Same Budget, More Bandwidth

By: John Shepler

Is your network sluggish? Are slow file transfers, telephone calls breaking up, pauses in audio and video streaming, unpredictable delays in getting a response from cloud services, and slow web page loading getting on your nerves?

Is Bandwidth The Answer?
You may well need more bandwidth. You don’t necessarily need to increase the speed of your internal LAN. It’s more likely that your outside, or WAN, connection just isn’t getting the job done anymore.

How Can You Tell?
It’s a likely problem if you’ve had the same level of service for years, yet your business has grown or you’re using a higher percentage of multimedia content than you used to. Even a decade ago, T1 lines were standard for small and some medium size businesses. At that time consumer broadband speeds were also a few Mbps. Users were happy because email and Web pages were relatively small. Many business applications were things like credit card verification and after-hours inventory updates.

Look what’s happened recently. Emails are huge. Why? Because they often contain photos and other high resolution images. Web pages are more interactive and more visual that they’ve ever been. Many contain embedded video players.

The Cloud In The Room
This is nothing compared with the growth of the cloud. Cloud services offer near infinite capacity, ease of scaling up and down as needed, and no requirement for capital investments or maintenance activities. This has proven an irresistible combination for many businesses. What gets lost in all the excitement are the increased bandwidth requirements.

What’s happened is that all the traffic that used to flow effortlessly through your Fast Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet Local Area Network now has to be transported up to the cloud and back down. All those packets have to go through a carrier network for hundreds or even thousands of miles. They have to do that with a minimal time delay and at a price you can afford.

Declining Cost per Mbps
Fortunately, WAN bandwidth services have gotten a lot more competitive, lower in cost and available in a wider variety of options during this same period of change. You may not be aware of it if you’ve simply kept renewing your old line contract or paying month to month since it expired. There’s an excellent chance that you can get the bandwidth you need today without having to jack up your budget… if you’re willing to look at alternatives.

New Quotes Needed
The first thing you need to do is get a fresh set of competitive quotes. By competitive, I mean pricing from as many carriers as possible that serve your location. In the heart of metropolitan business districts you’ll have lots of options. Farther out there will be fewer choices, but almost always two or more. This works to your advantage because the more competition there is, the lower the prices for the exact same service. A number of carriers may have entered your marketplace when you weren’t looking.

Expanded Options
You may also have more options for getting the same job done. For instance, Ethernet over Copper runs on the same wires as T1 service. It offers the same highly reliable dedicated and symmetrical bandwidth. But, Ethernet over Copper can give you twice or more bandwidth than the older T1 technology for the same cost. You may also be able to get higher bandwidth levels with the newer Ethernet services.

How About Fiber?
Impossible to get where you are located? Way too costly? Perhaps not anymore. Fiber buildups have quietly accelerated and carriers have expanded their service footprints around the country. Some of this is driven by the cell phone industry that needs fiber bandwidth to their towers to support 4G LTE. Other runs have been built by the Cable industry that needs much higher bandwidth to deliver digital video channels and video on demand.

The bottom line is that all these fiber operators have bandwidth to spare and they are in fierce competition to get buildings “lit” with their network. They want your business a lot more than they did some years ago. It’s not unusual to find several fiber optic services available where there were none the last time you looked.

New Fiber Options
Like copper-based bandwidth, fiber service is also available in two technologies. The legacy service is SONET, with bandwidth levels such as OC-3, OC-12 and OC-48. Ethernet over Fiber is the newer technology and offers highly scalable fiber services in a wide variety of bandwidth options from 10 Mbps on up to 10 Gbps in most areas. Some locations can now get 100 Gbps if needed.

Just like Ethernet over Copper, Ethernet over Fiber has a cost advantage over SONET. It’s not unusual to get twice and much bandwidth or more for the same cost as your old Optical Carrier contract.

How Much More Bandwidth Can You Get Now?
You may feel that you are limited in bandwidth by budget constraints. It’s possible, even likely, that the budget you have now can be worth 2x, 3x or more high performance business bandwidth in today’s market. Don’t wonder if this is the case. Find out now by checking out the range of bandwidth options and competitive pricing for copper and fiber services available at your business location.

How to Find GigE Connections For Your Business

By: John Shepler

Gigabit Ethernet, or GigE, is becoming the bandwidth connection of choice for many businesses and other organizations. So, how do you find bandwidth services at this level and how can you be sure you’re getting the best deal? Let’s take a look.


Business Quality High Bandwidth
Professional grade GigE services are offered by incumbent and competitive telecommunications carriers. These are high quality fiber optic lines with dedicated symmetrical bandwidth that is low in latency, jitter and packet loss. They generally come with SLAs or Service Level Agreements that guarantee performance.

Legacy SONET Services
Not ALL telecom carriers offer GigE. Some still operate only legacy SONET fiber optic services that are higher in price and less scalable. These include OC-3, OC-12, and OC-48.

Carrier Ethernet Options
Most of the legacy carriers and newer startups with their own fiber optic networks now offer what is known as Carrier Ethernet. This is network Ethernet that has been extended for long haul connections. Typical bandwidth levels are 10 Mbps Standard Ethernet, 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, and 1,000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet, called GigE for short.

Ethernet Scalability
You should know that Carrier Ethernet services are very flexible and that you can order nearly any bandwidth you need, with the option to easily upgrade later.

Where Do You Find GigE?
Finding GigE connections can be a challenge if you aren’t involved in doing so frequently. Prices are constantly in flux and generally headed downward. New service providers show up without notice and may offer deals that disrupt the traditional marketplace. How do you know that you’ve found everything available to you?

GeoQuote Makes It Easy
The easiest and most comprehensive approach is to use an automated online tool from a major telecom agency, such as Telarus. Their GeoQuote is patented software that goes out and gathers pricing information from dozens of carriers and presents a comprehensive list of those available for your location. All you do is provide some basic information that the system needs to run the search. Then push the button and wait for the results.

How long does It take?
Usually a minute or so. Sometimes the system needs a few minutes to gather a large range of options. You’ll soon see a table with the appropriate services, including GigE bandwidth, on your browser.

Support Readily Available
You have the option to contact a Telarus product specialist with a toll free call or online inquiry… or have then call you at a convenient time. These agents can help you do the tradeoffs among options, and they have access to limited time special offers that may not show up in the automated system. There is no obligation for this free service.

Discover Your Options Now
Would you like to find out what GigE services are available in your area and what they cost? We have a form at Telexplainer.net that lets you access the GeoQuote system. You may also call toll free (888) 848-8749 for assistance and discussion with an expert agent.

Gigabit Ethernet over Fiber to Your Door

Big data, cloud services, medical images, video production and other bandwidth intensive applications are stretching the capacity of many traditional WAN services to point of congestion. That’s were bad things happen to good data. Frustration, productivity loss, delays in file delivery and unworkable telephony and video conferencing rear their ugly heads when there just isn’t enough bandwidth to go around. Fortunately, solutions are easier to come by than ever before.

The answer to big bandwidth demands is big bandwidth services. T1 lines were left in the dust years ago. Many companies thought that moving up to DS3 bandwidth at 45 Mbps would keep them in good stead for the foreseeable future. That future came sooner than foreseen. While Ethernet over Copper and fixed wireless can give you 50 or 100 Mbps of reliable symmetrical bandwidth, they’re also being left in the dust. What remains? Fiber optic WAN services in both SONET and Ethernet flavors.

SONET is the grandaddy of fiber optic bandwidth. It’s a standard developed by the telephone companies for transmitting or “trunking” large bundles of telephone calls between switching centers and overseas. Options begin at OC-3 with 155 Mbps. If that’s not enough, then OC-12 at 622 Mbps is the next step up. OC-24 offers 1.2 Gbps, but isn’t so widely available. You may be required to take OC-48 at 2.4 Gbps. In some cases, you’ll be able to contract for OC-192 at 10 Gbps or even OC-768 for 40 Gbps. Those are usually reserved for network operators themselves, but are now becoming more available to businesses.

So that solves the bandwidth dilemma, right? It would except for budget constraints. OCx SONET services have traditionally been pretty pricey. Those costs have plunged in recent years due to increased competition, but the need for bandwidth is expanding faster than corporate budgets. Fortunately, there is another alternative. That’s Ethernet over Fiber.

EoF, as it’s called for short, has some real advantages over traditional SONET optical carrier services. First of all, it’s Ethernet. Yes, the same Ethernet that runs on your local network but extended so that it can reach across town or even around the world. That makes interfacing easy and efficient. There’s also the cost factor.

Ethernet over Fiber typically costs a fraction of what you pay per Mbps for equivalent SONET bandwidth. A lot of this has to do with competition that has come into the market after deregulation of the phone companies. With SONET, you almost always have the local phone company involved in running the last mile connection. Ethernet has been adopted by newer competitive carriers who operate their own fiber networks, including owning the fiber. They can run a drop from their closest point of presence (POP) to your building and give you just about any bandwidth you require.

Not only are these carriers hungry for business, they have a much wider range of bandwidth options at their fingertips. Carrier Ethernet, as it is called, was designed from the get-go for ease of scalability. SONET has fixed bandwidth levels known generically as OCx. Each OC level has its own interface requirements and they don’t intermix. If you want to jump to the next level, the service provider will have to roll a truck and plug in a different module. They may also have some changes to make in their network to ensure they can deliver the contracted bandwidth.

Contrast that with Ethernet over Fiber. The interface to your equipment is called a “port”. A port has a maximum speed that it can run but no lower limit. You could install a 10 Mbps Ethernet port, but today’s practice is to install a 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet port or a 1000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet port. With a GigE port, you can order, say, 200 Mbps now and know that you can ramp up to 500 Mbps or even 1000 Mbps with little more than a phone call. In fact, it takes just hours to a few days to increase your line speed. Compare that to traditional practice that can require weeks or months.

Installation is still a consideration. Many business locations are still not connected to any fiber optic carrier. That doesn’t mean they can’t be. Metro Ethernet Networks are expanding rapidly, especially in larger business districts. Even if you couldn’t get anything last year, you might have a couple of providers to pick from this year. You’ll almost certainly be served if your equipment is in a colocation center or you are renting cloud computing services. All of these data centers are served by multiple fiber optic bandwidth providers. That gives you the option of moving your demanding applications to where the bandwidth is readily available and then connecting back your facility with a lower but adequate speed service like Ethernet over Copper.

Another strategy is to get together with other tenants in your office building or park to woo a fiber carrier who might not otherwise think the investment is worth it. With multiple clients all ready to commit to fiber bandwidth, the combined capacity can lure service providers to run a drop to your facility where each customer can connect their equipment to the provider's edge router. You might even get a substantial break on construction costs or pay nothing at all if the commitment is high enough.

Are you interested in more bandwidth for your business? If so, check options and get free consultation on what’s available in high bandwidth fiber optic network services.

Fiber Optic Leased Lines for Business

Copper-based leased lines have been the go-to solution for connecting business sites and for dedicated access to the Internet. However, copper’s days are numbered as big data, HD video and a migration out of the corporate data centers and into the cloud accelerate. The era of fiber-everything is approaching. Fortunately, prices are lower and options greater than ever before.

Fiber optic leased lines have been employed for decades by major corporations and businesses, like video production and distribution, that can’t function without the bandwidth fiber affords. Nearly all of this bandwidth has been supplied by a telephone industry standard called SONET for Synchronous Optical NETworking.

SONET picks up where T-carrier stops. T1 is good for 1.5 Mbps and up to 12 Mbps when multiple T1 lines are bonded. T3, often called DS3, is a 45 Mbps service, although it can be rate limited to 10 or 20 Mbps to lower costs. DS3 stands at the crossroads between copper and fiber. DS3 bandwidth is most often carried on a multiplexed SONET service for most of the transport distance and then converted to coaxial copper connections at the customer site.

SONET fiber optic lines start with OC-3 at 155 Mbps. Like DS3, OC-3 can be rate limited to offer fractional OC-3 bandwidth at 50 or 100 Mbps. Most often it is leased as a full rate OC-3 service.

Other SONET service levels offer increasing bandwidth. OC-12 runs at 622 Mbps. OC-24 is a Gigabit service running at 1.2 Gbps. It is not widely offered. The next popular SONET service is OC-48 at 2.5 Gbps. OC-192 steps this up to 10 Gbps. OC-768 is a 40 Gbps line service that has been popular as a carrier backbone but now offered to businesses in some areas.

Note the big gaps in bandwidth between the SONET optical carrier levels. If you need a Gigabit connection, you may have to order an OC-48 service even though it has twice the bandwidth you require. We’ll take a look at how Carrier Ethernet is far more scalable and can give you fine degree of granularity for selecting just the right bandwidth for your applications.

Another thing about SONET is that it is a TDM or Time Division Multiplexed technology. This means that the signal is a string of bits divided into small channels and carefully synchronized to communicate with other SONET lines. Why this arrangement? It is the telephony legacy of SONET. It was designed to be compatible with Bell’s T-Carrier standards that are also TDM-based. Each channel in a T1 line or OC-768 is 64 Kbps to support one telephone call. Of course, these channels can now be combined so that you can use the entire line capacity less overhead to transport your data packets.

Since SONET is not a packet switched protocol, you need a protocol converter to translate between TDM and Ethernet in order to get your network data from place to place. That is generally a plug-in module for your router. Each SONET level has a specifically designed module that is unique to that optical carrier level.

What SONET has going for it is a long history and extensive deployment worldwide. You don’t have to worry about the intricacies of protocol conversion or signal interfacing, as they problems were solved long ago. SONET is most popular when deployed in rings of two redundant fibers that can switch in under 50 Msec to keep the data flowing even when faults in the system occur. Most metropolitan and long haul fiber optic networks are set up in the SONET ring topology for reliability.

What now competes with SONET is Ethernet over Fiber (EoF). Yes, this is the familiar Ethernet protocol that runs on your LAN but extended for long haul transport. The extended protocol is called Carrier Ethernet.

The advantages of Carrier Ethernet include easy and rapid scalability, a packet oriented protocol directly compatible with nearly all company networks and edge routers, and a considerable cost savings compared with SONET. Typical service levels start at 10 Mbps, the standard Ethernet service level. Other popular options are 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, 1000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) and 10,000 Mbps or 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GigE).

You aren’t limited to these particular service levels. You can pretty much pick any bandwidth you like as long as the Ethernet Port installed at your facility can support the maximum speed you require. Easy scalability also means that you can often simply call your service provider and request an increase in bandwidth. It’s likely to be available in a matter of days if not hours.

Ethernet over FIber was almost unknown even a few years ago but now widely deployed. If available at your location, you’ll find that the cost per Mbps is much lower than SONET, perhaps half the cost for the same bandwidth. This is why Carrier Ethernet is rapidly taking over the fiber optic transport market, although SONET prices have also been plunging in response to the new competition.

Does your company require higher bandwidths that you can get from copper wireline services? Are you using fiber now but wondering if you can get a better price? Do you have a new application and want to get the best deal on bandwidth? If any of these apply, get competitive quotes on SONET and Ethernet fiber optic leased lines available for your business location.

Fiber Optic Private Lines

Companies that need 50 Mbps or more of private line bandwidth find that their twisted pair copper options have pretty much topped out. Downtown in some major metro areas you may be able to get high bandwidth point to point wireless service. Most of the time, though, you’ll be looking at fiber optic options for private line services that have the bandwidth you require.

The traditional fiber optic service for metro and long haul networks is SONET / SDH. The term Synchronous Optical NETwork / Synchronous Digital Hierarchy is aptly applied. The heat of this technology is a highly synchronized Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) protocol that offers very low latency with a range of bandwidth options that can take you to 40 Gbps or beyond. This standard has been proliferated around the world by major telecom companies. You can often get SONET services at the bandwidth of your choice from door to door to all points on the globe.

I say often, because the biggest stumbling block with fiber optic transport is the last mile connection. Estimates are that no more than a third of US business locations are “lit” for fiber. This generally means that either you or the carrier of your choice will need to build out a last mile fiber link to get your building “on-net.”

It’s a prospect that isn’t as daunting as it used to be. Fiber bandwidth providers are aggressively building out their service footprints and are actively looking for attractive locations that will use their service. If you are willing to commit to significant bandwidth usage or can get together with other tenants for a combined offer, you might get a great deal on establishing fiber optic service.

You may find that you have several types of service to choose from. SONET is the legacy service and is at the core of many backbone networks. IP networks are newer and more closely match the protocol that your LAN is running. Ethernet Private Line (EPL) service offers highly scalable bandwidth from a low of 10 to 50 Mbps right on up to Gigabit Ethernet and 10 GigE. These bandwidth options are available in Metro Ethernet Networks and long haul Ethernet transport.

SONET bandwidth services start off with OC-3 running at 155 Mbps. The next level generally available is OC-12 at 622 Mbps. Then you can move up to OC-24 at 1.24 Gbps, OC-48 at 2.4 Gbps, OC-192 at 10 Gbps and OC-768 at 40 Gbps.

SONET is often provisioned in a protected ring topology. There are two fiber strands, each carrying the same traffic. If one strand fails for any reason, the other picks up the full load within 50 mSec. This makes for very high reliability data connections.

If you want even higher performance fiber optic private lines or wish to have more control over your services, you can order wavelength services. Each wavelength is like having a separate line all to yourself. They are typically offered at 2.5 Gbps and 10 Gbps bandwidth level.

Still not enough? How about your own fiber optic cable from point to point? Sounds nice, but who can afford that? You can by leasing dark fiber that is already in the ground. When companies bury fiber, they bury a lot of fiber at the same time. It’s not unusual to have over 100 fiber strands in one cable. You can lease one or more of those strands and connect them to your own termination equipment. If you light the fiber, you have the ultimate in security and can run any protocol you wish.

Are you in need of higher bandwidth to support your business needs? Have a look at fiber optic private line options to see what services make the most sense for what you are doing.




Note: Photo of fiber optic transmission equipment courtesty of WikiMedia Commons.

Business Fiber Optic Connections Nearby

Are you running out of bandwidth on your telecom connections? You’ve gone as far as you can with bonded T1 lines. Now you’re considering making the move up to fiber optic services. You’ve heard that those are really expensive and that you can get hit with construction costs on top of the monthly lease price. Is that really true? Is there such as thing as cost effective fiber optic connections?

A lot of what everybody knows about fiber optics is long out of date and may be preventing them from making a smooth and painless transition to unlimited bandwidth options. For one thing, there are options available right now that weren’t around even a few years ago. Pricing has also come down considerably due to competition and new technology. Let’s take a closer look at the fiber optic connections that are located nearby.

Before we start looking down fiber strands for a solution, have you considered the latest in copper technology? Copper is way more than T1 or DSL these days. Ethernet over Copper technology gives you up to 45 Mbps in many business locations. That’s as much as many businesses really need. It’s relatively inexpensive, highly reliable and is provisioned over multiple twisted pairs. Those pairs, by the way, are probably already installed in your building for multi-line telephone service.

Another copper service is cable business broadband. It’s not for everyone, but if you can benefit from shared bandwidth up to 100 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload for Internet access, the price is right. It’s about the same as a T1 line.

Entry level fiber optic service actually starts with DS3 at 45 Mbps. Nobody thinks about DS3 being a fiber service. It’s delivered over two coaxial cables and often referred to as a T3 line. However, that copper cable only goes as far as the street at most. The rest of the path is over a multiplexed SONET fiber optic service.

It is OC-3 SONET fiber optic service that is fiber all the way. OC-3 was the first fiber optic service available to most businesses. It offers bi-directional 155 Mbps dedicated bandwidth for point to point or dedicated Internet access connections. OC-3 is part of the SONET (Synchronous Optical NETwork) family of traditional telecom services. Next up the line is OC-12 at 622 Mbps, OC-24 at 1.2 Gbps, OC-48 at 2.4 Gbps, OC-192 at 10 Gbps and OC-768 at 40 Gbps.

Competing directly with SONET is now Ethernet over Fiber (EoF). Ethernet over Fiber is a Carrier Ethernet service that is easily scalable so you can increase bandwidth incrementally. That means more intermediate bandwidth steps than SONET and fewer equipment changes. The provider installs an Ethernet port that delivers your service. This is almost always selected at 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps or 10 Gbps. You can get any speed service you want up to the capacity of the installed port. Many carriers are now routinely installing 1 Gbps ports so that start off as low as 10 Mbps and work your way up to 1 Gbps with only a phone call.

How about pricing and availability? It varies greatly, although you should know that there is a big competitive buildout underway nationwide. It’s not just the traditional telecom companies. There are new players with their own fiber networks that run IP at the core. They don’t have a legacy SONET infrastructure to maintain, so they’ll run Ethernet over Fiber right to your door.

The big trick is to have your building “lit” by one or more carriers for fiber optic service. In multiple tenant business buildings there is enough opportunity to attract carriers to install service at little or no cost. If you are the only user, the bar is higher. Some providers are so aggressive that they’ll waive construction costs if you buy a reasonable amount of bandwidth and they don’t have to run the drop too far. Others will ask you to kick in at least a small portion of the construction expenses.

Monthly lease prices have plunged over the last decade for both SONET and the newer Ethernet services. Competition from peers and Ethernet vs SONET has driven fiber optic bandwidth costs down to a fraction of what they were during all the hoopla of the tech boom years before 2000. If you haven’t gone out for quotes in, say the last few months, your jaw will likely drop when you see how much you can get for your bandwidth dollar these days.

What’s the best way to get a reasonable suite of competitive quotes? Use a bandwidth broker, like Telarus, to get multiple fiber optic service quotes for your location. Their automated GeoQuote (tm) system is so fast that you can get quotes up to 1 Gbps instantly online with no cost or obligation. If you like what you see, an expert consultant will help you sort through the options at your convenience. Go ahead and give it a try now.



Note: Photo of fiber optic conduit spools courtesy of Wikimedia 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.

SONET Rings To Support Ethernet

The hot bandwidth service these days is Carrier Ethernet. Everybody wants it once they see the cost advantage over the WAN connection they have now. The big question is can they get it?

In most cases, the answer is yes for a couple of reasons. First, new competitive carriers are rapidly building out their fiber optic core networks based on IP from the start. These networks are tailor made for Carrier Ethernet services. It’s relatively easy to get a point to point Ethernet connection between two distant business locations and use it to link their respective LANs. The result is one larger bridged LAN that enables all employees to be on essentially the same corporate network.

The other reason that Ethernet WAN services are so readily available is that established SONET fiber optic networks are being pressed into service to deliver Ethernet to the customer. This is known as Ethernet over SONET or EoS. The core of the network is still SONET, but operations at that level are invisible to you. As far as you are concerned, your connection is Ethernet all the way.

There’s no reason that SONET can’t transport Ethernet, ATM or other protocols. It was designed as a transport technology and has been adapted over the years to carry whatever traffic required hauling. The origins of SONET, like T-Carrier, are with the telephone industry. The name is an acronym for Synchronous Optical NETwork. Note the term synchronous. That tells you SONET is set up to be a highly synchronized network. The designed is based on multiplexing thousands of small channels called DS0s that each hold one telephone call. These DS0 building blocks can be combined to create T1 and T3 lines or SONET services such as OC-3, OC-12 and OC-48.

The beauty of synchronization for circuit switched architectures based on time division multiplexing is that everything is orchestrated so tightly and you can easily multiplex and demultiplex channels and higher level services. The device that does this is called an ADM or Add/Drop Multiplexer. An ADM can drop off a T1 line, DS3, OC3 or other service at your door from a much higher speed fiber line that carries traffic for many customers.

How does Ethernet squeeze into those tiny telephone channels? It takes some doing, considering that each DS0 carries exactly 64 Kbps. That’s about the speed of an old dial-up modem. What the industry has done is replace the telephone oriented channels with large concatenated frames and various mapping techniques to more efficiently carry Ethernet packets. SONET networks can now readily carry Ethernet services from standard 10 Mbps Ethernet to 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, 1000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet (GigE), and 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GigE).

A feature of most SONET networks that makes them highly reliable is their twin ring design. Two separate fiber strands are used simultaneously. Each carries the same traffic, but in opposite directions. If a fault occurs in the working ring, the network switches over to the protection ring within 50 mSec. This self-healing property works best when the two rings are widely separated so that a single backhoe cut or equipment fault doesn’t take out both rings at once.

Ethernet over SONET and native IP networks are making Carrier Ethernet services of all speeds readily available for businesses looking to upgrade their bandwidth connections at reasonable costs. How much are we talking? Find out with an instant online Ethernet Fiber quote for 10 Mbps to 1 Gbps service levels. Higher bandwidths and SONET services quotes need some manual effort but will be sent to you promptly.

MegaPath Pushes EoC to 400 Mbps

The bandwidth of Ethernet over Copper services has been setting new standards on a regular basis. It’s now at the point where you have to think seriously whether you really need to invest in fiber optic construction to light your building or if EoC will get the job done. MegaPath has just upped the ante for those doing copper/fiber tradeoffs. The new upper limit is 400 Mbps.

Many companies that are using Ethernet over Copper are doing so as T1 line replacements to get twice the bandwidth for the same cost. The 2x2 Mbps and 3x3 Mbps options are especially popular for this application. Other companies are moving to mid-band Ethernet where even bonded T1 cannot go. These are bandwidths in the 10 to 20 Mbps range, suitable for many mid-size operations. It’s the companies that have hundred or thousands of employees to support or are engaged in high bandwidth requirement applications that have been stuck with fiber as their only option.

That’s all changed within the last year. More sophisticated modulation schemes and bonding to 8 copper pairs have pushed the bandwidth limit past 50 Mbps to 100 Mbps and even 200 Mbps. Now, MegaPath is offering a new service that can exceed 400 Mbps. This could be a strong option for companies that have specified OC-3 SONET fiber optic service at 155 Mbps and even OC-12 at 622 Mbps.

To be fair, the 400 Mbps speed is only specified on the download path. Upload speeds could be a fraction of that. Does asymmetrical service make sense in a business environment? It could, depending on what you are doing with it. Internet access is typically asymmetrical in nature, with download speeds 10x what you use for upload. That’s because most internet usage at the desktop consists of sending keyboard requests for Web pages or files and then viewing the results or making other use of the data in applications. The principal is that the huge files are almost always coming to the user rather than being sent.

That’s especially true for video, now the number one source of traffic on the Internet. It takes relative little upload activity to request the video files, even streaming, and a considerable amount of download bandwidth over extended periods of time.

Some cloud applications also fall into this category. If you routinely send huge files to the cloud and expect little back, then the asymmetry is wrong for you. However, if most of your bandwidth activity is using large information packages delivered from the cloud, then an asymmetric bandwidth connection could work in your favor.

MegaPath is also offering symmetrical Ethernet bandwidth up to 100 Mbps x 100 Mbps for point to point, point to multipoint and dedicated Internet access. Other options include Ethernet over DS1 and Ethernet over DS3 to address the inherent distance limitations of Ethernet over Copper service. As part of rolling out the new higher bandwidth services, MegaPath is increasing the number of central offices with EoC equipment from 200 to over 680 within a year.

Are your bandwidth requirements increasing, perhaps because of a current or planned move to cloud-based services? If so, you should know that fiber optic connections are only one option to get the line speeds you need for efficient operation. Get competitive quotes now for low, mid-level, and high bandwidth Ethernet over Copper line services for your business location. Sorry, no residential service available.

Fiber Maps At Your Fingertips

You’d like to move to higher bandwidth services, but you have no idea what that is going to cost. Horror stories of fiber optic construction costs abound. How can you tell if the cost of moving up from copper to fiber optic bandwidth services will be trivial or unacceptable?

The best thing you can do is get a set of competing quotes from many carriers that have facilities in your area. That’s going to take a lot of time and energy, isn’t it? Not if you approach it the right way. By going through a telecom broker, like Telarus, Inc., the effort on your part is next to nothing and you’ll have results quickly. Moreover, you get a comprehensive report that gives you pricing from all the important carriers in your marketplace.

Want to find out right this minute if there is fiber nearby? You can do this in a matter of seconds with just a quick click to the Ethernet Today Shop For Ethernet search box. All you need to do is enter the street address of your building, city, state and zip code and the system will automatically search the database and give you a map and list of buildings lit for Ethernet fiber optic service nearby.

Why Ethernet? The best prices for higher bandwidth services have changed from SONET services, such as OC-3, OC-12 or OC-48, to Ethernet over Fiber services such as 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet or 1000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet (GigE). If you request pricing, you can also ask for equivalent SONET service prices so you can compare and see how much you are saving. In some situations, you may already be set up for SONET and happy with the arrangement. That’s fine, but you might as well get better pricing on your next contract.

Location is everything when it comes to fiber optic services. The best situation is already being in a building that is lit for the fiber optic service you want. The bandwidth level isn’t important. What is important is that someone has already paid the cost of bringing in the fiber and getting it working. Fiber has so much bandwidth capacity that there is plenty for whatever your needs require, even if another tenant in the building is already connected to that carrier.

What if you want Ethernet and your building is only lit for SONET? Have a look at the cost figures, including any construction charges, and decide whether it is better to just stick with SONET bandwidth or have Ethernet brought in. Sometimes you can get what’s called Ethernet over SONET that has better pricing than the traditional OCx service levels.

Don’t despair if you aren’t in or next door to a building lit for fiber optic service. Carriers are more competitive than ever. One or more may well waive the construction fees to get your business. The chances of this increase dramatically if you round up other tenants in the building and all offer to subscribe to fiber services with a very attractive combined bandwidth.

Here’s something else. Even buildings too expensive to light with fiber can get bandwidths far above the traditional T1 lines that come in on telco copper. Today’s Ethernet over Copper technology bonds multiple pair to bring in bandwidths of 10, 20, 50 and even 100 Mbps. That’s done over already installed copper wiring, so construction costs are minimal to nothing. This much bandwidth is adequate for many, many businesses.

Are you at least curious as to what fiber optic services may be nearby? If so, instantly check for lit buildings near your location and then request the pricing and recommendations you need to get the best deal for the least cost.

Moving From OC-3 Bandwidth To Ethernet

Many medium size and larger businesses have been using OC-3 bandwidth over fiber optic connections for dedicated Internet access, video transport, remote data backup, large file transfers between sites and other high bandwidth applications. Now, there’s a newer lower cost option that can get you as much bandwidth or more for less money.

That solution is Carrier Ethernet. You may still think that Carrier Ethernet is a specialty service found in only a few areas by even fewer service providers. Not any more. Carrier Ethernet is mainstream. There is a mad dash underway to convert TDM based networks to IP packet networks. It may not be much longer that you’ll even be able to get OC-3 bandwidth services.

It’s all about the switch from telephone technology based on individual circuits to computer network technology based on packets. What’s happened in recent years is that the vast majority of traffic around the world has changed from voice to data to video. Voice is now thought of as one more service on a converged network that can transport voice, data or video with equal ease.

OC-3 is a TDM or Time Division Multiplexing technology. It has its roots in telephony, where everything revolves around small discrete channels that each carry one individual digitized telephone call. All of those channels are carefully synchronized by giving them each their own time slot in the bitstream.

So what’s wrong with that? Nothing other than the fact that using this methodology to transport packets that aren’t the same size as channels and don’t require the TDM synchronization unduly complicates the network interface and introduces inefficiencies. An OC-3 line runs at 155.52 Mbps with a payload of 148.608 Mbps.

Ethernet is the same protocol that runs on your corporate network. What Carrier Ethernet does is enable that same protocol to run for long distances on Metropolitan and Wide Area Networks.

Is there a direct Ethernet equivalent to OC-3? Not exactly. Ethernet does have standard LAN speeds of 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps, 1,000 Mbps and 10,000 Mbps. Carrier Ethernet is far more scalable, though. You can order just about any bandwidth you require. A 150 Mbps Ethernet service is pretty much equivalent to the OC-3 speed. You could, however, select 100 Mbps, 200 Mbps or some other bandwidth that more closely matches your true requirements.

Here’s something else that makes your life easier. Install a Gigabit Ethernet port and you can easily upgrade to any bandwidth up to 1 Gbps at any time. Start with 150 Mbps to match that OC-3 today and later move up to 300 Mbps, 500 Mbps, 750 Mbps or 1,000 Mbps when the need dictates. In the mean time, you’ll be paying for only what you need on that fiber optic link.

Moving from OC-3 to the next available standard of OC-12 means you’ll have to jump from 155 Mbps to 600 Mbps and wait for a technician to change out your router card or managed router. Moving from 150 Mbps Ethernet to 200 Mbps Ethernet or higher can be done with a phone call in hours or days, not potentially weeks or longer.

Best of all, Carrier Ethernet is almost always priced less per Mbps than OC-3 and similar telco services. The reasons are increased competition and a technology that is on the rise, not the decline. How much can you save by making the move from OC-3 bandwidth to Ethernet? Check fiber optic bandwidth prices and availability to find out how many competitive options are available for your business location.



Note: Graphic of router symbol courtesy of Tosaka on Wikimedia Commons.

Fiber Buildings Offer High Bandwidth

Are you looking to increase your bandwidth connections from the low to medium speeds you can get delivered over twisted pair copper or fixed wireless, on up to the high speeds available only over fiber optic cabling? Would you like to do that while avoiding the often prohibitive construction cost of bringing in new fiber service? Then what you need is a fiber building.

In this case, a fiber building isn’t one that’s made out of carbon fiber construction or anything exotic like that. Fiber doesn’t refer to the construction materials of the structure itself. It refers to the type of telecom services already installed. A fiber building is one that already has fiber optic service brought in and operating. That’s why you often hear them referred to as fiber lit buildings. Lit means that there is laser light shining down those fiber strands and carrying digital payloads.

So, how do you find a fiber building? Peeking in windows after dark won’t work and will probably get you in trouble. You could start calling all the office and industrial buildings in the area and mark the lit building locations on a map. Or you can take the easy approach and use an automated online tool that will do all that legwork for you. It’s called the “Lit Building Locator.” You simply enter the street address of the building you are in now and you’ll get a map of lit buildings in the area and how far they are from you.

The most popular fiber optic bandwidth service being requested now is Metro or Carrier Ethernet. The beauty of Ethernet is that it is the same protocol that you are already running on your corporate LAN. That makes interfacing very easy. Fiber optic Ethernet services include Fast Ethernet at 100 Mbps, Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) at 1,000 Mbps and 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) at 10,000 Mbps. In some cases 40 Gigabit Ethernet is also available for the most demanding applications.

You should be aware that there is another type of fiber optic service that is also installed in “lit” buildings. This is the traditional telecom service called SONET for Synchronous Optical NETwork. Bandwidth services include OC-3 at 155 Mbps, OC-12 at 622 Mbps, OC-24 at 1.2 Gbps and OC-48 at 2.4 Mbps. Higher speeds include OC-192 at 9.95 Mbps that is compatible with 10 GigE WAN-PHY and OC-768 running at 40 Gbps.

Which fiber service should you choose? There may or may not be a choice. Once a fiber service is brought into a building, competing services generally choose other buildings to light up. Any particular building may be lit for SONET or Ethernet. There is a service called Ethernet over SONET, including 10 GigE WAN-PHY, that can give you the protocol you want even if your building is set up to legacy telco standards. Another reason that customers are asking for Ethernet is that it tends to be less expensive per Mbps than SONET services, where available.

Are you looking for more bandwidth? Why not check for fiber buildings and see if yours or one nearby is lit? If close, you may be able to get a carrier to make the necessary installation with no or discounted construction costs if you will be ordering a high bandwidth level. Perhaps you can find other tenants and pool your request to make the installation even more attractive.



Note: Photo courtesy of Diego Silvestre on Wikimedia Commons.