ENLAN Spans The Nation

The idea of having all your company locations on a single extended LAN is one that is gaining traction. Why continue to manage a nightmare of dozens or hundreds of connections to link an array of branch offices or retail locations when a single managed network can handles this for you?

TW Telecom calls this service ENLAN for Extended Native LAN. It provides users with a fast reliable and secure network that extends to encompass what is normally considered the WAN or Wide Area Network territory.

The WAN has traditionally been the jurisdiction of the telecom companies. If you needed to leave your own property, you were forced to convert your traffic to a telco standard to travel on their network and then convert back at the remote location. No more. A combination of Ethernet and MPLS is making the WAN invisible. It all now looks like one big LAN.

The way this works is that the core of the extended LAN is the TW Telecom MPLS Cloud. As a multi-protocol network, the MPLS Cloud can transport whatever digital format is required. That includes voice, video and data packets as well as traditional TDM services.

Ethernet is a perfect fit with MPLS networks. TW Telecom lets you keep everything in the Ethernet protocol, just like it is on your LAN. Rather than going through a speed bump when you have to exit your edge router and enter the WAN, you simply hook up to an Ethernet connection that leaves your facility. When this Ethernet access network reaches the MPLS Cloud it is assigned to one or more L2 Tunnels where it is transported to its intended destination. From there another Ethernet access connection takes it to the remote location.

Note that all connections are Ethernet and the transport takes place through layer 2 tunnels. That allows you to keep a switched Ethernet protocol linking all your desired locations. It looks just like one big LAN, even though you are traversing a MPLS cloud network on the way from point to point.

Being able to stay at the layer 2 switching level is one advantage of ENLAN. Another is that the Ethernet access connections and MPLS tunnel bandwidth is scalable. You can order bandwidths from 2 Mbps up through 1 Gbps. Your access is through IEEE standard 10/100/1000/10000 Mbps Ethernet interfaces. With scalability you can get the bandwidth you need to support your operations right now and then easily upgrade as needed.

Is ENLAN or Ethernet / MPLS networking right for your business or organization. To find out quickly and easily, simply request a quick quote for the bandwidth and locations you need to support. Then see if you can justify not saving a small fortune on your network services.

A New Edge On Private IP Networks

So many companies have multiple business locations today, that IP network options have become cheaper and more available than ever before. A major player in this space is New Edge Networks, headquartered in Vancouver, Washington. New Edge specialized in private IP-based WANs (Wide Area Networks) that don’t use the public Internet. That gives them the edge on quality and performance in linking multiple business locations.

Why not the Internet? The largest network in the word certainly has proliferated over the last few decades. It connects just about everyone, everywhere on Earth at reasonable connection costs. That’s its advantage as a general purpose communications network and its limitation as a serious business network. Anyone and everyone can and do send just about anything and everything there is through the Internet. With network neutrality mandated, your critical transaction data gets exactly the same treatment as somebody on the other side of the globe Tweeting what they had for lunch.

The need for dependable performance, security and availability is what makes private networks attractive. Private networks are just that. They are privately owned and operated. There is no public access. Being a private entity, they are free to establish classes of service to guarantee that latency sensitive applications like voice and video conferencing have the priority to ensure low jitter and latency for optimum performance. New Edge, for instance offers six classes of service (CoS) on their network with service level agreements for each.

Strict control of network parameters makes possible the long desired goal of network convergence. Convergence merges separate data, voice and video networks into one single network that supports them all. Enterprise VoIP offers productivity features and cost savings, especially on a converged network. But voice is fragile, and your telephone calls can quickly turn to garbled mush on a “best effort” network like the Internet. Video conferencing, including telepresence services, also has great productivity and cost saving value. Like voice, real-time two-way video is fragile and breaks up with the slightest provocation. You need a solid network to support these high performance communication tools.

MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching private networks, a specialty of New Edge Networks, give your business the opportunity to connect multiple locations on one fully meshed private network. Each location only needs an access network connection to the MPLS “cloud” network. New Edge offers a variety of connection options that include T1 lines, Ethernet, wireless, and even DSL.

Since most small and midsize businesses don’t have large full-time IT staffs to manage wide area network services, New Edge Networks offers full network management services, including the critical LAN/WAN interconnection. This lets companies concentrate on their core business activities while knowing that their wide area network is being well taken care of.

Does your company have more than a couple of business locations? If so, private IP networks may work to your advantage. Find out how you can improve performance and perhaps save money at the same time with high value MPLS network services from New Edge and other top tier service providers.