Ethernet and Colocation For Texas Business

The Lone Star State is a land of big spaces, big business, big data and the need for big bandwidth. Alpheus is a carrier with both Texas roots and a focus on the needs of Texas business. Let’s take a look at the services they offer to meet the needs of companies in banking & finance, energy, government, healthcare, information technology, legal and media sectors, among others.

With a Network Operations Center (NOC) in Houston, the Alpheus fiber optic network connects major cities in Texas. Their Texas regional network connects to Dallas, Fort Worth, Waco, Bryan, Austin, San Antonio, Laredo, McAllen, Harlingen, Corpus Christi, Victoria and Houston. Core network reliability exceeds 99.999% or “five nines,” the gold standard for telecommunications.

Alpheus serves both enterprises and carriers within their Texas footprint. Network services include Dedicated Internet Access (DIA), Metro Ethernet, Private Line and Managed Wavelength. One of the newer services is Ethernet-Over-Local-Area-Network (E-LAN). This is a Carrier Ethernet service standardized by the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) and used to bridge multiple local area networks so that they act as one much larger network.

If you’ve been trying to tie business locations together with traditional telecom services, you know that there is a transition between your network edge and the telco providers network. Usually this means a protocol conversion and specialized interface hardware. What E-LAN does is eliminate that transition by keeping everything in the Ethernet protocol from end to end. A simpler service called Ethernet Line or E-LINE provides a dedicated point to point Ethernet connection between two locations as a replacement for private line services such as T1, DS3 and OC3.

Alpheus Carrier Solutions include Metro transport with rates ranging from DS-1 (1.5 Mbps) to OC-192 (10 Gbps), Texas Long Haul for connecting from Texas Metro markets to virtually anywhere in North America at the same speeds as Metro Transport, Metrolocity Peering to cross-connect with other service providers with bandwidth speeds from DS-1 to OC-12 (622 Mbps), Ethernet services to 10 Gbps, and 2.5 Gbps managed wavelengths. Ethernet interfaces include 10/100 Mbps FastE, 1000 Mbps GigE and 10 Gbps Ethernet. Scalability is flexible from 1 Mbps on up to 10 Gbps to match user requirements.

Alpheus Waves and Gigabit Ethernet services offer 3 levels of protection. Load sharing consists of two interfaces with two physically diverse unprotected connections. Your provide the protection switching. Network protection is configured to protect against network outages but not client issues. Unprotected services are just that. There is no network or client protection.

Alpheus operates four Data Centers with colocation services available. These are 777 Walker (2 Shell Plaza) in Houston, 1905 E. 6th Street in Austin, 2323 Bryan in Dallas and 307 & 309 West 7th St. in Fort Worth. The Austin and Houston data centers are SAS 70 Type II Audio Certified for critical operations that need to meet that requirement.

Colocation solutions include full and half cabinets, private cages, relay racks, flexible power configurations and the Alpheus Tier 1 regional fiber optic network with connections to over 75 carriers. “Remote Hands” service is a way to let Alpheus engineers perform simple troubleshooting and maintenance tasks, plus lend a hand when emergencies pop up. Remote Hands include server & equipment reboot, equipment and card testing, secure cabling connections and removal of customer equipment.

Is your business located in Texas and in need of connectivity or colocation services? There are excellent options available to you for a simple inquiry. Get competitive quotes from Alpheus and other top tier carriers for bandwidth services and equipment colocation and see what works best for your situation.



Note: Map of Texas courtesy of WikimediaCommons.

Metro Ethernet over Copper

You’ve heard that Metro Ethernet service offers exceptionally good pricing and higher bandwidths than you can get from your copper-based T1 lines. But those huge savings can vaporize once you get the estimates for fiber optic construction. Is there any way you can participate in the cost advantages of Ethernet service without having to come up with a large amount of capital funding?

You bet there is. It’s a technology that combines the advantages of Ethernet connection services with the availability of twisted pair copper cabling. The service you want to ask for is “Metro Ethernet over Copper”.

Just what is Metro Ethernet over Copper and how does it differ from what’s generically called Metro Ethernet?

Actually, the similarities are many and the differences are few. Metro Ethernet over Copper, also called Ethernet over Copper or EoC, is more about the delivery mechanism or physical network than the service itself. Ethernet for the Wide Area Network (WAN) is Ethernet regardless of how it is provisioned. Metro Ethernet refers to Ethernet services that connect your business location to a carrier’s point of presence or an extension of your Local Area Network (LAN) to other locations within a city or suburban area. The copper reference means that multiple twisted pair copper is used to connect your building instead of brining in a fiber optic cable.

Where does this copper come from and why is it cheaper than fiber? The copper is already there. It’s the same multiple pair binder cable that the telephone company installed when the building was constructed. These cables generally have many small gauge copper wires twisted together in pairs. Each pair can carry one analog telephone conversation or be used to transport a digital signal. Metro Ethernet service providers install a special piece of termination equipment at your site to connect the copper pairs they’ll be using. The more pairs they an employ, the higher the bandwidth they can provide.

How much Ethernet bandwidth can you expect with copper-based service? It depends a lot on how close you are to an on-network fiber lit building or a carrier office. The digital signal degrades with distance. Generally, you can get anywhere from 10 Mbps to 50 Mbps Ethernet service over copper. That’s a lot more than T1 lines at 1.5 Mbps and as much bandwidth as most small and medium size businesses need.

Are you interested in finding out if you can get high bandwidth, low cost Ethernet service? If so, check Metro Ethernet over Copper prices and availability for your location now. You may be surprised by how much you can get for your telecom dollar.