What Dynamic CoS Means to You

By: John Shepler

Most of today’s networks are converged networks. In other words, they carry a variety of traffic from disk backups, file transfers, cloud access, VoIP telephony, audio streaming, video conferencing & streaming and web services. With all of that going on, how do you ensure that your networks maintain the integrity of every process?

The Need for QoS
A network is more than a “dumb pipe” when Quality of Service (QoS) controls are implemented. What do you need that for? Can’t you just provide enough bandwidth so that every packet can traverse the network without limitation?

You certainly can if your pockets are deep enough. 10 Gbps? 100 Gbps? 1 Tbs? There is some bandwidth level short of infinite that will carry any traffic you throw at it with ease. Unfortunately, such capacity gets very expensive very fast. On a local network, you may find that even the fiber you have isn’t enough. When ordering MAN and WAN bandwidth, the cost can make your eyes bug out.

Different Applications, Different Requirements
This is where quality of service controls come into play. Not every file transfer needs to take place in a fraction of a second. Nobody expects those overnight backups to get done in minutes. Your emails need to get to their destinations, but not instantly. Even video downloads are expected to take some amount of time, considering their size.

What we do insist on is telephone conversations that don’t break up or make each party wait a second before responding. We wan’t video conferencing that doesn’t look jerky and responses from cloud software that don’t hesitate, especially long and random pauses.

The truth is that not all packets need equal treatment. Some need to get right through the network as quickly as possible. Others can wait a second. Still others can get through when they get through… within reason.

CoS to Implement QoS
What’s needed is traffic control that decides how your network capacity is allocated among all the packets that want it at any given time. Implementing this process is called Quality of Service. The mechanism that does that is called Class of Service (CoS).

Class of Service is a numerical tag that is inserted in the Ethernet header. There are three bits assigned for this, giving 8 possible classes from 0 to 7. Most of the time you won’t need this many. A few different classes will keep the insensitive traffic from damaging the highly time sensitive traffic.

Chances are that you have CoS tags implemented on your local network now. This is especially true if you’ve made the transition from analog telephones to SIP phones for VoIP. Phone conversations and huge file transfers don’t play well together… unless they’re kept separate.

Think of CoS as lane assignments on a superhighway. Voice packets go on the high occupancy lane. Cloud traffic gets the fast lane and data backups go in the slow lane on the right. CoS tags determine which lane a packet gets to use.

The Next Step: Dynamic CoS
As conditions change, you may wish to alter the class assignments. Local IT people can implement these changes on your network. The WAN is another matter. Legacy procedures for making changes tend to involve paperwork and delays of even weeks for implementations.

tw telecom has implemented something called Dynamic CoS that allows you as the customer to prioritize your applications dynamically and in real-time. Along with dynamic bandwidth control, it gives you, the user, wide ranging control of WAN network resources, as if they were your own.

Are you in need of more flexible bandwidth services that can respond to rapid changes in business requirements? You may well benefit from newer intelligent and dynamic network services. Find out what MAN and WAN network services are available that meet your requirements.

Do You Need Bandwidth on Demand?

By: John Shepler

When you order a bandwidth service, you are expected to know the bandwidth your network requires and select the best option to deliver it. But, what if your requirements are somewhat fuzzy or subject to change? What if you are moving from an in-house IT data center to cloud computing or cloud communication services? What happens if you get it wrong?

The Limitation of Standard BW Services
Traditional line contracts are for a fixed amount of bandwidth for a set number of years. A DS3 bandwidth connection gives you 45 Mbps bi-directionally at all times. You have the security of knowing that the line speed will be there when you need it. You are also paying for the line to sit there doing nothing when you don’t.

Overprovisioning
This can lead to overprovisioning to ensure that you’ll never run out of capacity. You might only need half the capacity most of the year. Then the holiday rush hits and the network becomes congested at times. The worst situation is when you experience a sudden unexpected wealth of new business and you can’t serve the customers… because you don’t have the capacity.

Making Changes is Slow
When things start to pick up, you can order more bandwidth and keep your fingers crossed that it will be in place before your current line starts to sputter. That’s a problem with traditional telecom services because they are so specific. A T1 line is 1.5 Mbps, a DS3 connection is 45 Mbps, an OC-3 fiber service is 155 Mbps. There is a big gap between service levels and it takes equipment changes to move from one service type to another. That can translate into weeks and even months to make a change.

The Ethernet Advantage
Carrier Ethernet offers a lot more flexibility. If you have a Gigabit Ethernet port installed, you can order 100 Mbps, 200 Mbps, 400 Mbps or some other bandwidth and know that you can upgrade quickly when needed. A GigE port will run at any speed up to 1000 Mbps. You have the option to both upgrade and downgrade your service with just a phone call to your provider. How long does this take? Since there are no equipment changes needed, you may be looking at anywhere between a few hours and a few days max.

Consider Your Port
Of course, you’ll need to think ahead just a bit to know what size port to install. They are typically one of the standard Ethernet speeds of 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps, 1000 Mbps and 10 Gbps. It’s also possible to get a 100 Gbps port installed in certain locations if you really need this much capacity. Most business users need a 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet port or a 1,000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet port.

Bandwidth Bursting is Better
Additional flexibility is provided by a feature called “bandwidth bursting.” Bursting means that you have some ability to get extra capacity automatically on a short term basis. Not all line services offer this ability. It’s more typical on MPLS IP VPN networks. The capacity is already available on the network. You are simply paying for a committed information rate (CIR). It you need more, you get more and simply pay for the excess used during the month.

Bandwidth on Demand For The Most Flexibility
Bandwidth-on-Demand takes this idea a step further. This is a dynamic network design that can give you more capacity on the fly. You don’t have to plan ahead or settle for a “best effort” by the provider. Bandwidth-on-Demand gives you extra capacity on the fly at the quality of service (QoS) level you’ve pre-selected. XO Communications, a worldwide leader in WAN bandwidth solutions, is offering this service for organizations that need to accommodate unanticipated capacity needs. They are promoting it especially for cloud and multi-cloud service environments.

What Do You Need Now?
Could your operation benefit from Bandwidth-on-Demand, burstable bandwidth or easily scalable Ethernet bandwidth? Get quick quotes and recommendation on flexible bandwidth solutions now.


Note: Image of Gamma Ray burst courtesy of NASA on WIkimedia Commons.

VoIP Compatible High Speed Internet

Voice over IP (VoIP) technology is attracting more and more business users all the time. There are big advantages over traditional Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) in features and cost savings. The big issue is what to do with the outside phone lines.

Why is this even a question? It’s because the century old public telephone system has been based on analog transmissions over twisted pair copper wiring. Many smaller companies still have multiple analog business lines connected directly to their phones or to Key Telephone systems or in-house PBX systems. Others who are big enough to need at least a half-dozen outside lines have moved to digital transmission via ISDN PRI, also called T1 PRI.

So, if PRI is digital then what’s the issue with VoIP?

Well, there’s digital and there’s digital. PRI telephone trunks are actually digital replications of the old analog lines. Each PRI consists of 23 channels that each carry one digitized phone conversation. One other channel is used for switching and data, like Caller ID. Those 23 PRI “B” channels are strung together end to end for transmission. Each channel is 8 bits wide and sampled 8,000 times a second. At the far end, the channels are separated and converted back to analog phone signals.

Note that nowhere here is any mention of packets. You know that computer networks all communicate using standardized packets of information. Each packet has both address and data bits. This allows switches and routers to get them from wherever they originate to wherever they are intended.

TDM (Time Division Multiplexed) lines, such as PRI, use channels instead of packets. The switching function is provided by the central office switch. When a phone call is in process, there is a direct electrical connection between the two callers. That connection is set up at the beginning of the call and torn down when the call is over.

If you are thinking that PRI service isn’t really compatible with VoIP, you’d be partially right. It’s really a conversion process between your office phone system that might be VoIP and the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) that is still analog and TDM based. What VoIP really needs is a telephone line that is compatible with packet switched technology.

The first obvious option is to use the Internet to connect you with your VoIP phone service provider. After all, the Internet is readily available, relatively inexpensive to access, and packet based. Remember that Internet Protocol (IP) is the basis of VoIP.

What gets missed is that there is a big difference in the technology that includes Internet Protocol and the actual performance of the public Internet itself. One issue is that the Internet is open to anyone to do pretty much anything they want on it. There is no traffic manager ensuring that each user gets adequate resources for their particular application. There is a pool of resources and it’s first packet come, first served. Your voice packets may be competing with users backing up their files to the cloud, accessing ecommerce websites or downloading HD videos. If there is enough low latency bandwidth for everyone, then no problem. If the pipes get clogged up like rush hour on the Interstate, then you get what you get.

That can be a big problem for sensitive packet streams such as VoIP calls. Network congestion can cause dropped packets that distort the voice, delay some packets so they arrive out of sequence and are discarded, or impose a noticeable delay that makes two-way conversations difficult.

You can improve your chances of getting decent VoIP voice quality by using dedicated instead of shared bandwidth for your connection. That means Ethernet over Copper or T1 lines instead of cable broadband or DSL. You can also impose QoS (Quality of Service) through your own router so that at least your VoIP conversations aren’t competing with computer file transfers in your own office.

A better idea, although a bit pricier, is to use a dedicated private line called a SIP trunk between your network and your service provider. QoS is maintained by the service provider from end to end. As long as you have enough bandwidth to support all the calls you want to make, everything should work beautifully all the time. SIP trunks can be set up to provide you with both telephone service and broadband Internet access. This is done by dividing up the trunk so that phone calls and Internet are kept completely separate.

Are you considering a change to your business phone system because you are dissatisfied with how it works or are looking to add features or reduce costs? Investigate enterprise VoIP and hosted PBX solutions with SIP Trunks as a better approach for your company.

Secure To The Core Cloud Hosting

Moving to cloud based solutions is making sense for more and more companies. The cloud offers easy scalability, near-infinite resources, high performance, no maintenance headaches and the opportunity to avoid capital investments and pay only for what you use. The one nagging issue is how secure is the cloud, really?

MegaPath, a major player in private networking and hosted IT services, has taken a big step toward assuring businesses that their data and business process will remain private by introducing a concept it calls “secure to the core.” Just what does secure to the core mean and how can it work for your business?

Nearly every cloud service provider touts its security. This generally centers around the data center itself. Many are SAS 70 Type II and SSAE 16 compliant with physical security that include biometric scanning, a full time security staff, video surveillance and a walled fortress. Inside there are redundant power and cooling systems, fire suppression and multiple WAN connections to the outside world. However, this last group is really more about reliability than security.

With proper personnel screening and all the physical and technical barriers to entry, it’s not that hard to physically keep people out who don’t belong in the data center. It’s more difficult to keep them out when they come in through the Internet.

The Internet is a weak link when it comes to any data security program. The most motivated and talented of wrong-doers operate in this domain. They eagerly stalk potential targets to penetrate and make off with intellectual property, credit card numbers, personal data that can be used for identity theft and anything else of value. It takes talented network security people and an array of firewalls and security appliances to protect high value business, organizational and government assets that face the Internet.

This is where MegaPath has a leg-up on a lot of cloud service providers. They also have the latest in high security data centers that meet stringent industry compliance standards. What MegaPath has that most providers don’t is a large private network completely independent of the Internet.

When you think about it, companies with multiple locations or Intranets that include key suppliers and customers don’t really need the Internet for internal communications. In fact, it is highly desirable to keep internal communications on a private network for both security and performance. MegaPath makes this affordable for all size businesses through their nationwide MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) fiber optic network. The label switching technology of MPLS makes packet forwarding simple and efficient. It also allows customers to chose from eight levels of QoS (Quality of Service) so that time sensitive packet streams get the priority they need to maintain integrity end to end. This is ideal for enterprise VoIP telephone systems and video conference or telepresence.

MegaPath can offer you MPLS network connections throughout the United States plus Managed SSL VPN, Retail Access SSL and Business Continuity SSL. Their compliance services help companies meet regulatory requirements such as PCI DSS, FFIEC/NCUA, HIPAA/HITECH, GLBA and SOX.

Of course, you probably want Internet connections as well to serve the general public and commercial buyers, and for employee access to the vast information resources available worldwide. MegaPath offers a comprehensive security array called UTM or Unified Threat Management. This includes advanced firewall, intrusion prevention, anti-virus protection, Web filtering, anti-spam, Web application control and data loss protection. These UTM services can be implemented within the cloud, at the customer’s premises or in a hybrid configuration.

Are you looking for cloud services that have rigorous physical and network security protections? Get features and pricing for secure network and cloud services from MegaPath and other high quality providers.

The PBX Disappears With Hosted Voice

Medium and large companies are used to managing their own phone systems. It seems to go without saying that if you want to be able to make inter-office calls, you need to have a PBX or at least Key telephone system in-house. Hosted voice service says quite the opposite. With hosted voice, you only need to provide the phones. Sometimes even those are provided for you.

Hosted Voice, also known as Hosted VoIP or Hosted PBX, is a cloud service. The PBX phone system hasn’t magically disappeared. It’s simply been relocated from your building to the service provider’s.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because this is the model most companies used about half a century ago. What? You don’t recognize it? Back in the day, we all got our phones from Ma Bell and let her do the switching.

Centralized switching at the local phone company is what built the Bell system. That worked perfectly for residential users and small businesses. Larger companies wanted control of their calling and installed switchboards with operators. Later, when technology enabled it, they tore out the switchboards and installed automatic switching equipment. The phone company had an answer to the PBX. It’s called Centrex. They move the switching back to their “cloud” and handle internal as well as external calls.

There are a number of advantages to dumping the switched circuit model of Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) and moving toward what is known as network voice. What’s changed over the last few decades is that every company now has a computer network. What they may not recognize is that the telephone system is also a network. It’s just a different and very specialized network. Why have two networks when you can combine them and maintain just one network?

It no longer makes sense to add modems to computers so they can run on the telephone network. Computer networks are so large and so fast that they have left voice lines in the dust. Instead, it makes more sense to modify telephones so that they can run on the computer networks. Telephones that have this capability are called IP phones or SIP phones. SIP is the switching system used by VoIP telephone systems.

The term VoIP or Voice over IP describes the nature of this system. You are transporting telephone calls, or voice, over IP Networks. Your LAN is an IP network. The IP stands for Internet Protocol, regardless of whether it is connected to the actual Internet or not.

This is how hosted voice works. Your PBX and analog telephones are hauled away for salvage or resale. In their place you get brand new IP phones that you unpack and plug into your network just like you would a computer or a printer. Then you pick up the phone to place a call and...

Oh, wait. You can’t make a call until you get a phone line to your network. That line is called a SIP Trunk. The SIP Trunk is what connects you to your service provider. At your end is a voice gateway installed by the service provider. At the far end is their very large telephone switching system, called a soft switch, and all the outside phone trunks that connect it to the public telephone system.

There’s a caveat here. Some smaller businesses try to cheap out and use the Internet to provide the connection to their phone service provider. That’s a pretty dicey arrangement because the Internet doesn’t offer any QoS or Quality of Service mechanisms. Your voice packets and the neighborhood kid’s pirated movie packets are all jammed together with no priority for anyone. If traffic backs up, it’s just like the tollway at rush hour. Everything creeps along and your phone conversations get choppy. They might even drop completely.

The best practice is to get your SIP Trunk from the same company that is providing your hosted voice service. They will give you a line that serves up telephone calls and the Internet without any interference between the two. As a single provider, they are responsible for both the line and the phone service. They’ll manage this arrangement to make sure both work optimally.

Regardless of the size of your business, it is well worth your while to investigate the features and cost savings from hosted voice solutions. Savings can be as high as 50% and you may be able to include your mobile phones as well as your office phones.

Meshed MPLS Forms a Cloud of Clouds

MPLS networks have risen to prominence lately as replacements for old-school Frame Relay networks that link multiple business locations. MPLS networks are highly popular because of their ability to transport nearly any protocol with high quality and reliability. One remaining wish has been the ability to use a multitude of carriers at various locations and still have them interconnected by a managed MPLS network. That desire has now been realized.

AireSpring, one of the fastest growing and most innovative competitive carriers, is now offering what they call a Meshed MPLS Network. Just what does such a networking scheme do and how is it different from the meshed network connections inherent in any MPLS network?

MPLS networks can be thought of as classic clouds. You connect each of your locations to the cloud by means of a last-mile access network and then instruct the MPLS network operator how each location should connect to the others. These can be private point to point links, a star network with corporate headquarters at the center, or a meshed network arrangement. The meshed approach is highly popular because it allows any location to communicate with any other location at will. You don’t have to be actively managing or even monitoring the network, as the service provider takes care of that.

The one fly in the ointment is that you need to contract with one MPLS network provider for all your connections. That service provider will take care of getting the access connections, even if it means subleasing copper or fiber from another carrier. But what if you already have contracts with carriers to provide MPLS mesh networks for particular geographical territories?

This can happen easily if your company grew by mergers and acquisitions. It can also happen in decentralized organizations or conglomerates of businesses that haven’t traditionally had a need to connect with each other. Not all carriers have a nationwide footprint. It’s common for some carriers to be strong in parts of the country and not have a presence at all in others. All of this results in the head-scratching problem of how you tie together disparate WAN networks.

This is the problem that AireSpring’s Meshed MPLS Network solution addresses. Their MPLS Mesh (tm) creates a NNI (Network to Network Interface) that ties together multiple carrier solutions running at T-1 or higher speeds into one MPLS Virtual Private Network. You then have the choice of linking all of your sites into a single IP network or segmenting your data into multipole secure networks. Note that the segmenting can now be logical and not geographical.

Meshed MPLS technology gives companies a flexibility that they haven’t had before. You can now pick and choose which carrier you want to serve which locations to minimize your telecom costs. Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms ensure that you can converge your entire network for voice, data and video. Your critical business applications will get the prioritization that they need for high quality performance.

Are you frustrated with your current hodge-podge of disparate telecom services that don’t quite perform the way you need and cost you a small fortune? It’s time to take a look a consolidating all that with a more advanced networking solution. Get MPLS network service pricing and features for all your business locations now. You’ll likely find you can have higher performance and lower cost at the same time.

Smoothstone’s Converged IP Cloud Expanding To Europe

Smoothstone IP Communications, an innovator in the new field of cloud-based unified communications, is expanding its service portfolio to include European locations. Could this be the start of a cloud that covers the Earth?

You bet it is. Thanks to international MPLS connectivity, it is now feasible to port any IP service to anywhere on Earth. That’s the beauty of MPLS networks. They take whatever you’ve got and transport it anywhere users can connect to the network.

Well, it’s not quite that simple. There’s a matter of scaling involved. Servers that easily handle the load for a limited universe of users in a regional area can become quickly overloaded when a tsunami of new users joins the network from a global footprint. Likewise, the core network has to have the bandwidth needed to handle the increased traffic without degrading latency, jitter and packet loss characteristics.

Smoothstone has addressed these issues, partially by expanding their cloud-based applications platform into several European data centers. That removes a potential bottleneck that could form if all packets needed to be processed through a single U.S. data center. It also makes call termination to off-net European phones easier and less costly.

One of the advantages that Smoothstone touts for moving enterprise voice services to their IP cloud is that internal phone calls stay on the network even when those calls are transatlantic to the UK, France, Germany or Switzerland. It’s only when calls need to be terminated to the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) that connection costs are incurred. The more local the call termination, the cheaper it is. That argues for geographically diverse data centers and central office equipment to support telephony in the cloud.

What is also significant is that Smoothstone is not merely another VoIP service provider. The heart of their competitive portfolio is unified IP communications services. That means converged voice and data services to gain the cost advantages that come from deploying one network among business locations rather that separate telephone and data networks. Convergence can be a tricky proposition for time sensitive applications like network voice. If not done properly, VoIP calls can degrade into clipped and garbled conversations. Calls can even be dropped in extreme cases.

MPLS networking is especially suited to supporting converged voice and data. Not only are multiple protocols supported, but these privately owned and operated networks are carefully managed to ensure Quality of Service (QoS) at all times. For companies that want to unify their communications among multiple locations, it’s hard to argue against a solid MPLS core network. Now smoothstone is taking a leadership position to expand the very same converged services to include European cities. By the end of 2010, they expect to be providing applications and services across Europe.

Is your company still suffering from last century’s networking solutions? Have you been stymied by the process of creating unified communications that delivers the quality of service you require? What you need is the right provider with assets and resources to deliver the right solution for your size of operation and be able to seamlessly scale up as your business level increases. See how Smoothstone and other cloud networking services can provide the connectivity you need at a cost that makes sense.

Level 3 Shows How The Converged Business Network Saves Money

Network convergence has been an initiative for larger organizations since IP became accepted as the default network protocol. But smaller companies, with smaller or non-existant IT staffs, have paid little attention. That’s all changed recently. Now, convergence is for everyone.

Why the big change? The primary driver is cost savings, as it has always been. Cost savings has become an ongoing business process in this era of continuing austerity. But the real enabler is the availability of managed convergence. The carrier becomes your partner rather than simply a vendor. This relieves you of the burden of network management, especially WAN network management.

Level 3 has entered this space with its Converged Business Network solution. The idea is to use one bandwidth pipe for voice, Internet and VPN instead of three separate pipes. In one example, Level 3 replaces three separate T1 lines at 1.5 Mbps each with a single 3 Mbps connection that handles everything. That 3 Mbps link could be bonded T1 lines, or it could be one of the newer Ethernet services. They show stand alone services at $ + $ + $ being reduced to converged services for $.

A 3 to 1 reduction? That’s not unreasonable. After all, 3 Mbps Ethernet over Copper services are often priced about the same as a single T1 line.

How can you get a 3:1 line cost reduction without destroying quality of service? The answer is in two pieces. First of all, the bandwidth reduction isn’t that dramatic. You are going from 4.5 Mbps to 3 Mbps. Cost is going down faster than bandwidth. Second, the question assumes fully loaded line services. That’s seldom the case. Many companies have T1 lines because that’s the smallest commercial grade line service available to them. They wind up ordering 3 lines in order to keep voice, Internet and VPN applications separate so they won’t interfere. In reality, only a fraction of that available 4.5 Mbps is needed at any given time.

This is how a converged 3 Mbps WAN network can do the same job cheaper. QoS or quality of service controls are maintained on that connection so that time sensitive voice packets have priority over less time-sensitive data packets. At times when there are fewer telephone conversations in progress, that bandwidth is released for use by the broadband Internet or VPN services. This is called dynamic bandwidth allocation. In a situation with separate lines, any unused capacity simply goes to waste. It is not available for any other use.

A converged voice and Internet service called Integrated T1 has been on the market for years. However, its availability has been spotty and its focus has been on traditional analog and PBX telephony rather than the more advanced features of enterprise VoIP systems. Level 3’s service goes way beyond Integrated T1 with Ethernet connection speeds up to 100 Mbps as a standard package. That makes it an attractive service for medium and larger companies that long ago outgrew their T1 lines.

Is your company on the lookout for ways to save money while preserving quality of services? If so, you should inquire about the cost and benefits of network convergence. You could be missing out on a major advantage for your business.

Wireless SIP Trunking

One thing we know about business telephone and dedicated broadband access is that they are wireline services. Well, that’s what we used to know. There’s a new player in the marketplace and it is wireless SIP trunking.

A pioneer in this field is Airband Communications. They offer enterprise-class IP-based voice services bundled with wireless Internet access. In wireline parlance, this could be called a SIP trunk or Integrated voice and data service. But Airband VoIP trunking service has some unique advantages.

Like other integrated services, there is only one WAN connection providing both telephone and broadband Internet access. This one just happens to be wireless. Also like the better integrated services, bandwidth is dynamically allocated between voice and data to make efficient use of the connection. Voice packets get priority to maintain quality of service. The bandwidth sharing of voice and data also only exists between your facility and Airband. Your telephone calls never travel on the Internet and aren’t subject to the disruptive effects of congestion, jitter and latency on the public network. In fact, you get a unified service level agreement from Airband that covers availability, packet loss, latency and jitter for your peace of mind.

Standard telephone trunking using ISDN PRI generally comes in blocks of 23 channel with a maximum carrying capacity of 23 separate phone lines. Airband’s VoIP trunks can be added in single increments. Buy these outside phone line connections as business picks up and you need them rather than paying for excess resources up front.

A standard package starts at 5 VoIP trunks minimum bundled with 2 Mbps of Internet access. This is perfect for smaller businesses, with unlimited local calling and 200 minutes of domestic long distance per trunk. 911 support is included. So is local number portability so you can keep the phone numbers you have now. You’ll also get both inbound and outbound caller name and ID. If you want, you can add-on DIDs (Direct Inward Dialing), toll free numbers and directory listing, and analog/Fax/security lines. The interface of this system will support either PRI or SIP to your in-house telephone system.

Don’t confuse this fixed wireless service with either cellular or WiFi services. This is professional grade private fixed wireless network with 128 bit data encryption and quality of service (QoS) controls. The radios at each end automatically adjust 8 levels of signal modulation to ensure reliable transmission in all types of weather. In fact Airband offers Dual Path Service Delivery (DPSD) that automatically fails over to the backup service should the main path ever fail. With wireline services, you have to do this yourself by ordering separate diverse line services from different carriers or take your chances on line breaks.

Could your business or organization benefit from a high quality fixed wireless solution with bandwidth up to Gigabit Ethernet? If so, get service availability and pricing on fixed wireless for voice and data now.

Is Voice Over MPLS The New PSTN?

It’s clear that packet switched networks are taking over from circuit switched networks. So much so, that the FCC is considering pulling the plug on the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) at some point. It’s a clear omen that the end is near for the telephone system that has served us for over a century. But what will take its place? Will it be VoIP? How about cellular?

It’s likely that VoIP is going to be the answer, but not the VoIP that we know today. What VoIP has going for it is established standards for coding & decoding, signaling, and a packet protocol that is compatible with Ethernet data networks. What’s holding it back from taking over virally is a wide variety of incompatible implementations, fear by wireless carriers that it will bring down their networks, and unpredictable voice quality on the Internet.

That hasn’t stopped major organizations from switching to enterprise VoIP solutions. They avoid the problems that consumers face using Voice over the Internet by rigidly controlling the performance of their in-house networks. For calls that need to go outside the organization, enterprise users will terminate outside calls to the PSTN through ISDN PRI digital trunks or have a third party SIP trunking provider terminate the calls.

Clearly, the larger the organization, the higher the percentage of calls that can be kept in-house. When companies have multiple locations, they have a decision to make. Each location can have its own PBX telephone system and connect to the PSTN for calls leaving the building. Or, a corporate PBX telephone system can handle all facilities with private trunk lines running between locations.

Chances are that a multi-location business needs data connectivity between locations anyway. So, adding voice packets to the data stream makes sense. That way call quality can be assured while avoiding the per-minute costs of using the public telephone system. The question is what type of network will work best for this application.

MPLS is increasingly becoming the network architecture of choice for converged voice and data networks. MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching is designed from the ground up to handle whatever protocol you want to transport. But even if everything is IP, MPLS has some big advantages over rolling your own network with private lines.

MPLS are privately operated and available only to customers of the service. That gives the network operators the ability to ensure the availability of enough bandwidth to prevent congestion and the resulting latencies and dropped packets that slow data and destroy voice services. QoS or Quality of Service control ensure that voice packets get the priority treatment they need to maintain high audio quality.

MPLS networks are also mesh networks, which makes them ideal for interconnecting multiple business locations. You can do this yourself with a hub and spoke arrangement with headquarters at the hub and routing traffic among the other locations. But your costs will be higher and the latency between locations greater when everything has to go through a central routing hub on private point to point trunk lines.

MPLS makes so much sense that the large telecom carriers are converting their core networks to MPLS to handle today’s traffic and whatever will be coming through the pipes tomorrow. Data, voice and video are handled equally well and can be transported in traditional TDM channel as well as packet protocols. What we call the PSTN today may well become interconnected MPLS networks in the future.

In the meantime, you can be enjoying the quality, security and cost advantages that MPLS networks have to offer. Learn how MPLS for VoIP networks can work for your organization.

MPLS Just Got Easier

MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching is fast becoming the core transport technology of choice for point to point and point to multipoint networks. If MPLS is gaining acceptance, what is on the wane? It's Frame Relay networks for sure, and perhaps legacy TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) networking in general. If you're still on one of those legacy networking technologies but wondering if a move to MPLS would be advantageous, you're in luck. A new service is here to make your life easy.

The newest service of Telarus, Inc., the creator of the GeoQuote (tm) instant online pricing service for T1 and DS3 line services, is called Shop For MPLS. It's exactly what it sounds like and then some. This is an online tool that lets you enter information about your business locations and how you are going to use the network. That gives the automated search system and the Telarus consultants the data needed to calculate the best options for your situation.

You'll notice that the Shop For MPLS query form is more detailed than the simple GeoQuote quote request form found on Shop For T1. The reason for this lies in the inherent nature of MPLS networking.

If MPLS were a wireless technology, it might be called 4G. The impetus for a new core network technology comes from the need to transport a variety of protocols from point to point or as a mesh network. Plus today's need to provide a QoS or quality of service control to ensure that real time services, such as VoIP or live video, are protected from degradation by network congestion.

Without MPLS, you have a potpourri of network technologies and pick the one that most closely matches your application requirements. Frame Relay has been a popular service for connecting multiple locations. It uses a private network with virtual circuits that are set-up between locations. Multiple users share the network and the cost, but your data has a committed information rate that is protected.

MPLS does something similar by employing an extensive private network to connect among multiple locations. Instead of virtual circuits, MPLS routers employ labels or tags that define source, destination, and quality of service. The quality of service part of the tag is what makes MPLS able to reliably transport voice and video and well as data.

MPLS networks are based on IP rather than legacy TDM protocol, although they can transport TDM services such as T-carrier or SONET. Many large scale carriers are building new MPLS networks or converting their TDM networks to MPLS. This make the MPLS marketplace very competitive and offers considerable cost savings for network service users.

The new Shop For MPLS online service recognizes that many ideal candidates for MPLS networking are companies with many locations. These can be branch offices, retail outlets, franchises, warehouses and factories. You have the ability to upload a site list rather than having to individually enter a dozen, a hundred or a thousand locations, or mail-in a list or electronic file. That alone can shave days off the quote process and improve accuracy.

The automated analytical tools available to Telarus consultants further improves the opportunity to find the lowest cost solutions from among a large suite of competitive carriers, making it easy to get a good deal on MPLS services.