Dark Wavelength vs Dark Fiber for 10 GigE

By: John Shepler

Organizations that require extremely high MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) bandwidth or need to run a multitude of protocols have looked to dark fiber as a technical solution. Dark fiber is still a good choice for the most demanding applications, but there is a competitive service you should also be aware of. It’s called dark wavelength or dark lambda. Let’s look at what each has to offer and how they compare with the more common point to point and MPLS network connections.

What is a Dark Wavelength?
We think of wavelengths as colors of light, not something dark. A wavelength with no color would essentially be turned “off” and would be the same as a dark fiber, right?

Not really. The difference is that dark fiber is nothing but the glass fiber strand itself. There is no equipment attached. Somebody, and that somebody is likely you, has to install terminal equipment at each end and turn on one or more laser beams to “light” the fiber. Sometimes "managed" dark fiber is available, where the carrier will provide the terminal equipment but you'll still have exclusive use of the fiber strand.

With a dark wavelength, this has already been done. It’s not a fiber with a single color laser at one end and a detector at the other. Instead, the equipment that has been installed is DWDM or Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing gear. What DWDM does is send multiple non-interfering laser beams down the same fiber strand to create what amount to additional channels equivalent to multiplying the number of fiber strands available.

With DWDM there is still only a single physical glass strand. The multiplexing or creating of multiple virtual fibers out of one is based on the fact that glass is transparent to more than a single color or wavelength of light. You can easily see this with a common prism. Shine white light in one side and bands of color appear on the other side. The prism shows that a number of separate colors can travel through the glass without interfering or canceling each other out.

Say you want to create a dozen different wavelengths on a single fiber. You’ll need a DWDM system that contains a dozen laser transmitters, each tuned to a slightly different wavelength or color. In practice, all the colors are in the infrared part of the spectrum and not visible colors. Nonetheless, they are referred to as colors, wavelengths or lambdas (the Greek letter used to denote wavelength).

Why go to all this trouble and expense? Simple: To multiply the capacity of a fiber cable. There are two ways to get more bandwidth from a fiber bundle. Either add more strands or use more of the inherent capacity of each strand. Adding strands means running an additional cable along the same route or replacing the cable you have with a larger diameter one that has more of the hair-thin glass fibers. Both options are incredibly expensive. Getting more from the infrastructure you already have is very attractive by comparison.

This is why DWDM is so popular. Why pull many miles of new cable at a cost of millions of dollars when you can upgrade your terminal equipment for a fraction of the cost? DWDM is a well established and standardized technology. Why not let technology save you the cost and delays involved in upgrading the physical cable?

The Dark Wavelength vs Dark Fiber Tradeoff
If you lease a dark fiber strand, you have exclusive use of that piece of glass. You have the security of knowing that only your traffic will travel over that strand. There will be other customers using other fiber strands, but there is a physical separation between you and them.

Dark fiber also gives you the flexibility of using any protocol you want and even setting up multiple protocols on the same fiber. How do you do that? By installing DWDM equipment of your own to create multiple independent wavelengths.

You can see how this can get to be expensive fast. A simple one wavelength fiber strand is one thing. You can probably get 10 Gbps bandwidth on that strand with simple equipment. DWDM is another matter. Now you need a fairly sophisticated piece of equipment at each end that you have to install, pay for and manage. For that, you can create multiple independent channels of, say, 10 Gbps each.

Instead, why not let somebody else bear that expense? That’s the basis of dark wavelength services. Someone, the carrier or service provider, has already lit the fiber with DWDM equipment that they own and operate. However, they don’t need all of the wavelength capacity themselves. If there is only enough traffic to use half the wavelengths available, the others can be leased to help pay for the system.

A dark wavelength is simply an unused wavelength on an existing fiber optic system. To be truly dark, the laser for that wavelength may be turned off or there is no card in the system for that particular channel. Either way, once someone agrees to lease the wavelength, service can be turned up fairly quickly. After all, the fiber and the DWDM chassis are already in place and operating.

Why Choose Dark Wavelength?
One reason to opt for dark wavelength service is that it may be all that is available. The owner of the fiber network may not be willing to lease an entire strand. That’s especially true if they have already lit their strands and are using some of the wavelengths.

Another attraction of dark wavelengths is equipment cost and maintenance. In theory, a provider could require you to purchase the channel cards that are compatible with their DWDM system and light the wavelength yourself. More likely, they will handle that themselves. You may or may not be asked to pay a one-time installation fee that includes the cost of the wavelength cards.

If the common carrier turns up the wavelength and maintains the system, you will have exclusive use of that particular wavelength at a bandwidth of 1, 5 or 10 Gbps. Sometimes wavelengths can be aggregated to create higher bandwidths up to 100 Gbps. Either way, only your traffic will be carried on that wavelength as whatever protocol you choose. Other customers will have their traffic on other wavelengths, but the different color beams will not interact.

Other Options
Not everyone needs or wants dark fiber or wavelength service. Many businesses only need 100 Mbps or Gigabit service. Both traditional SONET or the newer Carrier Ethernet protocols are generally available as point to point connections, ports to much larger MPLS optical networks, or Dedicated Internet Access.

What bandwidth option is best for your applications? Why not discuss your needs and get competitive quotes from multiple carriers for a range of services that can meet your needs. Then you can compare costs and benefits and pick the high bandwidth fiber optic service that best meeds your requirements.


Note: Spectrum of light wavelengths though a prism animation courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. 

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.

20 to 100 Mbps Metro Ethernet

Companies often lease telecom lines for dedicated access to the Internet or for Wide Area Network (WAN) connections. These WAN links can span cities, states or even international borders. But what if all you want to do is connect two or more locations in the same town? What you need then is a MAN or Metropolitan Area Network.

The newest type of metropolitan network is called Metropolitan Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or Metro E. What’s exciting about Metro Ethernet is the wide range of bandwidth levels available, the ease and speed of increasing bandwidth as needed, the availability of new standardized services, easy LAN interfacing and the cost advantage of Ethernet compared to traditional telecom services.

A metro area network is exactly what it sounds like. It is a network that covers a particular city or metropolitan area consisting of the city, suburbs and any important industrial or office parks. Metro networks are careful to be accessible by businesses that are likely users of their services. This is strictly a commercial service, not for residential or home office users.

Unlike the Internet, there is no public access to Metro Ethernet Networks (MEN). They are privately operated by a network service provider who grants access only to paying customers. Even those customers can only access their own data. The network operator provides enough resources so that customers are unaware there is anyone else using the network.

What type of services can you get? Two of the most popular are E-Line and E-LAN. Both are standards established by the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF), an industry trade group. An big advantage of standardization is that you know what you are ordering regardless of service provider or hardware implementation.

E-Line or Ethernet Line service is the familiar point to point dedicated line connection. A EVC or Ethernet Virtual Connection is established between the UNIs (User Network Interfaces) at two locations. Your Ethernet packets travel back and forth on this EVC. It’s virtual because you don’t have a dedicated set of wires between the locations for your use only. Instead, your EVC shares the Metro Ethernet Network with other user’s EVCs.

The other popular service is E-LAN or Ethernet LAN service. This is a multi-point networking service that connects 3 or more business locations in a meshed network. This replaces propriety corporate networks created using multiple T1 lines or other dedicated bandwidth connections in a star network arrangement.

What makes E-Line and E-LAN so popular? First, you can get the connectivity you want at a lower cost than using older telecom technologies. Second, it’s Ethernet just like the Ethernet you run on your company LAN. For MAN applications, this is called Carrier Ethernet. Because it’s Ethernet, your connection to the MAN is via a standard copper or fiber Ethernet connector. There are no special interface cards needed. By tying your locations together via Carrier Ethernet, you can choose to use layer 2 switching to create a bridged LAN that includes all of the networks at your various locations around town.

Carrier Ethernet is designed to be easily scalable. You can get connections using copper technology called EoC for Ethernet over Copper in the range of 2 Mbps on up to about 45 Mbps. Fiber technology called EoF for Ethernet over Fiber covers you from 10 Mbps up to 10 Gbps. This includes the popular range of 20 to 100 Mbps that many companies desire. Note that if you have a 100 Mbps Ethernet Port installed, you can start off with 20 Mbps service and scale up to 100 Mbps with only a phone call to your service provider. If you have a Gigabit Ethernet Port installed, you can get any bandwidth up to 1,000 Mbps.

Could your company benefit from 20 to 100 Mbps Metro Ethernet? If so check prices and services for Metro Ethernet Networks available for your business locations.



Note: Photo of city lights courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

Finding The 100 Megabit Connection

Fractional Gigabit connections are becoming more and more common, as demands for video content delivery, electronic medical image transmission and cloud connections increase. A popular service level now is 100 Mbps, the 100 Megabit connection. Let’s have a look at what’s available to deliver this bandwidth level to you.

The legacy high performance telecom service at the 100 Mbps level is OC-3. This is a fiber optic bandwidth service delivered over SONET, the Synchronous Optical NETwork. OC-3 bandwidth is actually 155 Mbps. The next step higher is OC-12 at 622 Mbps and the previous step is DS3 at 45 Mbps. DS3 is often delivered over an OC-3 connection, multiplexed with other services.

SONET fiber optic services are popular because they were first to be deployed by the telecommunications carriers. The TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) technology is directly compatible with T-Carrier services such as T1 and T3. Many Metropolitan Area Networks (MAN) and nationwide fiber optic backbones run on SONET rings that offer a redundant path with automatic failover. This protection scheme gives SONET a high reliability as well as very high bandwidth capability.

A newer competing fiber optic service is Carrier Ethernet. Unlike SONET which needs an interface card to do the protocol conversion between the telecom standard and network standard, Carrier Ethernet is directly compatible with the switched Ethernet running on your LAN. You know that 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet is a standard LAN speed. It is also a standard for Carrier Ethernet. With Fast Ethernet on both your LAN and WAN, there is no “speed” bump when files are transfered to other locations over the WAN connection.

Ethernet has its standard speed levels of 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps, 1000 Mbps and 10,000 Mbps, but it is also highly scalable. If you want to move up or down the SONET digital hierarchy, the jumps between bandwidth levels are large. Ethernet can be set up to deliver just about any bandwidth level up to the maximum speed of the installed port. For instance, if you have a 100 Mbps Ethernet port installed, you can easily get 20, 50, 75 or 100 Mbps as well as other levels in-between. Increasing bandwidth is often no more difficult than placing a phone call to your service provider. The change can be made in as little as a few hours. That doesn’t work with SONET. The provider will need to roll a truck to replace the interface card in their edge router before you can use the higher speed.

If you expect to need higher bandwidths, it probably makes sense to have a 1 Gbps Ethernet port installed. You can start off at 100 or 200 Mbps and then scale-up as your bandwidth needs increase. The advantage of this is that you only have to pay for the bandwidth level that you are actually using. You retain the option to quickly increase bandwidth when justified by increased business activity or additional needs.

What if there are no fiber networks nearby? In rare instances, it is possible to get 100 Mbps Ethernet over Copper. Eight pairs of twisted copper telco wire are used to deliver Fast Ethernet to business locations very near the central offices that have EoC equipment installed. This is most often the case in business districts of large metropolitan areas.

Another high bandwidth service available downtown in major metro areas is 100 Mbps fixed wireless service. This is a licensed line-of-site point to point microwave system with a small antenna installed on your building. Like Ethernet over Copper, high bandwidth fixed wireless has limited transmission range. It can be very useful if it is too expensive to provision fiber optic service across a major highway or a river.

There’s another 100 Mbps service that is suitable for businesses that can use a shared bandwidth asymmetrical Internet service. You typically get 100 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload and your bandwidth varies constantly. Even so, for undemanding tasks like email, web browsing, downloading video clips or providing a free WiFi hotspot for your customers, Cable business broadband may be just the answer. The cost is similar to a T1 line, making this option very affordable for businesses of all sizes.

Are you in need of new 100 Mbps bandwidth service or just wanting to check prices for your business location? Please take a minute and get free instant online price quotes for 100 Mbps business bandwidth services.



Note: Photo of night traffic courtesy of Pekka Tamminen on Wikimedia Commons.

600 Mbps Ethernet vs OC12 SONET

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MAN and MEN - Metropolitan Networking

When your local area network expands beyond the property that you own or lease, what you need is a MAN. That’s MAN as in Metropolitan Area Network. Let’s take a look at what the MAN is all about and how you use one or more to expand your company network.

The idea behind a metro network is that many offices, medical centers, manufacturers, governmental bodies and retailers have multiple locations within the same geographical area. Within a particular building or campus, you are free to install as much wiring as you want. But what happens when you need to get that connection across town?

The legacy answer is to lease point to point dedicated circuits from a telco provider. These can be T1 lines, DS3 for higher bandwidth or very expensive OC3 and above optical connections. Essentially, you create your own metropolitan networks from leased lines and routers that you install and manage.

It turns out that many, many businesses and organizations need this same service. This opens the opportunity for a metro network operator to install the necessary fiber optic cabling, add-drop multiplexers and other equipment to create a publicly available resource that meets the needs of most businesses in the area. By connecting to the MAN instead of building your own network, you can save considerable cost. You’ll also likely have additional resources at your disposal just in case your bandwidth needs suddenly increase.

Metro networks have more inherent security than the Internet in that there is no general public access. The residential users downloading movies and browsing the Internet or looking for mischief have no real need for the MAN and aren’t willing to pony up the price of a connection. Certainly, you have the ability to encrypt any packets you send through the MAN to improve security even further.

Many Metropolitan Area Networks are built from SONET rings, which are fiber optic networks organized as rings with many access points. Usually there are at least two fiber rings sending traffic in opposite directions. The idea is that if one strand fails, the other redundant strand will maintain the network. A ring arrangement is a good fit with most metro needs. The ring circles the business district and includes important industrial parks, hospital campuses, office complexes and the like.

The newest development is MEN as a specific type of MAN. MEN stands for Metropolitan Ethernet Network. This network is based on the Ethernet protocol, although it may be running on a SONET core network or a native IP network. As a user, you are able to get Ethernet service in the metro area.

What makes Ethernet so desirable? Metro Ethernet is based on standards established by the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) so that you know what to expect when you order a particular Ethernet service. There are two services of particular interest to most business users. The first is E-Line which is a private dedicated point to point connection between two locations. You use E-line the same way you’d use a T1 line, except that you have many more bandwidth options and the price per Mbps is often much lower than traditional telecom services.

The other service of note is E-LAN, a private LAN service. But you already have a LAN, right? Not like this one. E-LAN is a metro network version of the LAN. It connects the individual LANs at each of your metro locations to make one large bridged LAN connecting all of them in a layer 2 meshed network. It’s as if all those different buildings were really just different departments in the same building.

How do you connect to the MAN? Typical methods include T1 lines, DS3 and OC3 or OC12 fiber last mile connections. However, if you want to take advantage of Ethernet services like E-LAN, you’ll need EFM or Ethernet in the First Mile. You can use Ethernet over Copper for bandwidths from 1 to 100 Mbps. Higher speeds require Gigabit Ethernet or 10 GigE fiber optic service.

In some downtown areas, there is such as thing as a fixed wireless MAN. This is different from 3G and 4G cellular wireless intended for smartphones. Fixed wireless operates on private licensed frequencies with directional transmission from the service provider to all-weather terminal equipment mounted to the roof of each customer. High speeds, excellent security and fast installation characterize fixed wireless MAN.

What type of metro networking will work best for your business or organization? The best way to evaluate your choices is to get a list of available services and pricing for Metropolitan Area Networks serving your location.

Metropolitan Area Networks

We’re all familiar with LANs. Those are the local area networks used in nearly every business to interconnect computers, centralized storage, printers, wireless access points, WiFi hotspots, scanners and, increasingly, telephones and video equipment. When we want to connect to the outside world, we might think of a long haul or WAN connection to the Internet or distant business location. But there is another important type of network in-between the LAN and the WAN. That’s the MAN or Metropolitan Area Network.

The Metropolitan Area Network is an important service in its own right. For many companies, the only long-haul connections they may need are a dedicated broadband Internet and long distance telephone services. Most all of their traffic stays local. Not local as on the LAN, but geographically local. That means within the bounds of a city, suburbs and nearby locations.

This is where the term Metropolitan Area Network got its name. It’s a network that spans a given metropolitan area and not much further. You don’t find MAN services out in the countryside. Not that there aren’t important customers beyond the city limits, mind you. It’s just that MAN networks tend to be build upon fiber optic networks and very little fiber exits out in the boonies right now.

As you might suspect, the greatest concentration of MAN services will be found in business districts of major cities. That’s simply because the greatest population density and number of businesses are also found downtown and in the business districts of adjoining suburbs. Fiber optic cable construction and equipment are expensive. Service providers need lots of traffic from lots of customers to justify the expense of building out a MAN.

It’s possible to construct your own private MAN by ordering point to point lines between each of the locations you want to connect, or by establishing a star network with corporate headquarters at the center. Many companies buy MAN services instead because the costs are lower for a given bandwidth level. That makes sense, since the network infrastructure cost can be amortized over a large user base. A properly run MAN will give you the performance and security you require at a savings over creating your own private network.

How do service providers build a MAN? A classic approach is to construct a fiber optic SONET ring around the city, linking all the important office buildings, industrial parks, data centers and carrier hotels. SONET is the Synchronous Optical NETwork standard for legacy switched circuit telecom services. It features two lit fiber strands sending traffic in opposite directions for redundancy. If one fiber fails, the other picks up the load within 50 mSec.

Newer MAN services are build upon Carrier Ethernet or Metro Ethernet. The core network may still be running SONET or it may be an IP core network. Either way, the customer only sees an Ethernet interface. It may be an E-Line point to point connection or an E-LAN multipoint to multipoint connection. MPLS networks implemented as a MAN have the advantage of being able to handle nearly any type of traffic.

Downtown, you may also have the option of using a wireless MAN. These are based on fixed wireless transmissions between a carrier’s tower and radio equipment at each location served. These are short range services and require line of sight between buildings. If it happens to work out for you, wireless has the advantage of fast installation and low construction cost compared to bringing in fiber to locations not already lit.

Does your business need to communicate between two or more locations in town? If so, Metropolitan Area Networks are what you are looking for. Get prices and availability for now.



Note: Photo of New York City courtesy of I, Laslovarga on Wikimedia Commons.

You’ll Believe This MAN Can Fly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MAN Up

Is wimpy network performance your problem? Has productivity slowed to a crawl because zippy LAN performance is hobbled by too many users trying to get data in and out of the company through that neck of a funnel known as the WAN interface? Are you afraid to walk through the bullpens for fear of the angry stares and derisive comments about IT holding everybody back? If so, it's time to MAN up!

It's not that you need to grow a backbone... Actually it is. The frame relay or T1 connection that served you so well when most information was transmitted via paper, and the mail room served as a network router, has seen its glory days. The pace of activity and the volume of data flowing to customers, vendors and other company sites has tapped out these connections. A constant bandwidth of 1.5 Mbps might have seemed generous, even a bit wasteful, a decade or two ago. Now it's like connecting a soda straw of a WAN to a fire hose of a LAN. It will take a bigger MAN to do the job today.

The MAN for the job is the Ethernet MAN or Metropolitan Area Network. You might not be familiar with this MAN. The Ethernet MAN has come from obscurity to be the hottest ticket in town in only a few years. Ethernet MAN has taken on the incumbent SONET MAN and is winning over businesses left and right. You may not have wanted anything to do with SONET MAN. Incumbent telcos have had a lock on most SONET services and kept the pricing beyond what all the the largest organizations can afford. Ethernet MAN comes into town with two big competitive advantages from competitive carriers. One is Ethernet and the other is price.

Ethernet in point to point and multipoint metro networks makes the connection to your corporate LAN almost trivially easy. The outside line terminates in an Ethernet jack and you just plug-in your switch or router. There's no need to worry about protocol conversions or specialized terminal equipment. It really is Ethernet, just like you use internally.

Ethernet also offer dramatic cost reductions in many cases. SONET can provide dozens, hundreds, or thousands of Mbps. But can you afford it? With Ethernet, you'll most likely find that you can afford to upgrade from that 1.5 Mbps T1 to a 10 Mbps Ethernet connection. Perhaps you'll even be able to justify a 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet connection. That's over twice the bandwidth of DS3 service, but not twice the price. Maybe less, considerably less, than a single DS3 connection.

Need even more bandwidth? Gigabit Ethernet MAN is for you. Of course, you'll need a building that is "lit" for fiber optic service to get 1,000 Mbps. But not necessarily at the lower speeds. Many 10 Mbps connections are provided as Ethernet over Copper, using the same twisted pair telco lines that you already have installed for lower speed services.

Now that you know the advantages of Ethernet service in metro areas, there's really only one thing left to do - MAN up now for higher bandwidth. You'll wish you had done it sooner.