Encrypted Wavelengths Offer High Bandwidth and High Security

By: John Shepler

With data security becoming more and more of an issue, every weak link in the IT infrastructure needs to be identified and hardened. If your network extends beyond your premises, like most every one does, those MAN and WAN connections represent a vulnerability that has to be addressed. A relatively new service does that now for very high bandwidth users. It’s called Wavelength Encryption or Encrypted Waves.

Security of Dedicated Lines
The vulnerability of your connection can vary dramatically, depending on how your packets are getting from point A to point B. Back when the connectivity standard was a point to point T1 line, you had pretty decent security. A single line consisting of 2 twisted pair was dedicated to your use only. It was “nailed up”, as they say, meaning it was as close to a hard wire between two points that you could get. Only when you discontinued service was the connection “torn down” and the resources assigned to someone else.

Fiber Optic WAN and Multi-Tenant Networks
That’s not the way it is today. Unless you own a complete dark fiber run and light it yourself, you are sharing facilities with some and probably many other users. Note that you aren’t sharing bandwidth itself if you order a dedicated line. It’s just that high bandwidth fiber, be it SONET or Carrier Ethernet, is multiplexed to transport multiple streams of data and yours is simply stripped off the stream when it is delivered to your door.

It gets even more complicated in MPLS networks. These networks are multi-tenant by nature. The operator routes your data and that of other customers on the same core network and hands yours and only yours to you at the network edge.

Then, there's the Internet...
The security issues of the Internet need hardly be mentioned. You would have a hard time building a network that is less secure. But you don’t use the Internet for anything critical, right? If you have SDN connections over Cable Broadband or 4G Cellular, you probably are using the Internet for transport without realizing it.

Making the Insecure Secure
The answer to security jitters is encryption. On public networks, these encrypted data streams are said to be going through a “tunnel”. You can do the encryption and decryption yourself, or you can have your managed service provider take care of it.

Who Needs Encrypted Waves?
When it comes to high demand, high stakes uses, like medical data within hospital groups, there is a need for very high bandwidth channels that also have high security built-in. Level 3 Communications is at the frontier of a relatively new high performance connection called encrypted waves. These are based on the same wavelengths that are generated by coarse (CWDM) or dense (DWDM) wavelength division multiplexing. Each wavelength or set of wavelengths can deliver 10 to 100 Gbps of dedicated bandwidth. The multiplexing refers to multiple wavelengths, called colors or Lambdas, traveling over the same fiber strand. While leasing an entire wavelength does improve your security, encrypting that wavelength really adds security.

It’s simple in concept. The new wrinkle is that Level 3 is providing you with the wavelength already encrypted and protocol agnostic. Send whatever you want down the channel without having to worry about the nuts and bolts of securing that data stream.

Encrypted Wave Services Available Now
Here’s what Level 3’s Encrypted Wavelength service offers. The encryption is AES-256, the gold standard. You handle key management through your separate MyLevel3 portal that has two form factor authentication access. Ethernet speeds are supported at 10, 40 and 100 Gbps. SONET / SDH 10 Gbps is supported, as is OTU 2, 2e, 3 and 4. FICON and Fiber Channel (metro only) is supported at 8, 10 and 16 Gbps SAN. Low latency routes are optionally available for the highest performance.

Do you have high bandwidth needs that also require high security? You should take a closer look at what encrypted wavelength services have to offer. You may also be interested in dark fiber solutions. See what bandwidth options are available for your business locations now.

New Metro Networks Serving South America

Demand for high speed Metropolitan Area Networks (MAN) is on the rise in South America as well as worldwide. To help meet this need, Level 3 Communications, a major global carrier, is launching new high speed metro networks in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Bogota, Columbia. These complement existing metro networks in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

A significant design feature of the new networks is expandable capacity. The initial installation offers a total capacity of 80 x 40 Gbps for up to 40 Gigabits per second to end customers. These networks have ability to expand to 80 x 100 Gbps when demand is sufficient to justify it.

Who needs this much bandwidth? Data centers, carrier points of presence, financial centers, Internet service providers, and others who require high speed low latency bandwidth to conduct business. Bandwidth demands worldwide are being pushed up by video content delivery, cloud computing, big data, disaster recovery and electronic medical records.

Level 3 already has an extensive worldwide backbone network that serves many locations in South America including Brazil, Columbia, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Venezuela. Undersea fiber links South America to North America, and from there to Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.

High speed international bandwidth is important to transnational corporations and any business buying or selling across national borders. These days, that includes most every business that isn’t strictly local. In some cases, high speed dedicated Internet service is all that is required to communicate worldwide. In addition to Internet browsing and general email, VPN or Virtual Private Network connections can be set up to provide security through encryption that establishes private “tunnels” through the public Internet.

Many companies now have multiple business locations worldwide. When Internet VPN doesn’t offer the needed performance, private line and network solutions make sense. These can be point to point dedicated private lines delivering T1, E1, DS3, SONET or Ethernet bandwidth. Another popular solution is using MPLS networks to provide the bulk of the transport and simply connecting at each location with “last mile” line services.

MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching networks offer the reach and economy of using large worldwide networks without the performance and security limitations of the public Internet. MPLS networks are privately owned and operated, serving only their paying customers. They are carefully engineered to ensure that each customer has the bandwidth committed to, along with low latency, jitter and packet loss. In some cases, the network allows customers to burst above their bandwidth commitment as long as extra capacity is available.

MPLS networks are known as inherently VPN even without encryption. This stems from the label switching technology that is used to direct packets from source to destination. IP addressing isn’t used. Instead, each packed is encapsulated in a wrapper known as a tag or label. These labels provide the routing information while traversing the network. This allows the network to establish classes of service to ensure the performance of latency sensitivity applications such as VoIP telephony or video conferencing. The proprietary nature of the labels also serve as an extra security feature to thwart intrusions to the already private network.

When to MPLS networks make sense? Certainly if you have more than two locations that need to be tied together, especially if those locations are in different countries. Many times, though, using an MPLS network connection offers a cost savings on long haul connections versus a dedicated private line. It depends on your bandwidth requirements and the distances involved.

Do you have a need for connectivity to South America or other destinations worldwide? If so, check options and prices on international bandwidth solutions from Level 3 and other major global carriers.


Note: Map of South America courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Ethernet Connects Businesses Throughout Latin America

Over the last few years, Carrier Ethernet services have become the choice of many, many businesses for Dedicated Internet Access (DIA), private line point to point connections, last mile access to MPLS networks and meshed any-to-any connections to link multiple business sites in the United States. Now that capability is rolling out worldwide. As an example, Level 3, a major international carrier, has won an award from the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) for their service to the Caribbean and Latin America.

International voice and data services have been available for decades. We’re well aware of the extensive undersea fiber optic cables that link continents. What’s different now is a change of protocol and the availability of new services for companies and organizations worldwide.

The reason that Ethernet is displacing earlier protocols is that IP packets are now the dominant packaging for electronic communication. Nearly all Local Area Networks (LANs) are Ethernet based. The Internet, the largest and most connected set of networks, is based on routing IP or Internet Protocol packets. So why wouldn’t you simply extend the networks you have now using an Ethernet protocol?

The only thing stopping a faster switch over to IP based core networks is legacy. The massive investment in infrastructure over the last century isn’t going to go away all at once. That infrastructure was largely built by the telephone companies for their own use and is based on Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) telco standards such as T1, DS3 and SONET.

Fortunately, it isn’t necessary to rip out all the existing telecom equipment that works perfectly well just to have Ethernet services available. Carrier Ethernet can run over IP core networks or TDM networks. Ethernet over T1 (EoDS1) works well as a last mile connection to join MPLS networks or as a point to point private line. The existing T1 infrastructure is so extensive that it can be brought into nearly any business, even in rural areas. Ethernet over DS3 (EoDS3) up the bandwidth to 45 Mbps. Ethernet over SONET picks up at 155 Mbps and goes to at least 10 Gbps, with some connections available at 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps.

One factor that has hastened the adoption of Carrier Ethernet is the existence of an industry standards group called the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF). This group serves to establish and maintain the standards that all manufacturers and Ethernet service providers will use to enter the Ethernet marketplace. One standard of note is the E-NNI or Ethernet Network to Network Interface. This provides a predictable and carrier-agnostic way for two networks to exchange traffic. As they do this, each carrier expands the reach of its own services. It is no longer necessary to lay fiber around the world to connect to international destinations. Carriers can create peering arrangements through E-NNIs to gain access to the markets that they don’t directly serve.

Level 3’s award winning project involved one of the world’s largest banking and financial services companies. The Ethernet business solution supported this customer’s connectivity throughout Brazil. More and more large and medium size corporations are looking at Ethernet services to interconnect their various locations worldwide. Smaller companies are finding that the cost advantages and easy connectivity of Ethernet makes it well worthwhile to switch services at contract renewal time for for new installations.

Does your large, medium or small organization need better connectivity at lower prices than what you’ve traditionally paid for legacy telecom services? If so, check pricing and features of Carrier Ethernet services now.



Note: Map of Latin America image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Earth to Cloud Network Security Solutions

IT professionals understand that their corporate networks need to be secured. They also realize that cloud computing services at remote data centers need enterprise level security. But what about everything in-between? Once your LAN is extended to a remote location, your vulnerability may go up.

Level 3 Communications has addressed this situation with a comprehensive global security solutions suite they describe as “Earth to Cloud.” The idea is to provide multi-layered protection that keeps everything in the loop... and out of the reach of those who would do you harm.

The key to the success of this approach is a single provider for connectivity and network security. Level 3 is well positioned to be that provider. Their core network spans the globe with a variety of access options. Many content providers take advantage of the Level 3 content delivery network (CDN) to bypass the performance and security challenged Internet and put their content on a fast lane to their customers.

So, what is included in this comprehensive security package? Major elements include Secure Access Services, Managed Security Services, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation, Security Consulting Services, vulnerability scanning combined with DDoS blocking and familiar network edge elements such as anti-virus, anti-spam, and intrusion detection.

Sounds good, but how much support can you count on if you suddenly come under attack. In the case of Level 3, you’ll have 24/7/365 access to their security experts located in four redundant security operations centers (SOCs).

Managed security services are becoming more and more popular among businesses large and small. Part of this is a change in IT philosophy from doing everything in-house to outsourcing many services to companies that specialize in those activities. Cloud computing really started this mass migration when virtualization offered the opportunity to pay only for the resources you are actually using while reserving the opportunity to rapidly scale those resources up and down to match the flow of business in near real time.

Cloud services have expanded way beyond mere renting of processor cycles. They now include complete software solutions or Software as a Service (SaaS), development platforms or Platform as a Service (PaaS) and the computing and storage hardware known as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

Telephony has moved to the cloud as well. VoIP technology allows the network to substitute for dedicated telephone lines. It also means the PBX switching system can be located anywhere, including the cloud. Hosted PBX, as it is called, is another money saver for businesses large and small.

Cloud computing, hosted VoIP and network services such as WAN management and security have created a comprehensive set of solutions for companies that want to be more agile in the face of uncertain economic times. Could this approach be of benefit to your company? Check out cloud and network solutions tailored to your specific needs.

Virtual Computing, Storage and Security for Latin America

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and managed hosting have experienced rapid adoption by enterprise users in North America and Europe. Level 3 Communications is now offering a new set of data center services to enterprises in Latin America.

The countries of Latin America span North America (Mexico), Central America, the Caribbean and the continent of South America. This is an area of over 8 million square miles and 14% of the land surface of the globe that’s home to a population of almost 600 million. It’s also a region where major economic sectors include, banking, agriculture, manufacturing, commodities and tourism.

Level 3 Communications has a major commitment in Latin America, with operations in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, Mexico, Venezuela, the United States (Florida) and the Caribbean region. They already have 15 world-class data centers located in the main business centers of Latin America. The connectivity is in place to support communications in-country, between countries and to the rest of the global community. Options include SDH Private Line, Wavelengths and Ethernet Wavelengths, Ethernet Transport, IP VPN, high speed Internet Protocol and more.

What’s exciting now is the opportunity for virtualized services in the cloud to replace local data center operations. Cloud computing, storage and security have the advantages of being quickly scaled, and paid for as an operating rather than capital expense.

Level 3 Dynamic Enterprise Computing offers virtual computing, storage and security elements with dynamic pricing based on resource consumption. Resource availability is assured, but not limited. You can rapidly scale, or burst, to cover unforeseen business activities. All the while, you are paying for what you actually use, rather than having to provision resources that may sit idle just to ensure that you have enough online to keep up with demand peaks.

Level 3 is a major force in cloud computing with the advantage of also being a major worldwide telecom carrier. You have a choice of public, private or hybrid cloud arrangements. You also have the connectivity you need. You can connect to the public cloud through Level 3’s core Internet backbone. For a private cloud, Level 3 offers MPLS, private line and wavelength connections.

One thing you might want to consider is converging your network to support both voice and data. This has the advantage of eliminating the redundant telephone network, but the options it opens up go far beyond simple wiring. Once you’ve substituted IP phones for the analog desk sets you have now, your voice communications will all take place over your local network and the WAN connections you have in place with branch offices and other remote business locations. This lets you bypass the telephone industry toll charges for interoffice calls.

The biggest change of all comes when you abandon the large and expensive in-house PBX telephone system in favor of a hosted PBX solution in the cloud. It works like a virtual server, only for voice communications. The service provider takes care of trunk lines to the public telephone system. All other calls stay on-net. You also have the option of integrating your smartphones and other mobile devices into a unified communications system. You’ll have the same services available in the field as you do in the office.

Do you do business in Latin America, North America or elsewhere in the world and need the high performance connectivity and data center services that help make an enterprise successful? If so, have a look at the suites of cloud computing and networking services available from Level 3 Communications and other top rate service providers.



Note: Map of Latin America image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Better Network Connectivity Into France

Many, many companies are now global organizations. Even if your business isn’t a true multinational, chances are that you do at least some business beyond the borders of the United States. Connections to Europe are especially important, as the European Union represents an enormous pool of both producers and consumers. Within the EU, one of the most important destinations is France.

Well, there’s good news if you need to connect to French enterprises. One the major worldwide telecommunication carriers, Level 3 Communications, recently announced and expansion of resources, infrastructure and services for enterprise customers in France. A key piece in this initiative is expanded network reach and access from increased deployment of carrier Points of Presence (POPs) in Paris and the surrounding area. They are also extending core network capabilities in and around Lille, Lyon, and Toulouse. This gives businesses in these metro areas more access to the Level 3 network for connection to global markets.

In addition to the expansion of network connectivity, Level 3 is now offering enterprise services that include converged voice, VPN, high performing websites, content distribution networks (CDN), managed DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) mitigation for network security, and collaboration services to the expanded markets in France.

Paris has long been a major on-net fiber optic hub for Level 3, including Metropolitan Area Networks (MAN) and a colocation data center. It is connected across the Atlantic by undersea landing sites on the West coast, at Saint-Brieuc and Lannion. On the other side of the pond, these fiber cables terminate in the New York and New Jersey area. This is important for companies needing low latency connections for very high performance applications like automated financial trading.

In addition to France, Level 3 Communications offers extensive network connectivity in 23 countries of Europe, including Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The service portfolio includes metro and long haul services for transport, data, voice, Internet, content and media delivery.

What kind of international connectivity are you seeking? At the low end, the classic private lines are T1 in the United States running at 1.5 Mbps and E1 in Europe running at 2 Mbps. Other than the speed difference, these are essentially the same technology standard and easily interfaced. Higher bandwidths within the TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) family of standards include DS3 at 45 Mbps and SONET/SDH fiber optic services that range from OC-3 at 155 Mbps on up to OC-192 at 10 Gbps or perhaps OC-768 at 40 Gbps. Newer technology services are provided by Ethernet over Copper (EoC) and Ethernet over Fiber (EoF) based on Carrier Ethernet standards. Ethernet connectivity options are highly scalable and available up to 10 Gbps.

MPLS networks are becoming the international network service of choice for companies needing to link more than two locations. MPLS can support most any desired protocol and provide you with meshed network connectivity to connect your multiple sites in an any-to-any communications arrangement. A specialized service running on MPLS is VPLS or Virtual Private LAN Service. This gives you layer 2 Ethernet connectivity to create an international bridged network that joins your LANs worldwide.

Does your business need to connect to France or other locations in Europe, The Middle Ease, Africa Asia Pacific, Latin America or North America from the United States? If so, get pricing and features for international network connectivity from Level 3 and other high performance service providers.




Note: Map of France courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Why Colocate To An Omaha Data Center

When big companies think of colocation data centers, they’re probably thinking of 60 Hudson St in New York City or One Wilshire in Los Angeles, California. Where else should they be thinking? Why, Omaha, Nebraska, of course.

Omaha? What’s in Omaha? Well, billionaire Warren Buffett, the “Oracle of Omaha”, and his legendary Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate holding company. That’s just one of five Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Omaha. In fact, Forbes magazine has called Omaha the nation’s number one “Best-Bang-For-The-Buck City.” More to the data center point, Omaha is home to the Scott Data Center complex.

Scott Data Center offers over 110,000 square feet of data storage facilities. It has been continually operating since 2006 and is currently just one of two multi-tenant data centers in the United States to achieve Tier III Certification for both design and construction. This certification was awarded by the Uptime Institute, an industry organization focused on improving data center performance and efficiency. They award tier certifications in 26 different countries. Tier III facilities support critical business applications.

One of the newest tenants is Level 3 Communications, the worldwide telecommunications carrier for voice, data, and video. Level 3 is deploying a new enterprise-grade data center within the Scott Data Center complex. It will join more than 350 Level 3 data center facilities in North America, Europe and Latin America. You can select the level of service you require, including the Premier Elite facilities, such as the new Level 3 Omaha data center. All of these data centers are connected via Level 3’s 165,000 intercity, metro and subsea fiber route miles that provide low latency access to corporate assets around the world.

But, still, why Omaha? The fact that Omaha is located in the center of the United States is an asset when it comes to disaster prevention and recovery. If you are insistent on avoiding a situation that wipes out your headquarters building and takes all of your IT facilities with it, you need redundant data centers that are geographically diverse. Keeping everything in one building is efficient, but it is risky for floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and fires. A separate facility across town is one step better. A facility someplace else in the country that doesn’t have the same risks is better yet.

Omaha isn’t subject to earthquakes and certainly not likely to be a victim of any coastal tsunamis. The Scott Data center design protects it from any potential seismic activity. It is elevated out of the flood plain to avoid any issues with an overflowing Missouri River. Yes, tornadoes can be an issue in the MidWest, but the Scott facility can withstand 250+ mph winds and the uplift of tornado level winds.

There are also financial advantages to locating in Omaha. Electrical power is available and costs well below the national average. You know that data centers are power intensive, both for equipment operation and cooling. There are also pricing and tax incentives that make Omaha an attractive place to build an expensive and sophisticated facility like a data center.

By the way, Scott Data Center meets the security requirements of the Department of Defense. That includes a 24/7 security desk, gated perimeter, dual authentication, surveillance cameras, barrier wall, man-traps, biometrics, generator backup and redundant cooling. Think your equipment and data will be safe? You think right.

Are you thinking about relocating your data center or establishing a complementary or alternative colocation facility to current coastal locations? Get features and pricing on colocation data center facilities available in Omaha and nationwide to meet your business needs.



Photo of Omaha skyline courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Can You Save 50% With Unified Communications?

Have you noticed that your telephone expenses have grown right along with the expansion of your organization? Of course. In fact, they’ve gone up like crazy over the years. Have you seriously questioned why?

Why? Because you have more people on the telephone, of course. That’s the obvious answer, but it may be so obvious that you don’t look further. The fact is that not all telephone charges are created equal. Some are difficult to avoid and a necessary part of doing business. Others can be eliminated through the use of better technology. The technology that works this magic is called unified communications. Let’s take a look at a quick animation that explains everything...



Here are some important points made in the video and how they apply to you. Unified communications is all about merging your voice, data and video networks into one unified network. Many businesses can save money by doing this, even if they are smaller companies and even if they have only one location. Not mentioned is the hosted PBX solution that works especially well for smaller companies that don’t have a large IT staff.

The real cost cutting comes from consolidating the communications across multiple business locations. Some companies grow linearly with optimization every step of the way. Most don’t. If any of your growth has been from mergers and acquisitions, you can be pretty certain that your telephone network is not anywhere close to optimized. That’s probably true to some extent even if all you’ve done is add branch offices.

Why? Because the tendency is to have a phone system at each location. That means a stand-along PBX with trunks to the local phone company and different bills from different providers at each location. Then there’s the matter of communication among locations and back to headquarters. Chances are that this is done by making long distance phone calls and incurring long distance phone charges. Ding-ding-ding. You can just hear those telcos ringing the registers.

What’s better optimized? Moving your voice communications, i.e. telephone calls, from their own individual networks to your main corporate network that interconnects all locations. You need it for data anyway. Why not let voice packets piggyback on the same network?

What happens with this arrangement is that all your internal calls are free of charge. The phone company can’t charge you if you don’t use their network. So, stay off the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) until you absolutely have to use it. That’s for outside calls to other companies or your own customers.

By letting a major competitive carrier, like Level 3, be your network and phone service provider, you can get by with a single IP PBX located somewhere on the network to route outside calls through one set of PSTN trunk lines. Level 3 has the advantage of being licensed as a competitive phone company in all 50 states, so they can get you local numbers wherever you want to establish a presence.

Is it really possible to save 50% of your phone bill by using unified communications? It can be that lucrative. How much can your operation save? Get competitive quotes for unified communications SIP trunking for all your business locations and see just how far your eyes bug out at the answer.

Transforming the WAN Into The Smart WAN

We often think of WAN connections as dumb pipes. Perhaps even the “series of tubes” that Senator Ted Stevens envisioned as a model for the Internet. Data goes in one end and comes out the other. Does it need to be any more sophisticated than that?

These days it truly does. The move from predominately in-house data centers and simple file transfers over the LAN to cloud hosted systems, VoIP telephony and video content has changed what we need from the WAN. Level 3 calls this the Smart WAN. This short animated video illustrates the difference...



Clearly, if you’re sitting in line at the bank drive-through, watching people load their transactions into those plastic carriers and shooting them through the vacuum tubes to the tellers, and start thinking, “Hmmm. That’s not a bad model for my WAN network,” you could be in serious need of a Smart WAN upgrade.

It all starts with a smart pipe to replace dumb pipe technology. Instead of just cramming everything down the same conduit without regard to content, you need put some method into the madness. That means CoS or Class of Service. CoS recognizes that some packets are more sensitive than others to vagaries of the network. Most sensitive is anything operating two-way in real time. VoIP telephony will fail when it encounters the least blockage or delay in the WAN. Video conferencing has a similar sensitivity to network characteristics.

What CoS does is assign different classes or priorities to different packet streams. Brute force file transfers go to the bottom of the list. It is important that the files get from point A to point B intact, but a little delay here and there won’t make any difference. The same is true for email and most messaging. Interactive business applications are a step higher. If you are interacting with SaaS in the cloud and expect it be as responsive as if it were running on the servers down the hall, your network has to make these interactions transparent. Bandwidth constrictions and latency can raise employee frustrations to a fever pitch, if not kill productivity completely.

Enterprise VoIP on converged IP networks offers major cost reductions and added productivity features for businesses that can make it work. The Hosted PBX model adds another layer of sensitivity because the WAN gets involved in handling voice traffic as well as data. Latency, jitter and packet loss wreak havoc with voice communications. Just because convergence works on your LAN doesn’t mean that sending the same traffic down a dumb pipe will give an equally good result.

Now consider having the same set of services expecting the same quality for multiple business locations, including headquarters, branch offices, retail locations, warehouses and factories. Clearly, some intelligence needs to be injected to the WAN network to ensure that every location has the same connectivity and quality of service as every other.

Has your company grown beyond the capability of simple, dumb WAN connections to ensure quality and reliability of service? If so, it’s time to consider a Smart WAN upgrade for your network operations. You may even find that this improved performance comes at equal or less cost that what you have now.

Handle Big Data With Big Bandwidth

We are said to be entering the age of big data. Just what is big data, why is it different than any other type of data, and what are the ramifications of having big data on our networks?

Big data is exactly what it sounds like. It refers to datasets that are so huge that they overwhelm normal database management tools. We’re not talking megabytes or gigabytes here. Those are easily handled by off the shelf tools. Big data is terabytes, petabytes, exabytes and zettabytes. If you don’t know what those are, just know that each named step up in size represents an increase of 1,000 times.

Where is all this big data coming from? It’s not the sort of thing you generate typing on your PC. Big data comes from computer generated simulations, process and financial modeling, research projects and sensor data acquisition and processing. Computer animation and video processing in high definition and beyond can spit out terabytes faster than you know what to do with them.

What is all this big data going to do to your network, especially your WAN network? Check out this video from Level 3 Communications to get a feel for what’s on the way and how you can deal with it...



As you can see, WAN bandwidth is likely to be the big choke point for big data. It’s because we’re used to dealing with relatively small files and modest applications such as video conferencing and VoIP. We're also used to handling incremental growth in bandwidth needs by scaling up bandwidth services we are already using.

Big data is going to change that. Instead of incremental change, we’re talking step changes. Bonding more T1 lines or moving up to a DS3 service isn’t going to do the trick. You’ll need fiber, and likely a fiber optic solution that has a lot of room for growth.

Fortunately, there a lot more fiber options available today than even a short while ago. These include Ethernet over Fiber to 1 Gbps, 10 Gbps and even 40 Gbps. Carrier core networks are now moving to 100 Gbps as quickly as they can. Other options include wavelength services over Dense Wavelength Division Modulation (DWDM) at up to 10 Gbps per wavelength and dark fiber that you can light yourself.

Are you feeling the pinch of too little WAN bandwidth right now, or see it coming in the near future? If so, this is a good time to check out your options from carriers that have the capacity to support your big data network needs. Get competitive fiber optic bandwidth options and prices for whatever capacity your business needs.

Level 3 Network Connections Into Mexico

If you do business in Mexico or are a multi-national company with a strong presence in Mexico, Level 3 Communications has good news for you. They’ve launched a major initiative to bring high bandwidth packet network services to business locations within Mexico.

Level 3 sees a business opportunity in Mexico that may be missed by carriers other than the incumbent, Telemex. it helps greatly that Level 3 recently acquired international bandwidth competitor Global Crossing, which already had significant network connectivity in Latin America. One of those assets is a 3,484 km fiber optic ring that connects Monterrey, Mexico City, Mazatlan and Guadalajara. From there it connects to the Pan-American Crossing submarine cable that runs from South America and Central America to the United States. There’s another connection at Tijuana, with a landing at Grover Beach near San Luis Obispo to connect to the California backbone and trans-Pacific submarine cables.

The Mexico ring is capable of providing Terabits per second of bandwidth capacity for transporting voice, data and multimedia services. Among the network services that Level 3 is now offering in Mexico are EtherSphere, Managed IP VPN, High Speed IP, Dedicated Internet Access, Wavelength Services and Private Line Service.

EtherSphere is a worldwide Ethernet-based WAN service, connecting Ethernet transport services from 150 locations that support 26 cities around the globe. EtherSphere offers Virtual Private LAN services (VPLS) specifically intended for companies with geographically dispersed business locations. VPLS is a mesh network technology running on the Level 3 MPLS (Multi Protocol Label Switching) core network. It’s also called Transparent LAN Service. The idea is to connect multiple Ethernet LANs together as if they are one bridged network serving all locations.

EtherSphere is a comprehensive VPLS service that supports six Classes of Services to prioritize traffic and enable network convergence on a large scale. You can easily scale bandwidth in various increments between 1 Mbps and 2 Gbps, although the system does support bandwidth above 2 Gbps. You have a choice of service types through the network that include multipoint to multipoint (mesh), point to multipoint (hub and spoke) and point to point connectivity similar to Ethernet private lines.

Level 3’s IP VPN service runs on their converged MPLS backbone rather than the public Internet. This gives you six-level Class of Service (CoS) for high performance voice and video transport as well as data connections. Level 3 owns more than 100,000 fiber miles connecting 450 markets in more than 45 countries. Your last mile connection can be anything from T1 through Gigabit Ethernet.

Level 3 is one of the world’s most connected Internet Service Providers. Their Dedicated Internet Access offers IP port speeds from DS-1 (1.5 Mbps) to 10 Gigabit Ethernet. High bandwidth users can opt for High Speed IP (HSIP), a dedicated wholesale high speed Internet service.

For the ultimate in high bandwidth service, Level 3 Wavelength service offers high performance, low latency fiber optic wavelength services over their high speed DWDM network. Available speeds are GigE, 2.5 Gbps, 10 Gbps, 10 GigE and 40 Gbps. You can order both protected and unprotected point to point configurations. Native Fiber Channel and FICON protocols are supported.

Level 3 Private Line services are available worldwide in over 45 countries. These connections are delivered over proven SONET and SDH architectures that are protocol independent. You can transport IP, voice, data and video as Layer 2 or Layer 3 traffic.

Do you have connectivity needs that include service to locations within Mexico or other international destinations from the United States? If so, get prices, features and availability for International fiber optic network services.



Note: Map of Mexico courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Fiber Optic Direct Connections To The Cloud

The Internet offers an extensive and cost effective means to access services in the cloud. What it doesn’t offer is consistent low latency, low jitter and high bandwidth performance. It was never intended to. The Internet’s claim to fame is universal connectivity. If your business processes in the cloud suffer from inconsistency or have become sluggish compared to when they were hosted onsite, you could benefit from a direct connection to the cloud.

One of the most popular cloud services is the Amazon AWS Cloud Computing Platform. Leveraging the enormous computing facilities owned by Amazon, users can pay as they go for application hosting, Web hosting, backup and storage, content delivery, enterprise IT applications and scalable database solutions. This nearly unlimited resource set can place a considerable load on typical bandwidth links used by corporations. It gets worse as you move more and more of your business processes to the cloud while leaving your employees in-place, often thousands of miles away.

The Internet works just fine for e-commerce, with thousands or millions of individual customers accessing centralized servers from their homes and offices. It’s also well suited for accessing company resources by remote workers and traveling employees. Where it starts to stumble is when you expect consistent real-time performance between the cloud and your data center or user base similar to what you get from hardwired connections in-house. The closest thing to your LAN is a high performance direct connection.

There are a couple of ways to achieve that direct connection. Amazon is currently offering direct connection to its cloud at Equinix’s Ashburn, VA and Silicon Valley, CA colocation facilities. Equinix provides colocation facilities for over 4,000 enterprises, cloud, content and financial companies through its network of colo centers. If you happen to have your equipment in their Ashburn or Silicon Valley facility, a simple cross connect is all that’s needed to hook your servers to Amazon’s.

If you are not collocated in an Equinix data center, you’ll need a WAN connection. AWS has two approved carriers that can make the connection. One is Level 3 Communications, a leading international fiber-based carrier with services to over 125 international markets. The other is AboveNet, Inc., another leading fiber optic carrier with 2.3 million metro fiber miles and connections in place to more than 450 data centers. AboveNet is offering connections to the AWS Direct Connect service at 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps.

AWS Direct Connect network service works withe the same AWS services that you would otherwise access over the Internet. These include Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), and Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC). You can use AWS Direct Connect to create multiple logical connections between your network and Amazon VPC. You can even establish multiple VPCs over this connection if you have enough bandwidth available.

AWS Direct Connect is flexible enough to scale your connectivity as your needs change. Each connection offers 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps connectivity and you can add multiple connections to increase capacity. Amazon suggests that this approach is better than using VPN hardware that frequently can’t support data transfer rates above 4 Gbps.

Have you already moved to the cloud or anticipate such a move and are concerned that your current connectivity can’t get the job done? Perhaps a direct connection can give you the performance that you need. Get pricing and bandwidth options for fiber optic cloud connections now.

Why The Smart WAN Beats A Dumb Pipe

The basic building block in constructing Wide Area Networks has been the “dumb pipe.” This refers to a bandwidth connection between point A and point B. There’s nothing stupid about these connections. They do one thing and one thing well. They get your packets from place to place with no effort on your part. The reason you’d want something smarter is that IT needs are getting more sophisticated. Either you add more smarts within your organization or gain this capability as a service.

Level 3 Communications, a major domestic and international fiber network carrier, has seen the transition from simple to high performance networking requirements and is launching what they call the “Smart WAN.” This is a bundled solution that includes all of the bandwidth services you traditionally associate with the WAN, plus managed services to optimally tie everything together.

Let’s take a look at some of the services you find in this bundle and how they can benefit your organization.

You’ll want a connection to the Internet, of course. This is a dedicated bandwidth line that can range from a T1 or Ethernet over Copper connection on the low end on up to Gigabit Ethernet or 10 GigE for high performance needs. Level 3 can make whatever connection you need, including video transport and content delivery outside but in parallel with the Internet.

Nobody in their right mind would simply plug an Internet port into their company network these days. All the benefits of worldwide connectivity bring along all the problems with bad actors scattered around the globe. Some want to bring down your organization just for fun. Others want to steal your intellectual property for sale to a competitor. Level 3 offers managed security services to keep the threats at bay. These include managed firewalls, intrusion detection and protection, and IPSEC secure remote access. You’ll need this if you employ remote workers or employees that need access to the company LAN while traveling.

Beyond the Internet, you may want a VPN to tie together your business locations in other cities, states and countries. Level 3 has an extensive MPLS network in place that can support any needed protocol. Some of the standard services include EVPL or Ethernet Virtual Private Line, a Layer 2 Ethernet service that replaces long haul dedicated point to point lines and can also provide point to multipoint data service. IP VPN service offers any to any, full mesh WAN connections plus managed routing to simplify your support needs. There’s also VPLS or Virtual Private LAN Service that lets you interconnect your far-flung LANs in to a single company network. WAN optimization ensures that you are making best use of the bandwidth you have without overpaying for unnecessary higher level line services.

You can go out and procure any of these services separately, of course. That’s been the traditional approach to building business WAN networks on an ad-hoc basis. When all you need is a phone line and broadband Internet access, it’s no big deal to handle it yourself. What’s different lately is that companies are embracing cloud services that need high performance secure connections, perhaps shared among many different locations. This puts an additional demand on IT resources, at a time when increasing staff is difficult to impossible.

Level 3’s Smart WAN looks to offload the burden of setting up and running your WAN for maximum effectiveness. In addition to bandwidth and managed services, Level 3 can provide architecture, design, project management, monitoring & measurement and field service.

Are you finding that your WAN needs are getting hard to handle and perhaps costing more than you think they should? Perhaps you need a “smarter” WAN approach. Get competitive quotes for managed WAN services and see if you can get higher network performance at better prices than what you are doing now.

More Ultra Low Latency Bandwidth For Europe

If you’ve harbored any hope that the speed of business would slow down to a leisurely pace, consider one of the hottest new technology offerings. It’s the ultra low latency WAN network connection. If you are involved in the financial services industry, you need to keep a keen eye on what your competitors are implementing in the way of higher bandwidth/lower latency connections. If you are involved in any other business field, expect that latency will be important to your business sometime soon.

Level 3 Communications is a leader in the field of low latency transport services. Once of their niche services is fiber optic lines optimized to reduce latency between financial centers. They’ve just added London to Madrid and Frankfort to Madrid routes with circuit speeds up to 10 Gbps. These join the existing routes of Chicago to Washington DC, Chicago to New York, New York to London, and London to Frankfurt. The newly added European connections will improve latency on the Madrid to New York and Madrid to Chicago routes also.

Why is low latency such a hot topic as opposed to, say, bandwidth? Actually both latency and bandwidth are important characteristics of long haul fiber optic networks. What’s given latency the spotlight in recent years is the rise of high speed financial trading. This is a process where computers generate market trades far faster than humans are capable of. With thousands of trades executing in milliseconds, even very small moves in a market can result in huge profits or losses. If your trading platform is running even a fraction of a second behind your competitor’s, you could be on the losing end of those trades.

Latency can be minimized, but not eliminated. That’s because latency is nothing more than the length of time that elapses between when a signal is sent and when it is received. The fastest that an optical or electrical signal can propagate is set by the speed of light at 186,000 miles per second or 300,000 kilometers per second. If two locations are separated by 186 miles, you’ll never get below 1 millisecond of latency. A 1,860 mile route can do no better than 10 milliseconds. However, it can be much, much worse.

What sort of characteristics can slow down a speeding laser pulse? The mere fact that the data modulated light beam is traveling through a glass fiber rather than the vacuum of space will slow it down. According to Level 3, the propagation delay in optical networks is approximately 4.9 microseconds per kilometer. In free space the delay would be about 3.3 microseconds. That 4.9 microseconds can be degraded further by electronics that can’t keep up with the speed of the traffic. In other words, any bandwidth limitation will manifest itself as an additional delay as packets queue up in a buffer chip. Even with the fastest electronics, fiber routes must be as straight as possible. Any meandering through the countryside or to pick up other cities adds fiber length and, thus, latency.

Global trading has been increasing in volume at the rate of 30 to 50% annually. It is expected that automated trading will soon account for fully two-thirds of equity trades. Level 3 Communications has carved out a position as a key provider of high bandwidth ultra low latency connections to serve the financial industry. Unprotected Ethernet Private Line services are available at 100 Mbps. Unprotected Wavelength services are available at 1 GigE, 2.5 Gbps, 10 Gbps, 10 GigE and 40 Gbps. They can also provide customized global latency solutions for specific physical routing and diversity.

Are you in need of ultra low latency connections or merely low latency for time sensitive applications? If so, you should check out the availability and pricing of latency sensitive high bandwidth connections for your needs.



Note: Map of Spain graphic courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.