13 Hot Business Bandwidth Options

By: John Shepler

You may think that your business has one or two options when it comes to bandwidth connectivity. If fact, you may have a baker’s dozen or more different technology options to choose from and multiple vendors for each. Of course, the closer you are located to a major business district, the more variety of services and providers you’ll have to pick from. Even so, there are often at least a few options available even out in the boonies. Let’s take a look at at thirteen hot business broadband options you should know about.


1. DSL - Digital Subscriber Line is a broadband service that is delivered over regular telephone lines. It may share a line with a phone or have a line all to itself for more bandwidth. Bandwidth starts at under a Mbps and goes up around 7 Mbps, depending on how far you are from the telco office. Both asymmetrical and symmetrical options are available.

2. Business Cable Broadband - This is very similar to residential cable broadband but designed to serve businesses locations. You often get static IP addresses and more responsive customer service. Bandwidths can range from around 5 Mbps on up to over 100 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload. You can get just broadband, or a combination of broadband, telephone and television service. Once catch is that the cable has to pass by your location for you to be connected.

3. Fixed 3G and 4G Wireless - This is cellular broadband designed to support business applications. Specialized equipment gives you highly reliable signal. Since it uses cell tower signals, you can get service out in the country pretty much anywhere you can get cell phone service. This option is especially popular for credit card verification in temporary retail locations and construction job sites. Bandwidths are similar to a T1 line (1.5 Mbps) for 3G service and Cable broadband (10 Mbps) for 4G.

4. Satellite - Two way satellite transmission is popular with retail stores and any remote locations. Bandwidth has been similar to 3G, but is now available at 4G levels. You put a dish on the roof and you have broadband virtually anywhere. One limitation is that heavy rain and snow can interrupt service.

Note that these first 4 bandwidth options are the lowest cost you can find, but have some important limitations. They are shared bandwidth, which means your speed will vary depending on what other users are doing. Both satellite and fixed wireless have monthly download limits. Most are asymmetrical, which means that download speed may be 10x upload speed. This works well for typical Internet access, which is what they are designed for. Geosynchronous satellite has high latency (time delay) that makes it unsuitable for real time applications like VoIP. Service reliability and speed of repair typically fall short of what you get with dedicated telecom services.

5. T1 Lines and Bonded T1 - T1 has been the workhorse of business connectivity. The bandwidth is limited to 1.5 Mbps, now too low for many applications. Bonding T1 lines together can create a larger pipe up to 10 Mbps. Available just about anywhere you can get landline telephone service. Popular as a point to point service, Internet access or PBX telephone trunking.

6. Ethernet over Copper - The new competitor to T1. Uses the same telco lines as bonded T1, but a different transmission technology. Bandwidths range from 3 to 50 Mbps typically, with some installations capable of 100 Mbps or more. The tradeoff is distance. Bandwidth drops off as you get farther away from the telco office. Cost is usually lower than bonded T1, sometimes half as much. Can be point to point, point to multipoint or Internet access.

7. DS3 - A hybrid between fiber and copper. The service is delivered to the curb over fiber optic line but then connected via coaxial cable. Runs at 45 Mbps. This is a well established service that is available in many locations, but losing out to less expensive Ethernet copper and fiber services in many areas. Can be point to point or Internet access.

8. OC3, OC12, OC48 - These are traditional fiber optic services using SONET technology developed by the telephone companies. OC3 is entry level at 155 Mbps. OC12 takes you up to 622 Mbps. OC48 is 2.4 Gbps for businesses needing very high bandwidth. SONET is well established and available from multiple vendors within metro areas. Not generally available in rural areas. Point to point or Internet access.

9. Ethernet over Fiber - Like Ethernet over Copper, fiber is taking over from T1 lines and even DS3, this is the new competing service to SONET. Bandwidth is highly scalable between 10 Mbps and 10 Gbps, with 100 Mbps and 1000 Mbps as popular service levels. Cost is generally lower than SONET and making changes is easier and faster. Also, EoF supports Ethernet services like E-Line and E-LAN. Can be point to point, point to multipoint or Internet access.

10. Microwave FIxed Wireless - Like 3G cellular, no landlines or fiber are needed. This is strictly a point to point wireless connection using licensed microwave band frequencies. Limited to line of sight from provider to an outside antenna on your building. High bandwidths of 100 Mbps are available, but generally only downtown in major metropolitan areas.

11. Wavelength Service - Gives you a dedicated “color” or independent channel on the laser beam. Bandwidth is typically 2.5, 5 or 10 Gbps. You can choose the protocol you want to run, including IP and TDM. Bandwidths of 40 and 100 Gbps are now becoming available for very demanding applications.

12. Dark Fiber - Have all the wavelengths to yourself when you lease an unlit fiber strand between two locations. The ultimate in bandwidth and flexibility, but you have to provide and maintain the terminal equipment on each end. For the most sophisticated users only.

13. MPLS Networks - Not an access service, but rather a way to connect many business locations in a regional, national or international area. Think of MPLS as a private version of the Internet. You have guaranteed bandwidth with class of service. Also, high security because there is no public access.

Note that all of the services from #5 on are considered professional telecom services that often come with service level agreements that guarantee performance. Bandwidth is dedicated, not shared, and symmetrical. If performance is more important than bargain basement pricing, these are the services you should be considering. If your needs are modest and you just want a connection to the Internet for email and Web access, then lower end options may well meet your needs.

Not sure how to choose the best bandwidth for your operation or how to find vendors for all these services? Get fast quotes on multiple bandwidth technology services for your business locations, plus recommendations from a bandwidth product specialist.

Bandwidth Management Gets Easier With Ethernet

Bandwidth demand can be all over the map. It goes up, it comes down. It’s fine now but could go parabolic in 6 months to a year. Or not. How can an IT manager ensure that adequate resources are in place when needed without paying through the nose for idle resources?

Exacerbating this problem is the procurement and provisioning process that worked better in less volatile times. Typically a need is identified, a budget is created, approved and released, requests for quotes go out, vendors are narrowed down, a purchase order is cut, it winds its way through the carrier’s front office, eventually resulting in an installation, turn-up and the start of billing. If something happens and you need more, the whole process starts all over.

In a way, the whole system is tuned to match the technical characteristics of circuit switched line services. Take a T1 line, for instance. You order the line and you get 1.5 Mbps. No more, no less. If you only need 500 Kbps right now, the other 1000 Kbps goes to waste. You have to pay for the entire 1,500 Kbps because the day is coming soon when you’ll fill that pipe and you need to be ready.

The same is true for DS3, OC3, OC12, OC48 and other traditional telecom services. Moving from one of these to the other, up or down, is a major deal. DS3 is nothing like T1. If you need DS3, you’ll have a completely different demarcation connection from the carrier and you’ll need a completely different interface card for your edge router. It’s a major bandwidth jump, too. You’re moving from 1.5 Mbps up to 45 Mbps.

Not enough? The next jump is to OC3 SONET fiber at 155 Mbps. Once again, there is a long procurement and installation process with unique equipment for a particular service level. If you failed to order enough bandwidth, you’ll be dealing with network congestion for some time. If you way over-order, you’ll be paying a pretty price for a largely empty pipe.

Is there anything that can take some of the risk out of bandwidth management? You bet there is. It’s called Carrier Ethernet.

Carrier Ethernet services are fairly new compared to T-Carrier or SONET. They are available for metro, long haul and access networks. Carrier Ethernet is often touted as a technology that can link company LANs at two or more locations. It has an easy interface which is the same Ethernet connection used on your LAN, copper or fiber.

If that wasn’t enough, Carrier Ethernet costs are generally less than equivalent bandwidth levels for T-Carrier or SONET. It is not unusual to get twice the Mbps for the same money as you are currently paying for legacy telecom services. This cost savings is compelling, but may not even be THE important reason to embrace Ethernet in the MAN and WAN.

What Ethernet offers that other protocols don’t is easy scalability. Ethernet MAN and WAN networks are being designed for rapid remote management so that no truck rolls are needed when a customer wants more or less bandwidth. It’s all done at a computer screen so that you can pick up a phone can request a move from, say, 10 to 15 Mbps or 100 to 150 Mbps and you’ll have the extra resources available in as little as a few hours.

Carrier Ethernet is set up something like your LAN in that there are standard port speeds. You know that your switches, routers and PCs all have NICs (Network Interface Cards) with specs of 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps, 1000 Mbps or 10 Gbps. Usually, its some combination like 10/100/1000. The Ethernet port that you order installed will generally be 100 Mbps or 1000 Mbps, although it could be 10 Gbps if you really need that much. As long as you stay below the maximum capacity of the port, you can have just about any bandwidth level you want.

Very low bandwidths may have increments of 1 Mbps to 10 Mbps. Higher bandwidths might go up in jumps of 100 Mbps. Carrier Ethernet gives you a lot more choices so that you can more closely match the bandwidth you are paying for to the bandwidth you need. The ability to rapidly scale up that bandwidth means that you don’t have to order too much in anticipation of need. Get a port that will handle what you can reasonably expect to require but only order the bandwidth level you need to handle current business activity. If you suddenly enjoy a flood of customers or need to support a new video distribution, you can make that call and get the extra resources when you need them.

The result, clearly, is a major cost savings in not be over-provisioned for bandwidth plus less stress in worrying about what you have to do to be ready for tomorrow’s needs. Could your operation benefit from having this capability? If so, get prices, features and availability of Carrier Ethernet bandwidth services for your business locations.

WDM Wavelength Services Offer Expandability

If your need is for high bandwidth, security and flexibility, you should take a look at wavelength services. This is more than the typical fiber optic bandwidth service. It’s almost like owning the network facilities yourself.

The thing about fiber optic transmission is that it offers almost limitless bandwidth. That’s a foreign concept to anyone who’s been tied to copper wireline services. It’s also an odd notion for those who pick a fiber optic service level and sign a contract for it. If you order OC3 SONET service, what you get is a line that runs at 155.52 Mbps with a payload of 148.608 Mbps. You don’t have to fill the pipe continuously, but the capacity is there all the time. If you need more bandwidth, you only recourse is to add an additional service or upgrade to something like OC12 or Gigabit Ethernet.

What you are using with fiber optic services is not the entire bandwidth of the fiber. In fact, you may be totally unaware that your signals are multiplexed with lots of others all traveling on the same fiber strand. If there is only one laser beam with a single color or wavelength shining through that fiber, it likely has a capacity of at least 10 Gbps. Chances are, though, that there are many different color beams all riding simultaneously down the fiber. They don’t interfere because they are different colors of light, called Lambdas, all in the infrared region of the spectrum. Each Lambda or wavelength has a carrying capacity as high as 10 Gbps. You can think of these as equivalent to individual high capacity lines. If the fiber optic strand were made of copper, each wavelength would be a separate pair of wires.

What if you could lease a wavelength instead of a copper wireline or a fixed bandwidth service on a fiber optic cable? The wavelength doesn’t care what modulation or data pattern you use. It’s just a pure light beam of one wavelength. There’s no fancy footwork required to convert between one protocol and another just to be compatible with what’s running on the line. That opens some interesting possibilities. You could use your leased wavelength to carry Gigabit Ethernet or Fast Ethernet, SONET OC3, OC12 or OC48, Fibre Channel, or ESCON.

Need to transport a variety of high bandwidth protocols? OK. Just lease multiple wavelengths and give each protocol its own Lambda. The won’t interfere. In fact, they won’t even known the other wavelengths exist.

This type of network transport is no longer a pipe dream. All you need to do is lease WDM Wavelength Services from a fiber optic network carrier such as AboveNet. What AboveNet has done is install a base of dark fiber in many metropolitan areas. It’s called dark because it hasn’t already be put into service with a particular fiber optic service in mind. It’s like a blank canvas ready to become any work of art. AboveNet “lights” the fiber as needed using WDM equipment to create their wavelength services.

WDM stands for Wavelength Division Multiplexing. It’s the technology that creates multiple wavelengths on a single fiber strand. This is a standardized process that ensures there is enough separation between the wavelengths that they won’t interfere and that different brands of networking equipment will work together. There are two flavors of WDM: CWDM or Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing and DWDM or Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing. The difference is that DWDM squeezes more wavelengths, up to 160, onto a given fiber but at a higher cost than CWDM.

Is this affordable? AboveNet says that their CWDM service becomes competitive at the OC-3 service bit-rate. If you can use more bandwidth than that, you’ll save money with CWDM. Typical applications include connecting corporate headquarters with branch offices and data centers, or connecting multiple hospitals and medical centers for exchange of medical images and other health service records.

Has your business or organization become limited by the network services available? Perhaps it’s time to move up to wavelength services. Find out by getting prices and availability of fiber optic wavelength services for your locations. Complementary consulting by bandwidth experts is also available for serious applications.



Note: Image of light spectrum from prisms courtesy of Marcellus Wallace on Wikimedia Commons.

Fiber Ethernet WAN Bandwidth Advantages

Large businesses and other larger organizations generally require more bandwidth than is available through T1 lines or other broadband services that can be provisioned over copper twisted pair. Fiber optic connections can provide nearly unlimited bandwidth, but what is the most cost effective service?

If you are a current user of fiber optic bandwidth, you are probably leasing a SONET/SDH service such as OC3, OC12, or OC48 for your wide area networking needs. These are traditional telecom services that were originally developed for the telephone companies to carry large numbers of telephone calls. They are circuit switched channelized networks that have been adapted to transport today’s demand for high data bandwidth connections.

A newer service that is offering serious competition to the legacy telco services is Ethernet over Fiber or EoF. It’s a packet-switched network that transports Ethernet at the layer 2 switching or layer 3 routing level. Within metropolitan areas, this service is known as Metro Ethernet. Over long distances, it is called Carrier Ethernet or Long Haul Ethernet. Just about all bandwidths are available, but generally you’ll find fiber Ethernet being used to carry 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, 1 Gbps Gigabit Ethernet, 10 Gbps 10 GigE. Even high bandwidths, including 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps, are used for carrier backbone networks.

One advantage of fiber Ethernet is that it is scalable. You may start out with 100 Mbps service but quickly find out that you need more bandwidth. With traditional SONET services, there can be long delays in upgrading your service to the next level. There may also be a big jump in bandwidth and cost to get to that next level. OC3 gives you 155 Mbps. But OC12, the next readily available increment, runs at 622 Mbps.

Fiber optic Ethernet can easily scale up to the limit of the installed port. For instance, if you have a port that is capable of 1,000 Mbps, you don’t necessarily have to buy that much bandwidth. It’s common to order a fraction of the port’s capability, say 100 Mbps and then upgrade to 200 Mbps when demand justifies such a move. Often this can be done with only a phone call to your Ethernet service provider. Only when your demand exceed the 1,000 Mbps capacity of the port will new equipment need to be installed.

Perhaps the biggest advantage of fiber Ethernet services is cost savings. In additional to the traditional telephone companies, there are numerous competitive carriers that have their own regional or nationwide fiber optic networks and points of presence. These carriers can build-out a fiber connection to your building. It may not be that expensive if you can guarantee a high enough bandwidth level to justify the construction. You’ll find the monthly lease rate attractive, too. They are often only a fraction of what you’d pay for equivalent OCx services.

How can you determine if fiber Ethernet services are the best option for your business or organizational needs? You can get a quick answer with multiple vendor quotes and recommendations now using the Fiber Ethernet Services Inquiry form that you’ll find at Ether Rabbit. It’s fast service on fast Ethernet services.

Fiber Optic ISP

Not so long ago, Internet service came through the telephone as a collection of audible beeps and squeaks. That evolved into dedicated landline and wireless broadband. The next step has already been taken by the largest companies. Now, medium size businesses are also looking for a fiber optic Internet service provider.

Fiber optic Internet service for residential users is the domain of Verizon’s FiOS. Google will soon enter the market on a test basis with a new benchmark of performance: 1 Gbps. But business broadband connections have moved past the Gbps upper limit, with 10 Gbps service becoming more common for major organizations. The technology is proven. The question is how much bandwidth do you need and where do you need it?

The key to fiber optic levels of telecom service is the “lit” building. That’s a location where fiber optic cable has been pulled into the facility and connected to terminal equipment. Once the fiber is lit by a service provider, the building is considered to be “on net” and able to select from a wide variety of service options. This facility can also be a jumping off point to provide fiber optic service to other nearby buildings. The most expensive and time consuming aspect of fiber optic service is the initial fiber construction.

What types of fiber optic bandwidth services are available? They typically fall into two categories. The first is traditional SONET / SDH telecom services. These are the original telco standards for voice and data over fiber optic strands. The most basic service is OC-3 or Optical Carrier, level 3. This is a 155 Mbps bandwidth service based on the same TDM or Time Division Multiplexing technology as copper based T1 and T3 lines. In fact, DS3 bandwidth at 45 Mbps is most often delivered as part of an OC-3 signal that can transport 3 of these DS3 services.

The SONET standard fiber optic services include OC-12 at 622 Mbps, OC-48 at 2.5 Gbps, OC-192 at 10 Gbps and OC-768 at 40 Gbps. This highest levels are most often used by carriers, themselves, as their backbone networks.

The other category of fiber optic service is Carrier Ethernet or Metro Ethernet. Ethernet services are standardized at the same levels seen in LAN networks. These are 10 Mbps standard Ethernet, 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, 1000 Mbps GigE, and 10 Gbps or 10 GigE service. Intermediate service levels are generally available, as Ethernet is readily scalable.

How do you decide between SONET and Ethernet Internet connections? Both are reliable, proven technologies that can deliver the bandwidth you desire. What often differs is availability and price. The best approach is to get a complete selection of fiber optic service quotes from a telecom broker and compare pricing on the services available for your business location. You may be surprised at how affordable the higher bandwidths have become.

GigE Gives OC48 a Run For The Money

Telecommunications infrastructure is rapidly changing from circuit switched time division multiplexing technology to packet switched IP technology. Standard telecom circuits for voice and data services now find their territory being encroached upon by upstart MPLS and Metro Ethernet connections. But this is more about entry level services such as T1 lines, right? There is no real competition for Gigabit bandwidth SONET fiber optic lines... or is there?

Gigabit Ethernet is coming on the scene faster than you might expect. GigE, as it's known for short, is a well established LAN standard. It's used in data centers, workstations and many newer business PCs. Gigabit to the desktop is well on its way. But what about wide area networking?

WAN (Wide Area Network) buildout and pricing lags well behind LAN standards. That can be accounted for by the fact that most corporate traffic is internal. Companies traditionally haven't needed near the bandwidth for communication with the outside world as they require to support dozens, hundreds or thousands of employees accessing company applications and data.

Another reason for lagging WAN bandwidth levels is that metro and long haul networks have traditionally been the domain of the telephone companies. Their digital technology is based on transporting telephone calls on 64 Kbps channels called DS0s. A T1 line, DS3 connection and all the way up through fiber optic SONET services as high as OC-768 with a data rate of 40 Gbps are all collections of DS0 channels. The big trunks were designed to transport thousands, even hundreds of thousands of simultaneous telephone calls. Their pricing has traditionally reflected that.

IP-based WAN networks never had that channelized telephone trunking legacy. They reflect the new reality that nearly all communications is becoming packet rather than channel based. A packet can represent voice, video or data. The higher the bandwidth required, the more packets traverse the network. A 64 Kbps data stream is still good for one or a few digitized telephone calls. But today's WAN network needs are measured in Mbps and Gbps, not Kbps. It's becoming a real-time audio, video and interactive data world. Both WAN capacity and pricing need to meet that current need.

This is where competitive carriers are moving in to fill the gaping demand for lower cost metro and long haul bandwidth. Computer aided engineering, medical imaging, automated manufacturing, e-commerce, and remote data centers have demands that are orders of magnitude above the previous business practices of FAX document transmission and overnight mail delivery of data tapes. Businesses need and will install higher bandwidth line services... if only they can get an affordable price.

Gigabit Ethernet, GigE, has advanced to a level of maturity where it is challenging the long-entrenched OC-48 SONET service for metro and long haul WAN connections. Costs are not merely competitive, they are often dramatically lower for Ethernet versus higher bandwidth TDM-based services. Some of this may be attributed to new carriers coming on the scene with aggressive pricing to establish themselves in the business bandwidth marketplace. But there is also an efficiency improvement based on technology.

Gigabit Ethernet is exactly what it sounds like. It's 1,000 Mbps of bandwidth. OC-48 can also give you 1,000 Mbps by using protocol conversion to allow TDM technology to transport packets instead of channels. But OC-48 has an inherent bandwidth of 2.488 Gbps. When you pull in an OC-48 line to deliver Gigabit bandwidth, there's a lot of excess capacity going to waste. OC-24 would be a better choice at 1.244 Gbps. But OC-24 is considered an oddball optical carrier level and isn't always available.

Is your business hamstrung by too small a WAN pipe for the applications you need to be competitive? If you haven't checked recently, you may be surprised at how much the cost per Mbps has declined for 10, 100 and even 1000 Mbps WAN connections. Take a minute now to find out how little you'll pay for the service you really need.

Oh, My Aching Internet Backbone

Bandwidth expansion is a sign of good business. As an Internet service provider or content provider, you see that once generous T1 pipe getting full to the limit. Now what? You wince a bit because revenues may not be accelerating at the same rate as bandwidth demand. Is there a way to ensure a solid dedicated connection to the Internet without going broke?

Today you have more cost competitive options than ever before. The standard upgrade path for ISPs and others with Internet backbone connections has been from T1 line to T3 line or DS3 over fiber, then OC3 SONET optical fiber, OC12, and on upward to OC48 bandwidth. You can still get all of these services at prices lower than ever before. But you now also have the options of Ethernet, Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet for your dedicated Internet connection. Let's take a look at what's currently available.

The most basic professional grade Internet connection is the T1 line at 1.5 Mbps. Some providers of free WiFi hotspots, such as restaurants, may get by with business DSL or a Cable Modem connection since the service is being offered on an "as available" basis at no charge to the patron. For everybody else, a T1 data line configured for dedicated Internet service is the opening ante.

If you fill up your T1 bandwidth, an incremental upgrade is to bond-in a second T1 to double the bandwidth. This process can be continued for 3x, 4x, 5x, and even 6x the original bandwidth. If you have a WISP (Wireless Internet Service Provider) tower in a rural area, T1 service over copper lines might be your only reasonable option. In metropolitan areas, you have a choice of staying with copper or moving up to fiber optic service.

T3 Internet runs at 45 Mbps and was originally designed for a coaxial cable physical layer. Today the same service is DS3 running on SONET metro fiber. T1, bonded T1, T3, and SONET fiber optic services are all based on TDM or Time Division Multiplexing. A protocol conversion is used to transport IP packets on TDM trunk lines. The last mile connection, or local loop, is almost always provided by the Incumbent Local Phone Company regardless of who supplies your Internet service port.

The native Ethernet connection is something fairly new. It is has come about primarily from competitive carriers with their own nationwide networks based on IP and not TDM, direct peering connections to the Internet, and local points of presence in metropolitan areas. XO communications is an example of a carrier that "lights" buildings for Ethernet fiber optic service in metro areas, bypassing the local phone companies completely. Check for Ethernet Lit Buildings in your area.

If you can get Ethernet, the cost savings can be substantial. A Fast Ethernet connection at 100 Mbps an easily be half the cost of a DS3 connection at 45 Mbps. The savings gets even better when you compare OC3, OC12, or OC48 to Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet.

What if you really need or want the cost savings of Ethernet but are nowhere near a carrier Point of Presence? Consider moving your equipment to "carrier hotel" or colocation facility. There you'll find multiple carriers offering a wide variety of standard and non-standard bandwidths at highly competitive prices. The construction costs are nil or minimal since you are in the same facility as the carrier's POP.

How much bandwidth can you get for the money? The answer depends on where you are located, where you might be willing to collocate, and how much of a bandwidth level and contract length you are willing to commit to. Don't spend a lot of time trying to run down these deals yourself. Let our team of expert bandwidth consultants review your needs and provide you with a suite of competitive options.