saddleback and Integra operate high performance fiber optic networks and both serve a wide range of customers, including corporate clients that need highly reliable high bandwidth Ethernet services. By interconnecting their networks for Ethernet to Ethernet transport, they can offer companies on both networks the opportunity to connect as if they are working under a common “digital roof.”

Does your business need reliable high bandwidth network connection service? Carrier Ethernet now spans the nation and the world with network to network interconnections. Get competitive pricing for fiber optic Ethernet network services now. You may be surprised by what is available.



Note: Map of Arizona courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Managed Security Moves To The Cloud

When cloud services are discussed, it’s most often Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service, or Software as a Service. You can now add Security as a Service to the list. Integra is offering a suite of Cloud Security Services, starting with Cloud Firewall Service.

Managed security is attractive to many companies that don’t have full time IT staff or don’t want to get into the acquisition and maintenance of their own security appliances. Instead, they buy this service by the month with the provider installing a security device on the premises. Security in the cloud is a bit different. Not only do you not have to make the capital investment in security hardware or maintain it, but the hardware is invisible to you as well.

Integra Telecom is uniquely positioned to provide this type of cloud security because they are both a facilities based telecom carrier as well as a cloud services provider. Most providers are in one business or the other. The advantage of this dual role becomes apparent when you see just how the security is being accomplished. Integra builds a firewall between the public Internet and your network. What’s different is that they do this off in the cloud, not at the edge of your LAN. A major advantage is that you can also include your VPN or VPNs and MPLS network connections between business locations behind that firewall.

The actual security component is a Palo Alto Networks Enterprise Firewall. Their solution is a rack mounted appliance that supports firewall throughput up to 10 Gbps with up to 4,000,000 sessions and 20,000 SSL VPN users. You could buy one of these and install it in your own data center, but you can gain the benefit without the management headaches by letting Integra do this for you in their cloud.

Integra’s Cloud Firewall Service goes beyond mere port blocking for network protection. Their solution is application aware so it can block unauthorized traffic based on policies for a particular application. Application visibility, control and reporting is part of the standard level of service designed for smaller organizations. The mid-level “plus” service adds intrusion detection and protection, URL filtering, policy customization, report customization, and an optional VPN client for remote users. The premium level of Cloud Firewall Service adds network anti-virus and anti-spyware protection along with file and data content filtering.

Like many cloud services, this firewall service offers the opportunity to increase the protection of your network while reducing the total cost of ownership. Is it any wonder that the cloud is moving in to envelop just about every business? There are also advantages for smaller companies to assure compliance with legal and regulatory requirements without having to staff up a separate security department.

When considering managed security, it is well worth your while to take a systems approach that treats network security as tightly integrated with public and private network connections. Integra is well versed and equipped to provide connectivity as simple as dedicated Internet access and complex as private multi-site converged voice, video and data networks.

Could your business benefit from managed network security in the cloud? Why not get competitive pricing and options for cloud services that make sense for the requirements of your particular organization? Then see if doing it yourself still makes more sense.