Fractional and Full Gigabit Ethernet Options

By: John Shepler

Today’s demanding application push for higher and higher bandwidths. Right now 10 Mbps is considered entry level and most businesses need at least 100 Mbps WAN bandwidth to ensure that real-time (VoIP, videoconferencing) and latency sensitive (cloud connections) applications won’t succumb to degradation from network congestion at peak load times. Technology intensive businesses and medium to large scale operations can easily require Gigabit connections. Fortunately, they are easy to come by and relatively inexpensive compared to times past.

One major technology upgrade in the last decade is the standardization and deployment of Carrier Ethernet. This represents a major change in MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) and WAN (Wide Area Network) bandwidth. The legacy services are SONET/SDH, a TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) switched circuit technology originally developed for massive telephone trunking between central offices. Carrier Ethernet acknowledges the fact that packet switched traffic is dominant on networks worldwide. With Ethernet on the local networks, it seems logical to keep everything in the Ethernet protocol from end to end.

Carrier Ethernet can be transported on both copper and fiber lines. The lower bandwidth offerings are found on EoC or Ethernet over Copper. This is a twisted pair technology that uses the same installed cabling that supports T1 and analog phone lines. EoC typically starts at 1 to 3 Mbps and goes up to 10 or 20 Mbps, although there are special situations that will support 50 and even 100 Mbps Ethernet over Copper. These tend to be locations very close to the telco CO where the termination equipment is installed. Copper based Ethernet loses bandwidth capacity rapidly with distance.

Ethernet over Fiber is the logical solution for many, if not most, high performance applications. Bandwidth typically starts at 10 Mbps and goes up to 10 Gbps. Popular service levels are 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and 1 Gbps. These mirror the LAN speeds of standard, fast and gigabit Ethernet.

There are factors that make Carrier Ethernet more affordable and more flexible than the longstanding SONET services. Numerous competitive carriers have deployed their own regional and national fiber networks independent of the public telephone system. They own the fiber and terminal equipment, including last mile drops to your building. This is a very competitive field right now and lease prices per Mbps have plummeted in recent years.

Another real cost savings opportunity arises from the easy scalability designed into Carrier Ethernet services. TDM based bandwidth is technically unique at each service level. T1, DS3, OC3, OC12, OC48 and other installations require specific terminal equipment. If you wish to upgrade to a faster service, you need different equipment installed. That helps drive costs and leads to long installation times.

Carrier Ethernet bandwidths are somewhat arbitrary. Everything works the same regardless of how much traffic is being transported. In other words, Ethernet is Ethernet. What’s important is the speed of the installed port at your location. It is the maximum capacity of the port that sets a limit on the bandwidth you can order. A Fast Ethernet port is good up to 100 Mbps. A Gigabit Ethernet port raises that ceiling to 1000 Mbps.

There is nothing that prevents you from operating your network connection at a speed less than the maximum port capacity. Fractional line speeds that are rate limited by the service provider have been available for other services, such as DS3 or OC3. There are cost savings available with these, but they are not nearly as dramatic as what you’ll find with Ethernet.

In fact, scalability is a big selling point with Carrier Ethernet. Many carriers offer bandwidth upgrades with only a phone call required. The additional capacity can be online in a matter of hours or days. That compares with weeks or months for equipment changes on older services.

This is where Gigabit Ethernet makes sense even if you don’t need that much capacity today. The idea is to install a Gigabit Ethernet port, which is commonly available with a managed router provided by the carrier. The output is a standard copper or fiber Ethernet jack. You can then place your initial bandwidth order at 100 Mbps, 200 Mbps or some other level that represents your current need. When you need more bandwidth, that phone call will get you 500 Mbps, 750 Mbps or one of many other increments. These fractional Gigabit speeds can be increased until you are at the full Gigabit capacity of the port.

Is Gigabit Ethernet still too restrictive? The answer, as you may suspect, is to order a 10 GigE or even 100 GigE port. That’s the practical limit today. As bandwidth demands continue to increase, carriers will upgrade their core networks to Terabit per second and higher speeds. Soon afterwards these speeds will be available to business or organization customers with highly demanding applications.

Are you being squeezed for metro and long haul bandwidth to support your organization? If so, it is well worth your while to look into the availability and cost of fractional and full Gigabit Ethernet services, and higher if needed.

100 Mbps Business Ethernet vs OC3 SONET Bandwidth

By: John Shepler

Many high tech companies and large corporations got into fiber optic bandwidth service years ago. The service they chose was the one available: OC3 SONET. Since then, many have upgraded to higher speeds, also in the SONET family of service, or simply stuck with the OC3 that has been performing reliably over the years.

The entrance of 100 Mbps and higher Ethernet MAN and WAN bandwidth is challenging the dominance of SONET fiber service. Long time users are taking a closer look at the competition. Companies upgrading or ordering bandwidth the for first time are doing their homework before choosing one technology over the other.

SONET (Synchronous Optical NETwork) in the SDH (Synchronous Digital Hierarchy) became the core of most metropolitan, wide area and international networks over the last decades. It was originally developed as a massive telephone trunking technology designed to bundle hundreds and thousands of simultaneous phone calls for long distance transport. With the rise of computer to computer communications and the Internet, SONET services were the logical choice to carry data packets as well as voice channels.

What does SONET have going for it? It is a very mature and well supported technology understood by all of the telephone companies and most network carriers. It is highly reliable and can survive certain fiber cuts and equipment failures. There are a number of service levels available between 155 Mbps and 100 Gbps. Costs have also come down over the years to the point where even smaller companies can consider the entry level OC3 SONET service.

Why throw over a winning service for a newer technology like Carrier Ethernet? It comes down to cost, service features and scalability.

In case you haven’t noticed, just about everything that can communicate uses Ethernet. This includes nearly every corporate LAN, all PCs, printers, scanners, routers, network switches and wireless access points. That’s expanding now to telephones, televisions and any other equipment that is joining the “Internet of Things.” Why not an all-Ethernet world?

The brand of Ethernet that leaves your property is called Carrier Ethernet. It has been standardized by and industry group, the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF), so that it works over long distances, has the operations and maintenance features needed for carrier operations and is compatible from provider to provider.

Let’s compare two very common bandwidth services: 100 Mbps Ethernet vs OC3 SONET. Both are provided over fiber optic strands and delivered to your organization at a specified demarcation point. For Ethernet you use a simple Ethernet copper or fiber patch cord to connect your equipment to the carrier’s demarc. OC3 requires a special interface module that plugs into a router to convert between the Ethernet on your LAN and the SONET that runs on the carrier lines.

This is one reason why SONET is losing ground to Ethernet. If your network and everything on it is running Ethernet, why do a protocol conversion from Ethernet to SONET and back again at the far end just to send Ethernet packets from point to point over to the Internet? There are inefficiencies associated with that conversion process. Plus, you need a specific interface module for each SONET level. An OC3 module won’t work for OC12 or OC48.

SONET has specific service levels, although you can sometimes get fractional or rate limited services below the maximum line speed. Ethernet is scalable by design. The carrier provides an Ethernet port with a maximum speed, typically 100, 1,000 or 10,000 Mbps. Your actual service level can be any speed up to the capacity of the port. You pretty much pay for the bandwidth you are actually using rather than the capability of the circuit.

Scalability can also save you money. A 100 Mbps or Fast Ethernet connection on a 1,000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet port can be scaled up or down easily. With SONET you start out at 155 Mbps for the entry level OC3. That sounds like 50% more bandwidth and it is. However, many companies really need 50 or 100 Mbps but had to buy 155 Mbps because it was that or nothing. If your 100 Mbps Ethernet connection bogs down, you can call the service provider and ask for an upgrade to 150 or 200 Mbps and have it in a matter of hours or days. If you tap out an OC3 connection, you have to wait days or weeks for an upgrade to the next generally available SONET level of OC12 at 622 Mbps.

Besides being able to order just the bandwidth you need now while knowing that you can easily upgrade when the need arises, Ethernet service tends to be less expensive than SONET on a per Mbps basis. But how about the quality of service? Both can deliver your packets with high reliability, low latency, and rock solid bandwidth. SONET tends to have fewer “flavors” available. It’s usually a protected ring arrangement with symmetrical dedicated bandwidth and five-nines (99.999%) reliability.

With business Ethernet, you need to be aware of what you are ordering. You can now get Carrier Ethernet with the same redundant path protection as SONET to ensure that if one circuit fails, the system will automatically switch to the other path in under 50 mSec. You can also get the same 99.999% reliability, low latency & jitter, and symmetrical dedicated bandwidth that you’ve come to expect with SONET services. However, if your applications aren’t so critical and you are more interested in saving money than in having the ultimate in performance, be aware that you can also order Ethernet services with asymmetrical bandwidth, shared bandwidth and unprotected circuits. These flavors of Ethernet work well for general Internet usage and casual PC backup to the cloud and are considerably cheaper.

Is SONET or Ethernet the best choice for your business bandwidth needs? Get free consulting help from a bandwidth expert who can also get you the best pricing from multiple carriers who offer services for your location. Also get instant online quotes for many bandwidth services up to 1 Gbps.

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.

1 Gbps Ethernet Service To The Internet

Internet access demands are on an upward spiral, thanks to a greater mix of video content, big data, large web pages, increasing use of cloud services, and other technical advances. Access speeds have gone from under 1 Kbps to 1 Mbps, 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and now 1 Gbps. Can 10 Gbps be far behind? That day will surely come, but for now let’s take a look at how businesses can connect to the Internet with Gbps bandwidth and without breaking the bank.

Until recently, the only way to get hundreds or thousands of Mbps worth of bandwidth connectivity was to bring in SONET/SDH fiber optic service. Your choices have been OC-12 at 622 Mbps, OC-24 at 1.2 Gbps and OC-48 at 2.5 Gbps. OC-24 isn’t always available, so you may be stuck with OC-48 as your only choice if you need to approach the Gigabit per second speed threshold.

A newer service option is Carrier Ethernet. Standard service levels match the standard LAN speeds of 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps, but much finer increments are also available. You may find steps of 1 Mbps below 10 Gbps, 10 Mbps up to 100 Mbps and 100 Mbps up to 1 Gbps. It’s also possible to get 250 Mbps, 750 Mbps and similar speeds. It all depends on the service provider and how granular they care to offer bandwidth options.

In addition to many more speed increments, Carrier Ethernet is designed to be more rapidly scalable than traditional telecom services. Instead of waiting weeks or months for a service level change to be implemented, you can often get your bandwidth cranked up with nothing more than a phone call to your service provider. That change can be made in a matter of hours or days. The day is not far off when you can get provisioning while-you-wait or do it yourself through a web portal.

Why is Carrier Ethernet able to do this while SONET is not? SONET service levels are strictly defined and each has its own hardware interface. For instance, the plug-in module for your router to connect with OC-12 service is different from the module for OC-48 service. There needs to be truck roll and likely other system changes to upgrade your fiber optic bandwidth even though the fiber itself remains unchanged.

Carrier Ethernet is Ethernet just like you run on your LAN, although extended for long haul deployment and maintenance. LAN network cards (NICs) are generally rated for several bandwidth levels, such as 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and 1000 Mbps. You can connect to your network with any of these, up to the limit that the cabling and switches can handle. With Carrier Ethernet, it’s the port speed that sets the upper limit. If you order a 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet port, you can get any bandwidth level up to 100 Mbps. If you order a 1,000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet port, you can get any bandwidth level up to 1 Gbps.

Gigabit Ethernet or 1 Gbps Ethernet service is becoming very popular, especially for medium and larger size enterprises. What if you see this coming in the next year or two but aren’t quite ready yet? That’s where fractional Gigabit service can match your needs today without limiting you tomorrow. Get that Gigabit Ethernet port installed but order 250, 500, 750 Mbps or whatever bandwidth meets your needs today. You’ll have the peace of mind knowing that you can quickly ramp up that WAN speed without having to pay for unneeded bandwidth right now.

Are you looking for a faster dedicated Internet access connection but frustrated with the service levels and prices available to you? Learn more about Gigabit Carrier Ethernet Internet Service and how it can save you money today and tomorrow.

5 Ways to Access An MPLS Network

MPLS networks have become a highly desirable option to expensive proprietary WAN networks or the public Internet with its performance and security issues. Let’s take a look at what MPLS networks have to offer and the variety of options that you can use to gain access.

You might think of an MPLS network as something of a private Internet for business. MPLS networks are privately owned and operated and don’t offer resources or connectivity for residential users. MPLS is a B2B or Business to Business service. There are numerous service providers, each with their own MPLS networks having regional, national or international service footprints. In addition, there are service providers who specialize in interconnecting MPLS networks to create an even larger reach. The result is a multiple-MPLS or MPLS Mesh network.

MPLS is often the core network of a major service provider. The reason is the versatility offered by this technology. The underlying network is either IP native or SONET/SDH fiber optic service at 10 Gbps or higher. Many networks are now migrating from 40 Gbps to 100 Gbps, which is considered state of the art. What makes the network MPLS is a unique switching and routing scheme that is protocol-agnostic.

The name MPLS is an acronym for Multi-Protocol Label Switching. Multi-Protocol means that the network will accept Voice, Data or Video IP, SONET, T-Carrier or other traffic types. At any given time, the network may be transporting a wide variety of protocols without corruption or interference. Label Switching is the technique that wraps each packet that enters the network with a tag that is used only to forward that packet to the correct destination with an appropriate class of service. Those labels are removed as the packets exit the network in exactly the same state as they arrived.

Think of MPLS networks as private superhighway systems and access as the on and off ramps. A major advantage of procuring MPLS network service for long haul transport is that you only need to worry about getting your traffic to and from the network. The network operator optimizes performance of the MPLS network to ensure adequate bandwidth with low latency, jitter and packet loss. You need the means to get to and from that network with your traffic intact.

EarthLink Business offers a nationwide access-agnostic MPLS network with Service Level Agreements (SLA) based on Class of Service (CoS). They offer 5 different access technologies based on what makes sense at each business location. Note that you can easily mix and match access methods and still maintain complete CoS right up to your own network edge. Here’s what you have to pick from.

The classic and still most popular access method is T1 lines. They are almost universally available over common twisted pair telco wiring that is already installed to most business locations. T1 lines offer 1.5 Mbps symmetrical bandwidth that can be increased by bonding more T1 lines together. EarthLink boasts 4 hour mean time to repair (MTTR) private T1 lines if there is ever a link problem.

Many companies have looked to DSL as a lower cost alternative to T1. ADSL is an asymmetrical bandwidth service with higher download than upload speeds. Earthlink is the first provider to offer CoS traffic management over DSL, making this access method viable for serious business use.

Ethernet over copper (EoC) and fiber (EoF) is a strong competitor to T1, DS3 and higher speed SONET fiber services. Ethernet is a better match to IP traffic than switched-circuit oriented TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) technologies. Ethernet is highly scalable and lower in cost on an Mbps basis, where available.

Wireless access works for companies with new location that need rapid provisioning and for low cost access where DSL is unavailable. 3G and 4G cellular-based bandwidth is often available in rural areas and offers T1 and better speeds without the landline. Fixed wireless microwave transmission offers higher speeds that can be an effective alternative to fiber.

Another unique service from EarthLink is MPLS IPsec. You may recognize IPsec or IP SECurity as a VPN technology used to make connections over the Internet secure. The security comes from using the 3DES encryption algorithm (168 bit). That’s the finance industry standard for network layer encryption. IPsec allows businesses to procure Internet access from a local provider in outlying areas and connect securely to the corporate MPLS network.

Is MPLS a good fit for your business networking needs? Which access methods are right for your various locations? You can easily find this out with a complementary set of MPLS network and access service quotes to compare with your current WAN solution. You may be surprised by the savings possible.

AboveNet Offers Gigabit Ethernet For Enterprises

Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) has pretty much taken over the LAN in large and even medium size enterprises. But what about the WAN? Are you still hobbled by the slowdown that occurs when you are sending files beyond your network edge? Isn’t it time to consider Gigabit Ethernet for the WAN as well as the LAN?

Running a Gigabit LAN and using something like DS3 bandwidth or even OC3 fiber optic service for your MAN or WAN service is like connecting a drinking straw to a fire hose. The flow can’t help but slow to a trickle when it goes through that edge router. There once were good reasons why very modest WAN connection speeds were just fine. Today, there’s much less of a case to be made for order of magnitude or larger differences in LAN and WAN speeds.

What’s happened to demand higher connection speeds today? Computer networks were once strictly internal to a company. In fact, anything connected to the network from the outside aroused suspicion. If you wanted to transfer data somewhere, you used a reel of tape or a cassette. Slowly, data communication networks arose starting with dial-up modems and Frame Relay networks. Then came the Internet. It been a speed race ever since.

Now nearly every company has a dedicated broadband connection to the Internet and perhaps one or more VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) to connect with employees working for home or on the go. Companies with more than one site often have private line or MPLS network connections to tie everyone together. With the amount of data flying around, tapes and removable disk packs are yesterday’s means of data transfer. Today it is high speed network links.

Not only has computer technology changed, but so have business practices. Now nearly everything has some form of automation involved. Business productivity is leveraged upon real-time computer systems and electronic storage. Nobody at headquarters wants you to create a report and send it overnight mail anymore. They want a video conference presentation featuring you delivering the report live. Oh, and they want it right after lunch.

Beyond mere connectivity for transmitting files electronically instead of faxing or mailing paper, companies and their computing systems are becoming estranged. The data center used to be right down the hall or in the basement. Now it’s on the other side of the country and is owned by somebody else. More and more companies are buying their computing and even their telephone service through a cloud service provider. The LAN no longer connects you to the server racks. Now you have to go through a WAN connection. Does it make sense that the bandwidth that used to be good enough for a few overnight file transfers can’t begin to support real time business applications running in the cloud?

The idea of Gigabit Ethernet connections used to be a fantasy. Now it’s becoming a given. You need the high bandwidth connections to support the amount of data moving between organizational locations and back and forth with the cloud. If you are supporting financial trading, high performance SaaS, video conferencing or enterprise VoIP, you need not just high bandwidth but also low latency and jitter with minimal packet loss. In some cases, you may also require links to overseas locations with the same network characteristics.

Where do you go to get Gigabit level connectivity? AboveNet is a premier supplier of domestic and international fiber optic services. They are recommending moving to Ethernet rather than the legacy SONET fiber services. Why? SONET/SDH services are a legacy telephone company technology. They were designed to support trunking massive numbers of telephone conversations from office to office. These protocols can be made to work with computer networks but they are not directly compatible.

What is? Ethernet! The Ethernet that runs on your LAN can now traverse your WAN to the Internet or to another LAN on the other side of the country or across the Atlantic. This makes for a simpler and more efficient overall network setup. It also enables services such as layer 2 Ethernet LAN Service that bridges two distant LANs as if they were in the same building. Ethernet scales much faster and more granularly than SONET, allowing you to buy just the bandwidth you need now with the option to quickly scale up when the need arises. Best of all, Ethernet has a cost advantage over SONET/SDH. You get more bandwidth for the same money or pay less for the same service level.

If you are feeling the pinch from too small WAN connections, this would be an excellent time to check your current options for Ethernet, Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet services from AboveNet and other fiber optic carriers. You can get instant pricing for bandwidths up to 1 Gbps and rapid quotes with helpful consultation for all other services you may be interested in for your company.

Choosing Dark Fiber vs Lit Fiber Service

When your applications are demanding enough to require fiber optic transmission, you’re faced with a choice. Do you order one of the lit fiber services available for your business location or do you buy or rent dark fiber and create your own transport services?

The tradeoffs can be tricky, so you’ll probably want to set up a spreadsheet to compare the performance, cost and installation time for all the services you are interested in.

Installation time? By focusing strictly on cost, you can get caught in a situation where you’ll have the best deal possible... whenever they can get it installed. That can be weeks or even months if you have a particularly difficult situation. Will that meet your needs? If you do your planning well in advance, it just might. If circumstances conspire to demand an order of magnitude bandwidth increase immediately, availability may trump lease cost.

The dark vs lit fiber tradeoff is the classic own vs rent situation. Most companies choose to survey the marketplace for bandwidth services and pick the least cost solution that meets their needs. That process is made easy by using a telecom broker, like Telarus, Inc., that represents dozens of service providers. If you have enough competition for your business, you can get much better pricing than if you are eye to eye with the only telecom sales person for a hundred miles.

One characteristic of both dark and lit fiber services is that they are extremely location sensitive. There may well be accessible fiber running on your side of the turnpike and nothing on the other side, or vice versa. Some buildings have already been “lit” by a particular carrier while others remain dark. Those dark buildings may or may not justify the construction costs of bringing in new fiber connections depending on location and how much service is needed by the tenants.

Lit fiber falls into several major categories. The traditional telecom service is SONET/SDH with OC-3 as the lowest bandwidth of 156 Mbps. An OC-3 can also carry 3 multiplexed DS3 circuits at 45 Mbps each. It’s common for companies to order DS3 and have it delivered by fiber optic cables of much higher capacity. Other SONET levels are OC-12 at 622 Mbps, OC-24 at 1.2 Gbps, OC-48 at 2.5 Gbps and OC-192 at 10 Gbps.

The hot competition for fiber optic bandwidth is Carrier Ethernet. Ethernet tends to be both more scalable and lower cost than SONET where it is available. That availability is becoming more and more common, thanks to aggressive build-outs by competitive carriers and business demand for higher bandwidths at lower costs.

Typical fiber optic Ethernet service levels are 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, 250 Mbps, 500 Mbps, 1 Gbps Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gbps 10GigE. Lower bandwidth such as 50 Mbps Ethernet that competes directly with DS3 may be provisioned on either copper or fiber, depending on the carrier’s available equipment.

Coming on strong for higher bandwidth fiber optic connections is wavelength services. When you order a wavelength, you are getting a virtual fiber all to yourself. Of course, there are many wavelengths on the same physical glass fiber strand, but they differ in color and do not interact. Wavelength services may sense for 10 Gbps requirements, with the added advantages of low latency and high security. With an entire wavelength dedicated to your use, you can use a different protocol than other customers on the fiber. You may be running Ethernet while others are running SONET.

The ultimate in flexibility is dark fiber. By leasing a dark fiber run, you have all the wavelengths at your disposal. You’ll have to buy the termination equipment for each end, but then you’ll have the option to light up as few or many wavelengths as you want. You can run a different protocol on each wavelength and even operate with something non-standard or experimental. Usually it is the largest companies with the most complex IT requirements that go the dark fiber route.

What type of fiber optic service makes the most sense for your operation? Don’t jump to any conclusions until you get a complete set of prices and install times for fiber optic options available for your business location or locations.



Note: Light bulb photo courtesy of Ulfbastel on Wikimedia Commons.

Gigabit Ethernet vs SONET

With the expansion of video content and moves to cloud services, business bandwidth now easily pushes the Gigabit per second level. This certainly means a move from copper to fiber optic services. But did you know that there are two types of fiber optic bandwidth to choose from? They are SONET and Gigabit Ethernet.

SONET is the original fiber protocol developed by the telephone companies to transport large numbers of simultaneous telephone calls between switching centers and internationally. SONET stands for Synchronous Optical NETwork. There is an international version of this protocol called SDH for Synchronous Digital Hierarchy. Together they are often referred to a SONET/SDH.

SONET’s origins go back to the initial development of digitized telephone conversations and the transmission of these a groups using trunks known as T1 lines. The larger T3 lines can carry the equivalent of 28 T1 lines or a data bandwidth of 45 Mbps. There are no faster copper telco standards. The next step up is OC-3 at 155 Mbps. That’s enough to transport 3 DS3 circuits and, indeed, the protocol is designed to easily multiplex and demultiplex lower level services. When you order a DS3 today, it will be transported most if not all of the way multiplexed into a OC service. A device called an ADM or Add-Drop Multiplexer gets the service on and off the optical network.

You’ve probably guessed that OC stands for Optical Carrier. There are a number of optical carrier levels that include OC-3 at 155 Mbps, OC-12 at 622 Mbps, OC-24 at 1.24 Gbps, OC-48 at 2.49 Gbps, OC-192 at 9.95 Gbps and OC-768 at 39.8 Gbps. When you hear about 10 Gbps SONET, it is an OC-192 service. The 40 Gbps that many carriers use for long haul transmission is OC-768.

What about intermediate rates? Not all levels between 1 and 768 are defined. Others, such as OC-9, OC-18, OC-36 and OC-96 are standardized but not generally offered in service.

SONET/SDH is set up in ring arrangements with two separate fiber strands for each ring. They are redundant circuits, so if one fails the other can pick up the load within 50 mSec.

Ethernet is a completely different protocol developed by the computer industry rather than the telephone companies. It is based on packets rather than telephone channels. Most LAN connected devices have a NIC or Network Interface Card that supports 10/100/1000 Ethernet. That means the device can run at 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps or 1,000 Mbps (1 Gbps). Corporate LANs may now run at 1 Gbps with some parts of the network using 10 Gbps or 10 GigE.

The equivalent of Ethernet in the LAN for local networks is Ethernet WAN or Wide Area Network. Switched Ethernet used for WAN applications is also called Carrier Ethernet. If the service is local to a particular city or metro area, it is often called Metro Ethernet or Metropolitan Ethernet and the network is referred to as a MAN or Metro Area Network.

Like telco services, Ethernet may be delivered over copper or fiber. Twisted pair copper telephone line can be used up to 100 Mbps. That speed is also available over coaxial copper cable through Cable systems. Beyond that, fiber optic connections can deliver 1 Gbps or 10 Gbps for business applications.

Ethernet is designed to be far more scalable than SONET. Instead of ordering a particular service level, such as OC-24, you order an Ethernet port capable of handling a maximum speed, say 1 Gbps. With the port in place, you can pay for Gigabit Ethernet if you need that much, or you can order 250 Mbps or 500 Mbps Ethernet and upgrade quickly and easily when the need arises.

Which fiber optic service should you order? In general, Ethernet is less expensive per Mbps than SONET. Sometimes the price savings can be dramatic. The one sticking point is that you need to have the service installed in your building. You may have one or the other services now or nothing at all. The cost of construction to bring in the right fiber from the right carrier can outweigh the monthly lease costs. You should know, though, that Ethernet can often be carried on SONET and that competitive carriers are hungry to get new buildings on their networks. These factors can affect the availability and pricing of fiber optic services to your building.

Fiber optic build-outs are progressing rapidly and the demand for high speed bandwidth increases. Even if you went out for bids a year ago, the situation may have changed for the better since then. The best thing to do is get new prices and availability for fiber optic bandwidth services for your particular business location.



Note: Photo of data center servers courtesy of WikimediaCommons

Broadband Ethernet Connections

When we think of Ethernet, it’s probably in regard to the protocol that runs on our LANs. Broadband? That’s something else entirely. Or is it?

Ethernet has moved from the LAN to the MAN to the WAN. That gives companies the opportunity to extend their networks across town, across the country and even internationally. But what about the Internet? What does Ethernet have to do with the Internet?

Ethernet and the Internet have been closely coupled from the beginning. The Internet is based on IP routing, not legacy telco circuit switching. But the Internet would have gone nowhere without telco technologies such as T1, DS3, and SONET/SDH (OC3, OC12, OC48, etc.) That’s because the telephone companies owned the digital lines and their mature technologies. The sensible and cost effective approach has been to do what is necessary to use these existing services to transport IP packets as well as other voice and data traffic.

That brings us to access. What do you have to connect with the Internet? It’s likely a T1 line, DS3 connection or a fiber optic service based on SONET. Very small businesses may be using DSL, Cable broadband, two-satellite or 3G & 4G cellular wireless. Why not use Ethernet as your last mile connection?

That’s a good question. In fact, it makes more sense now to install a broadband Ethernet connection to the Internet than ever before. The technology is proven and already deployed to most major cities and suburbs. What’s more, it will probably save you money.

The most popular and lowest cost Ethernet broadband services use Ethernet over Copper or EoC technology. This appears to be similar to T1 technology in that it is based on using twisted pair copper wires to bring the service into your building. Chances are that you have the wiring in place already for multi-line telephone service and perhaps a T1 line or two.

Ethernet over Copper offers dedicated Internet access, just like T1, where you have a committed bandwidth level that does not vary and is not shared with other users. The technologies are a bit different in that the EoC interface to your LAN is a simple Ethernet connector. If you are already using a managed T1 router, that may not be important because the interface is already handled by the service provider and you simply connect your edge router to the T1 router.

You’ll notice a difference in bandwidth scalability. T1 lines are designed around a fixed bandwidth of 1.5 Mbps. If you want more, you bond additional T1 lines in 1.5 Mbps increments. This is practical up to around 10 Mbps before it become too expensive for most applications. Ethernet over Copper bandwidth typically starts at 2 Mbps, with 3 Mbps a popular speed for about the same price as a single 1.5 Mbps T1 line. But EoC can easily deliver 5 Mbps, 10 Mbps, 15 Mbps and even 20 Mbps. If you order a port with enough capacity, you can often just call your service provider and have them increase your Ethernet bandwidth at will.

What about higher bandwidths? Above 20 Mbps, perhaps as high as 50 Mbps, you’ll need to switch to a fiber optic connection that offers almost unlimited bandwidth expansion. Once again, Ethernet over Fiber is as scalable as Ethernet over Copper. A Fast Ethernet speed of 100 Mbps is very popular because it is also a standard LAN speed. Larger organizations or more demanding applications will want 1 Gbps or Gigabit Ethernet speed. If you need it, 10 Gbps and even 40 Gbps or more is available.

Broadband Ethernet is not available for residential or home office users. For businesses with their own business addresses, you can get pricing and availability on broadband Ethernet services for whatever bandwidths you are interested in. Costs are very attractive, although Ethernet is a metro service and not readily available in rural areas. For those locations, you’ll need to stick with T1 and bonded T1 solutions.

Low Latency Fiber Network For Orange County

Businesses are demanding more bandwidth at lower latencies to support demanding applications such as financial trading, business process automation, cloud computing & storage and medical image transmission. This is creating an opportunity for new fiber buildout, like the one underway in the Los Angeles Metro area.

AboveNet, a major provider of fiber optic networking services in the US and Europe, is launching what they call a large “feeder ring” to connect office buildings, data centers, and carrier hotels to an existing fiber optic backbone that now serves the business districts of Irvine and Costa Mesa in Orange County, California.

Fiber optic connectivity has become the new battleground for competitive service providers as well as incumbent telcos. A major push has been the transition from legacy SONET/SDH to Gigabit Ethernet, 10 GigE and 40 GigE, MPLS networks, dark fiber and wavelength services. Networks are becoming more IP oriented, at the expense of traditional switched circuit TDM technologies. This plays well with the dominance of Ethernet networks in business and the move to converged voice, data and video networks.

Cloud services have opened up a further need for increased bandwidth. When companies had on-site data centers for their servers and storage, most traffic was contained within the building or campus LAN. Special links served overnight tape backup at offsite storage centers. Once computing and disk resources move to a colocation facility or a cloud services provider, there is a corresponding increase in WAN bandwidth requirements. With everything “out there,” a much higher portion of traffic leaves the company LAN.

AboveNet and other carriers are in a major push right now to expand their fiber optic network footprints in the US and abroad. Especially important are low latency networks to Europe and Asia to interconnect financial markets and major international businesses. Private networks require an enormous capital investment and the Internet is unsuitable for high performance, secure connections. That’s creating an opportunity for companies that specialize in metro and long haul fiber optic networks to jump in and fill the need.

Some services that are seeing more demand are IP transit to connect with the Internet backbone for companies that don’t have networks large enough to do their own peering, Ethernet Private Line and LAN services, global MPLS networking, and wavelength services that offer both very high bandwidth capacity along with flexibility of protocols.

Competitive pressures have also reduced the cost per Mbps for nearly all leased line services. This is true for even the ubiquitous T1 lines, but even more so for Ethernet connections of all types. Ethernet availability has expanded to such an extent that it is often far less expensive than T-Carrier or SONET in most metro areas. Gigabit Ethernet and 10 GigE WAN connections are now routinely ordered by larger business and organizations.

Is your company bandwidth starved or simply looking for better prices on existing network services? See if you can do better by checking prices and availability for fiber optic bandwidth.



Note: Orange County, CA photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

Metro Ethernet MPLS Combo

Two of the hottest networking technologies now are Metro Ethernet and MPLS networks. We normally think of using one or the other. But what advantages are gained when you combine the two?

Metro Ethernet is the familiar Ethernet protocol that we’ve come to know and love on our LAN networks. It’s not exactly the same, because it needs to be adapted to work over longer distances than typical building and campus runs.

This, and other service enhancements, have been standardized by the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF), an industry group comprised of over 170 companies and more than 75 service providers. The MEF has defined five attributes that distinguish what they call Carrier Ethernet from the familiar LAN based Ethernet. These are standardized services, scalability, reliability, service management and quality of service.

What carriers get is a set of certified network elements that work to connect users on a local or worldwide basis. They also have services that can be transported over whatever physical networks they have available, including legacy TDM networks originally designed for telephony.

Metro Ethernet is Carrier Ethernet implemented within a city or metropolitan area. Two of the popular standardized services are Ethernet Line Service, a point to point connection, and Ethernet LAN Service, a multipoint connection. Companies use Metro Ethernet to link branch office buildings, factories, warehouses, data centers and other locations in the area.

Ethernet can also be used as a last mile access connection to larger private networks or the public Internet. These links have traditionally been T1 lines, DS3 connections, or SONET/SDH fiber optic services. Ethernet is growing in popularity as a network access service because it is lower in cost and more scalable than legacy telecom services.

At the same time that Carrier Ethernet has soared in popularity, MPLS networks have seen a similar growth in demand. Most networks have a defined protocol that they run. This can be TDM, IP, Frame Relay, or something else. The beauty of MPLS networks is that they are designed to support all protocols. Hence, the name Multi-Protocol Label Switching. The label switching part has to do with a tagging system that is used to encapsulate and route packets while they are on the network. Since the MPLS network doesn’t need to use the internal packet structure for routing, it doesn’t matter what those labels are attached to.

Most new large scale networks are based on MPLS. It doesn’t matter what’s running as the core network. It might be IP. It might be SONET. What the user sees is a privately run network that can securely transport voice, data, video or converged network traffic within a city, between cities or around the world. MPLS networks have all but completely replaced the older Frame Relay networks that were once used to link computers over wide areas.

What you probably have guessed is that Ethernet and MPLS are very compatible. Many carriers have nationwide or international MPLS network service footprints. You can combine Ethernet access with a large MPLS network and create a very cost effective way to link your geographically diverse business locations.

Large scale Carrier Ethernet networks are also on the ascendency. A new interconnection standard called ENNI or Ethernet Network to Network Interface connects Carrier Ethernet service providers so they can share traffic and effectively increase their service footprints. The underlying transport networks may or may not be MPLS networks themselves.

What’s combination of Ethernet and MPLS offers the highest performance at the lowest cost for your applications? There are network consultants available right now to provide you with Metro Ethernet and MPLS service options and pricing at no charge for serious business and organizational users.

Moving on From SONET To Ethernet

Technology change is something we’re all familiar with. Every year, there’s a new bevy of cell phone models that make the old ones look tired and obsolete. Tablets are moving into to take over from netbooks even before netbooks completed taking over from laptop computers. It’s only in the staid world of telecommunications that technology time stands still... or does it?

Actually, there’s been a revolution brewing in telecom for decades. It’s all about move from circuit switching to packet switching technologies. Circuit switching got established from the days of Alexander Graham Bell and only became more entrenched as capital investment in central office switches and digital transmission equipment accumulated.

So, what’s wrong with circuit switching? Technically, nothing. It’s a mature technology honed by a century of refinement. So what’s the motivation to move away from a sure thing?

It’s all about computer networks and especially the Internet. While once there were many architectures and protocols, now the lion’s share is Ethernet. Except for a few special situations that still benefit from non-IP network designs, everything is supporting Ethernet. The economy of scale in manufacturing has operated as a positive feedback loop to ensure that you need a very good reason and deep pockets to select anything but off-the-shelf Ethernet interfaces.

The battlefront is at the interface between LANs and the outside world. It’s Ethernet inside and something else outside. That something else is telecom standardized circuit switched wireline and fiber optics. The need to succeed has made the two compatible through specialized interface hardware and software. But how long will this standoff continue?

Not much longer by the looks of things. Competitive carriers have build their new networks with IP cores rather than adapting traditional SONET fiber optic switched circuit services to transport their Ethernet offerings. SONET/SDH is the high end of circuit switching development and likely the end of the line for this technology path. It has a maturity level and deployment that far exceeds the upstart Carrier Ethernet. Ethernet is the future, SONET is the present and, more and more, the past. At some point, the momentum will switch and the Ethernet takeover will ensue en-masse.

That point may be sooner than any of us think. As evidence, a major competitive carrier, XO Communications, has announced that they are not planning to buy any more SONET moving forward. That’s especially significant since XO is rolling out a major network upgrade over the next few years. This should put a smile on the face of product managers in charge of Ethernet switches, routers, multiplexers and the like. It should have the opposite effect on those planning development and production of SONET equipment. If more carriers follow suit, you’ll see Ethernet lines becoming more robust and SONET heading for end-of-life management.

You can see the handwriting on the wall by comparing Carrier Ethernet line services with their SONET equivalents. On a Mbps and Gbps basis, Ethernet is getting cheaper faster than SONET in most areas. As the price gap widens, IT managers will need more and more justification for choosing SONET over Ethernet. Even if there’s capital investment involved in switching over to all-Ethernet networking, it will increasingly be seen as a smart move.

How about your high bandwidth connections? Could you be benefiting from Carrier Ethernet right now and not realize it? Time is money, so don’t wait any longer to find out. Get Carrier Ethernet service prices and availability now. You, too, may become part of the stampede from SONET to Ethernet.



Note: Fisheye photo of data center courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Switch to Switched Ethernet Service

Are you still living in the world of telecom past? Those are the days when you had one network protocol inside and something completely different outside. Switch to switched Ethernet service and your network has more options and easier interfacing.

What constitutes telecom past? It’s the legacy transport services developed as telephone technologies and later pressed into service to connect data networks through the public switched telephone network. That includes such favorites as Frame Relay, T1, DS3 and SONET/SDH.

What’s so bad about these venerable telecom services? Nothing at all. They are time-tested solutions to business connectivity. All of these services are readily available, perhaps with the exception of Frame Relay which is being rapidly replaced by MPLS networks. They offer high reliability and dedicated bandwidth suitable for business operations. The only real question is whether these are the BEST options available for your connectivity needs.

There’s a newer networking technology being deployed nationwide, indeed worldwide, right now. What it does is simplify the LAN to MAN to WAN connection. Everything is standardized on the Ethernet protocol. Connectivity is seamless, since outside network connections simply plug into your network edge Ethernet switch and become an extension of your LAN.

Contrast this approach to having to install a CSU/DSU interface card into a router to make the networks compatible. Inside your company, everything is packet based. Outside, those packets have to be shuttled into and out of TDM channels that transport them between locations or to and from the Internet.

With an all-Ethernet system, you also gain some service options you didn’t have before. Ethernet line service gives you a point to point connection between two LANs at different locations. Ethernet LAN service creates a multi-point to multipoint network that links 3 or more locations. All of these locations will appear to be on one large bridged network with switched Ethernet service. The engineer at the desk across town is effectively right next door to the marketing manager a couple of states away and the warehouse on the other side of the globe.

Just to add icing to the cake, Ethernet services also tend to be lower in cost per Mbps than equivalent legacy telecom services. It’s not uncommon to get 3 Mbps Ethernet at the same price as 1.5 Mbps T1 service. The distinction gets even larger as you go up in speed and include multiple locations.

Are you missing out by still depending on yesterday’s telecom technology to support today’s business needs? Check pricing and availability of switched Ethernet service to see if you can get better service for less money? There’s a good chance you can.

AboveNet Core Wave Makes Dedicated Wavelength Bandwidth Available

What do you do when ordinary bandwidth is no longer up to the task? You go above and beyond with AboveNet’s Core Wave service. For demanding financial services, media, health care, retail and government applications, you really do have to get to the core of fiber optic transport. The very core.

Most telecom services are electrically multiplexed somewhere along the way. What multiplexing does is combine your bandwidth service with dozens, hundreds or thousands of others to fill the capacity of a fiber optic core network. But what if you have enough demand on your own to take all the bandwidth a service provider can deliver?

One answer is to become your own service provider. You do this buy building-out or buying fiber strands or even entire fiber optic cables. That’s what Cable TV MSOs do. So do major telecom service providers. But bandwidth is their business. It’s what they do to generate income. You aren’t really in the business of bandwidth. You simply want to use large amounts of bandwidth to enable your business processes. Does investing large amounts of capital in fiber infrastructure really make sense for your corporate mission?

Of course it doesn’t. What does make sense is to partner with a service provider that has already made the investment and has enough bandwidth capacity at their disposal to meet your current and future needs. AboveNet has that capability and now they are making it available to large organizations in major markets.

Let’s take a look at AboveNet Core Wave. It’s a high capacity bandwidth service for point to point connectivity in metro areas, like New York City. Right now you can get 1 Gbps, 2.5 Gbps and 10 Gbps service. The platform is scalable, so that when demand justifies it AboveNet can also offer 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps bandwidth services.

How are they doing this? The platform is built on a fiber optic network managed by ROADMs. A ROADM is a Reconfigurable Optical Add Drop Multiplexer. This is the cutting edge of fiber optic networking. What a ROADM does is manage the traffic on the network optically. Each fiber transports not one, but many different light beams known as Lambdas or wavelengths. Each wavelength is said to have a different color, although these are in the infrared spectrum and not visible like the colors from a prism. A ROADM can manage dozens or hundreds of wavelengths in a process known as DWDM or Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing.

Normally wavelengths have such high carrying capacity that they transport traffic for many companies. But Core Wave gives you the option of having your own dedicated wavelength. The wavelength is like a blank slate to be written on, so you are not forced into the protocol of the core network. AboveNet gives you the choice of Ethernet, SONET/SDH, or Fibre Channel for storage networking.

Are your bandwidth needs pressing the limits of conventional telecom services? If so, perhaps it is time you moved up to fiber optic wavelength services, like AboveNet Core Wave. Why not check pricing and availability now? There is likely more capacity available than you think.

AboveNet Leads in High Bandwidth Ethernet Connectivity

There's a major transition underway in high bandwidth telecom services. It's a move from traditional SONET / SDH technology to Ethernet IP technology. There are good reasons for this evolutionary, or should I say revolutionary, change. They are rooted in the decades-long transition from analog to digital communications and the near universality of Ethernet as the network protocol of choice. Could we be at a tipping point for Ethernet in fiber optic communications? AboveNet makes a good case for just that.

AboveNet is a high bandwidth provider serving fifteen major U.S. markets plus the United Kingdom. They specialize in fiber optic MAN and WAN connectivity from 100 Mbps to 10 Gbps for companies that need this kind of bandwidth at lower costs than traditional telco solutions.

In their white paper, "Advantages of Ethernet vs Sonet, A Compelling Choice," AboveNet makes the case that cost is a major driver but not the only reason to switch from SONET / SDH to Gigabit Ethernet (Gig E). Ethernet is a better match with today's networks that are increasingly IP based. SONET is a TDM technology based on channels rather than packets. It works as a metro and long haul carrier for packet based networks, but with an inefficiency caused by the protocol conversions back and forth from TDM to IP. This can result in added latency and increased risk for data loss, as well as higher costs.

What may be lost to history is that SONET, the Synchronous Optical NETwork, is a product of telephone company research. At its foundation is the 64 Kbps data channel or DS0. There are thousands of them all multiplexed and synchronized to create SONET fiber optic high bandwidth services. Why such an arrangement? Each of those small channels is just the right size to carry one digitized telephone call. That was the original impetus for SONET. It was to efficiently transport high volumes of telephone calls from one telephone exchange to another.

SONET, of course, has grown from it's switched circuit telephony roots. With appropriate protocol conversions, those DS0 channels can be aggregated to transport IP packets as well as PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) voice. SONET has been the dominant technology for long-haul networks and fiber optic MAN and WAN connections. It's design includes redundant paths with a 50 mSec failover time to make it a highly reliable transport service.

But telephony as well as everything else in electronic communications is going to IP or Internet Protocol. VoIP is replacing analog and TDM telephony for business and residential users. At the enterprise level, there are enormous cost savings possible with converged voice/data/video networks. Why create an all-IP network based on Ethernet within the enterprise, only to have to convert it to TDM-based SONET for transport between locations or to a distant IP service provider?

Carrier Ethernet, the flavor of Ethernet specified for metropolitan and long haul networks, has the advantage of being IP at its core. No conversions are necessary from LAN to MAN to WAN and back to LAN at some remote location. This seamless connectivity reduces latency and improves network efficiency by eliminating conversion steps.

AboveNet operates its own network with over 2 million fiber miles worldwide and a reach of more than 1,800 lit buildings. Their services included MAN and WAN connectivity, plus managed services for WDM Wavelength, Metro Ethernet, WAN Ethernet and IP transit.

If your organization has a need for high bandwidth services and you want to acquire them at the best possible price, then consider getting competitive quotes on fiber optic services from AboveNet and other highly competitive carriers. This telecom brokerage service is free to serious business users, with complementary consulting on your corporate requirements.