Private Lines and Virtual Private Networks

By: John Shepler

Businesses often have need for a private line to communicate between headquarters and branch offices, factories & warehouses, retail franchises or suppliers. What’s important is reliable connections with security and transparency. The ideal private line gives you the same experience as your local area network.

Classic Point to Point Private Lines
Telephone companies have offered private lines since the analog days. Security systems and radio station studio to transmitter links are examples of private lines that were often little more than pairs of wires that ran directly from one location to another via the central office.

Digital communication introduced the T1 point to point private line that serves the same purpose. Bits go in one end and come out the other. T1 lines at 1.5 Mbps, DS3 at 45 Mbps and OC3 at 155 Mbps all offer private line service. Latency and packet loss are low. Speeds are fixed at the capacity of the line.

These private lines work well for connecting a central headquarters as a hub to branch offices as spokes. It takes one line per branch with the central switch or router directing traffic. The lines themselves serve as very, very long network wires to interconnect the LANs at the various locations.

Ethernet Private Lines
Since Ethernet is the protocol used on virtually all local networks today, it makes sense to have the private line running the same protocol. The telco solutions already mentioned require a protocol conversion module to convert between Ethernet and the proprietary protocol that runs on the lines themselves.

Carrier Ethernet private lines run the Ethernet protocol on the line itself. Carrier Ethernet is available as Ethernet over Copper for lower speed connections and Ethernet over Fiber for 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps, with 100 Gbps becoming more available.

Ethernet services have more carriers competing for business which tends to reduce prices per Mbps. The cost per Mbps is almost always less for Ethernet and scalability is much easier. You can have a Gigabit Ethernet port installed and order any bandwidth from 10 Mbps up to 1000 Mbps. When you want an increase or decrease in capacity, a simple phone call to the carrier will make that happen quickly with no equipment changes required.

MPLS Networks
Private lines are a great solution if you only need to interconnect a few locations in a small geographical area. As the number of locations and their distance from headquarters increases, the cost goes up quickly. Each line has a charge and it varies with distance.

A popular alternative is the MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching network. This is a privately run network that uses a proprietary protocol called label switching instead of the more common TCP/IP. The fact that access is limited to subscribers only and the uniqueness of the LS protocol provide a level of security even though you are sharing the network with other users.

MPLS operators work to ensure that you have no awareness of other traffic. Bandwidth, latency, jitter and packet loss are carefully managed to meet the needs of all subscribers with extra margin for bandwidth bursting when needed.

MPLS is also known a MPLS VPN or Virtual Private Network. That’s because it isn’t truly private and fully dedicated to your use like a private line. If you are feel that you need a additional level of security, you do have the option to encrypt your data before it enters the MPLS network.

Why choose MPLS? It’s a big money saver over long distances where private lines get expensive. All you need is a short private line connection to the network at each location and instructions to the operator as to how to route your traffic.

Internet VPN Solutions
The Internet is the least cost wide area networking solution with highest geographic connectivity. Performance can vary widely. It’s also the least secure network you can find. Anyone and everyone can easily get a connection, and they do.

How can you make the Internet act like a private line? You provide your own encryption from point to point. Two popular approaches are IPsec based on software installed on each computer and SSL or Secure Socket Layer that is already built into web browsers.

Choosing a Private Line Solution
Which approach is best? It depends highly on how many locations you have, where they are, what traffic you intend to send, and what level of performance you require.
There are cost/benefit tradeoffs to each of the above solutions. What’s right for you? An expert consultant will be happy to review your private line or VPN network needs and provide one or more solutions that can do what your business needs done.

Private IP Networks vs The Internet

By: John Shepler

Private vs Public. This is a big dividing line between business connectivity services. Let’s take a closer look at what the differences are and how you go about picking the right solution.

Private lines have been a staple of business operations since they were first offered by the telephone companies. They are renowned for their high reliability, excellent consistent performance, desirable specs… and high prices.

The Internet is the new kid on the block, relatively speaking. Remember the dial-up days? Long gone. Now just about everyone who wants a broadband connection and can pony up $40 to $60 a month can hook into a universal worldwide network from just about anywhere. In fact, if you have a business and want to connect with consumers you WILL be on the Internet.

That suggests an interesting approach. If you have to be connected to the Internet to do business with your customers and, often, suppliers, why not use the Internet for everything? If it would work, you could save a bundle of money and only have to worry about your last-mile access connection instead of an entire wide area network. Somebody else will take care of making sure the Internet core will be available 24/7.

The actual Internet core network is highly reliable. The issues that business users have generally break down into performance, security and reliability of that last mile connection.

Let’s take the last mile first. You know that you can connect to the Internet using a business version of the same DSL, cable and wireless broadband services that are popular with consumers. The price is right, but you will be dealing with variable performance due to the bandwidth being shared among many users, asymmetrical (much higher download than upload speeds), and no service level agreements to give you the priority you need when things occasionally go wrong.

The solution to these limitations is DIA or Dedicated Internet Access. This is a last mile connection using a T1 line, DS3, Ethernet over Copper or Fiber or SONET fiber optic service. Now your last mile is every bit the quality of a private line. So, does that also make the Internet the ideal business network?

Not necessarily. The Internet is designed for universal access and is self-healing to maintain connectivity even if one path is cut or routing equipment fails. That’s good, right? It sure is if you want to make sure your packets get from one place to another. Not so good if you need consistency in bandwidth, latency, jitter and packet loss. Remember, you are sharing the Internet with millions of other eager users. That can result in things backing up, like the congestion you get on a public highway. Nobody guarantees performance, so you get what you get. For nearly all consumers and many businesses it’s a good tradeoff.

Security is another matter. There is no security on the Internet. It’s open to anyone and everyone. However, you can create your own security by using data encryption to build a private tunnel through the public network. SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption is the standard for ecommerce and can be used for private business communications, too.

It the Internet won’t cut it for your critical internal operations, you can construct your own private IP network using point to point dedicated lines and your own switches and routers. The PTP lines simply extend your network around town, cross country or internationally. This is the ultimate in performance and security, but it costs a pretty penny. Is there anything else that will work?

MPLS networks are becoming the new gold standard for private business communications. This means connections between multiple business locations, remote data centers or cloud services. Only paying customers get on this network and the Multi-Protocol Label Switching technology is proprietary to the network. This is why they’ll often be referred to as MPLS VPN or virtual private networks. The network operator ensures that each user has the connectivity they need with committed bandwidth and guaranteed levels of low latency, jitter and packet loss. From your perspective, you are the only one on the network. In actuality, there are likely thousands of other customers using the same core network. There is no interaction between them.

MPLS networks are considerably less expensive than building your own private network but more expensive than using the Internet. So, how do you decide? In many cases, the answer is to use both. The Internet is perfect for connecting prospects and customers to your public-facing servers. The private network connections are perfect for sensitive internal communications, VoIP telephony, video conferencing, and efficient cloud connections.

Does your business need solutions for internal connections, public communications or both? Check out the different options for Internet and private IP connections available for your business locations.

Different Types of VPN Providers

Your network is private and you work hard to keep it that way. What about when you connect to the outside world? Do you open your castle gate to let in everybody and everything festering on the Internet? Or, do you protect your network over long distances by using a private or virtually private network?

Before there were VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) there were private networks. There still are. Some situations require so much security that the only way to be sure you maintain control and avoid all intrusion is by using private line point to point connections. You might even go one step further and encrypt the data traveling on those private lines on the odd chance that someone has figured out how to tap in.

Private lines make the most sense when you have only two locations to connect. You can order order a “nailed up” T1 line from point to point. By “nailed up” I mean that the connection is hard wired and stays that way as long as you pay the monthly lease. There is no traffic other than yours on this circuit. Whatever you aren’t using to full capacity simply idles while waiting to be used day and night.

Need a lot more bandwidth? You can order DS3 private lines at 45 Mbps or move up to fiber optic service starting at 155 Mbps. An alternative is Carrier Ethernet over copper or fiber. With Ethernet you have many more bandwidth options and the cost is generally lower than with traditional telecom services.

Note that these circuits are dedicated to your locations, but your data may be multiplexed with data from other users while it is on the line. SONET fiber service and Ethernet over Fiber has so much bandwidth that it doesn’t make economic sense to use an entire strand or even a wavelength for 50 or 100 Mbps of traffic.

This is the beginning of virtual private networking. In this case, the provider divvies up the available bandwidth by TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) time slots or virtual private circuits. Since the network is privately operated, you have the protection that the general public has no outside access to any of this traffic and no way to snoop on your data stream or cause trouble.

If you need really massive amounts of bandwidth, you can rent wavelengths on fiber circuits at typically 5 Gbps or rent dark fiber strands themselves that can support nearly unlimited bandwidth. These offer an increased security in that only your traffic is on the wavelength or fiber strand.

Another VPN methodology is the MPLS network. MPLS or Multi Protocol Label Switching also runs on privately operated networks. It transports IP traffic as well as other protocols but doesn’t use IP labels for routing. Instead MPLS switches install special tags on each packet upon entry to the network and remove them before egress. This is where the virtual private designation comes in. You share the network with other users, but the proprietary MPLS technology protects the privacy of your data while it is on the network. You’ll hear this service referred to as MPLS VPN.

The most common application for VPN is when using the Internet as your connection from point to point or to the general public. If you do business on the Internet, you don’t really have a choice. You may also want to have home workers or traveling employees connect to your business systems without the expense of private lines. The challenge is how to make an inherently risky network like the Internet into something your can trust with sensitive date.

The answer is “tunneling.” This is a concept for creating private channels through a public network. The tunneling is accomplished by encrypting each packet so that it makes no sense to anyone but the intended parties. There are two software methods commonly used to accomplish this.

The legacy method is IPsec or Internet Protocol security. This requires special software to be installed on the company server and client computer. IPsec does the encryption and decryption and must be specially set up to create the virtually private tunnel. One installed, you have a VPN connection from wherever you want to use that particular computer. Other computers must have the same software installed or they won’t work on the VPN.

A competing method is called SLL or Secure Socket Layer. This is the technology you use when accessing your bank account or secure email. It’s become so standard that it is built into all Web browsers and many email programs. With SSL, you need a user account ID and a password to access your remote account. The nice feature is that you an access your account from just about any computer, private or public, and know that your data is securely encrypted.

Are you in need of a business-grade private or virtually private network connection? If so, check out the options and decide which works best for your applications.

Types of VPN Connections

Virtual private networking is heavily used in business. In fact, you probably have used a VPN connection today without even realizing it. It’s not a belt and suspenders service anymore. VPN connections are absolutely essential to prevent being robbed blind.

First, let’s take a look at private vs virtually private networks. Your hardwired LAN is a private network. It would take some real effort and a lot of risk for someone to tap into your network wiring and install a device to capture traffic. The same is true if you establish a wide area network or WAN using point to point private lines. A PTP T1 line falls into that category. While it is not impossible to sneak into your wiring closet or even the telephone company and put a tap on the line, it is so difficult that only those with the most secure requirements will go to extremes to protect against this type of attack.

What distinguishes a private network is that 100% of the traffic is yours and yours alone. You are not sharing the lines with anyone else. The advantage to a private network is inherent security. The disadvantage is cost. You pay for all the construction, maintenance and monthly lease fees. It’s unlikely that your private network will be fully loaded at all times. Whatever capacity is unused goes to waste.

Contrast the private network with a public network like the Internet. They are polar opposites. The Internet allows anyone and everyone access by design. Traffic on the Internet is everybody in the pool. Your packets are intermingled with everyone else’s. Even so, a wired connection to the Internet isn’t the worst situation. That belongs to the unsecured wireless network. No need to plant malware in someone’s computer when everything they are doing is perfectly visible on any WiFi enabled computer within range. You are most vulnerable reading private unencrypted emails in a popular public hotspot. Anyone with a laptop computer and some easy to obtain spyware can be reading your messages right along with you.

It seems like such a crying shame that the one network that any employee can access at home or while traveling is such a security nightmare. That’s where the technique of encryption becomes valuable. It doesn’t matter if someone is monitoring your traffic if all they see is gibberish. You encrypt your message at one end and decrypt it at the other end and you have a created what is known as a secure tunnel through the Internet. The public network has now become a virtually private network. It’s not a private network because you are still sharing the transport with many others. It’s virtually private because no one can read your traffic and make any sense out of it.

There are two popular methods of creating Internet or IP VPNs. One is IPsec or Internet Protocol security. The other is SSL or Secure Socket Layers. IPsec is based on software installed in both the company server and the client computer. IPsec encrypts and decrypts each packet, so once you have it installed you have a virtually private line to the company no matter where you hooked to the Internet. Of course, you need to use the specific laptop or other computer set up to work with this system. You can’t just go to any computer and connect back to headquarters.

If you want to do that, you need SSL (Secure Socket Layer). The beauty of SSL is that the software is already built into Web browsers and some email programs. SSL has been popularized for ecommerce and online banking. When you go to a SSL enabled webpage, you’ll notice that the http:// has become https:// The “s” means secure page. To access it you need a user account ID and a password at a minimum. Some sites go further and ask personal challenge questions or display special graphics that give you confidence you are logged into the correct site.

For corporate wide area networks, an alternative to private lines is the MPLS network. These are multi-tenant networks that spread the cost of building and running the system among many users. MPLS networks are considered VPNs because they use a proprietary label switching protocol that isn’t compatible with IP tools. This unique protocol plus access controlled to a limited number of business clients and not the general public give MPLS networks an enhanced level of security.

Do you need private or virtually private network connects to conduct business? If so, compare VPN options and prices to help decide which mix of network techniques is right for your company.

Online Backup For Disaster Recovery

In computing, disaster is always just around the corner. There are so many potential points of failure. Disks can crash at any time. Data can be accidentally erased. Both equipment and data can be stolen or destroyed by fire, storm or flood. So, why are we so convinced that it just isn’t going to happen?


The problem with computer disasters is that you may never get a warning. One minute everything is humming along nicely. The next minute, it’s all gone. That scares most of us just enough that we occasionally copy important files to other computers, alternative hard drives, thumb drives, CD ROMs or DVD ROMs. It’s a lot better than nothing, but the hit and miss nature of these backups means that there are long periods when data is changing but only in one place.

The other weakness of our ad-hoc personal backup systems is that they only protect from certain types of losses. A CD ROM backup protects against a hard disk failure. It doesn’t protect from natural disasters that wipe out the entire office, not merely a few computers or one hard drive. Just what would a tornado, hurricane, flood, fire or earthquake do to your facility? Think your backup disks would still be in good condition? Maybe. Maybe not. Can you really take that chance?

The traditional solution for robust backups is to send copies of your files to a remote location, such as a separate data center across town. Smaller companies store CD ROM backups in bank vaults away from the company facilities. Today’s solution is online backup. Everybody has a broadband connection and there are companies that specialize in being that secure data center that you can’t afford.

One of the best online backup companies is SOS Online Backup. They’ve been around since 2001 and have won numerous industry awards.

A really important feature that SOS offers is called Engage Live Protect. It detects whenever a file has been changed and immediately backs up that file. This certainly takes the weak link of remembering what to backup out of the loop. With file backups happening as needed, there is also no long time lag to the next scheduled backup during which something can go wrong.

Another nice feature of this service is that you can access your files on the Web from any computer with a web browser. You don’t have to use the computer that the file came from, which helps if that machine smokes. You can even share files by using an email address. SOS lets you backup to five computers with one simple account. There are enterprise level services available for larger organizations with many employees.

Have you integrated iPhones or iPads into your organization? SOS iPhone App lets you access all of your files anytime, anywhere from your iOS mobile device.

The big hesitation many people have with online backup systems is security. How can you be sure the bad guys won’t steal your data right out from under you? SOS protects you with a three-tiered encryption system that offers military grade security. The data to be backed up is first encrypted right on your computer using 256 bit AES encryption. While in-transit, 128 bit SSL is employed to secure the link. Finally, the data is stored using 1024 bit AES encryption.

Are you feeling a bit squeamish about all those files on your computer that could go “poof” at any time? How much would that hurt? Don’t let it happen. Get SOS Online Backup now and rest easy that your important files are stored away securely in the cloud, ready to retrieve at any time.

DIA and VPN For Europe

Level 3 Communications, a Tier 1 Internet networking services company with a global fiber optic footprint, is bringing its Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) and Virtual Private Network (VPN) services portfolio to European markets, including France, Germany and the United Kingdom. As the worldwide business climate improves, international connectivity will become more and more important for business success in a global marketplace.

Major multinational corporations and larger Internet Service Providers may operate their own Autonomous System (AS) networks that give them the ability to peer with other networks and purchase IP transit services to get to the Internet backbone. But many businesses don’t have or want the level of investment that it takes to operate an International private network. These companies still need high quality, reliable Internet access for e-commerce, communication with their customers, and private connections between far-flung company locations.

Dedicated Internet Access is the service of choice for most business users. What dedicated means is that you have exclusive use of the bandwidth that you purchase to connect to the Internet. But isn’t that always the case? Not really. Residential users and smaller businesses get by with shared bandwidth arrangements such as DSL, Cable broadband, two-way high speed satellite Internet, and 3G or 4G wireless.

The motivation behind bandwidth sharing is that costs are shared as well. The cost of shared bandwidth broadband services is usually well below equivalent speed dedicated bandwidth services. The price you pay is acceptance of not having a guaranteed bandwidth. Indeed, the bandwidth at any given time is a function of how many other users are sharing the service and what they are doing. Just a few people download huge software, database or video files can bring a speedy line to a crawl.

You don’t experience this with Dedicated Internet Access. You have the full T1 line speed of 1.5 Mbps or E1 line speed of 2.0 Mbps available in both upload and download directions at all times. Ethernet access connections are becoming popular as replacements for legacy T1/E1 lines. Ethernet is highly scalable from 1 Mbps on up to 10 Gbps. The lower line speeds can be provisioned over twisted pair copper, while higher speeds require fiber optic connections.

The VPN or Virtual Private Network is a way to take advantage of the universal reach of the Internet while adding a layer of security to protect your data during the time it is traversing the Internet.

Many companies have private point to point connections to securely link multiple business locations within a metropolitan areas or in nearby states. International private lines are also available, but they are pretty expensive for smaller companies to connect with sales offices overseas.

The Virtual Private Network makes it possible for businesses of all sizes to interconnect their domestic or global facilities. Another popular use for VPNs is to provide access to company networks for employees working from home or on the road. Without VPN capability, the organization would have to install a dedicated line between the corporate data center and they employee’s home at considerable cost.

The way a VPN works is that it encrypts the data packets so that they can’t be decoded by anyone who happens to gain access to them along the way. The process is said to create a “tunnel” through the Internet. There a two popular ways to do this. One is IPSec, which requires special client software at each end to perform the encryption and decryption of the data. Another approach is SSL or Secure Socket Layer. This technique requires only a standard Web browser for access. It uses the same encryption employed by ecommerce sites so that visitors can make online purchases securely.

Do you have need for Dedicated Internet Access or Virtual Private Network service to support your business or organization? If so, get prices and availability for DIA and VPN services to meet your requirements.



Note: Physical map of Europe courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Virtual Private Network Definition

You know what a network is, but what is a virtual private network? Is it a real network or something that only exists virtually? Just how private is a virtual private network?

A virtual private network or VPN is a real network. It’s the privacy that is considered virtual. For instance, the Internet is a public network. There is nothing private about it, or intended to be. But there are techniques to add privacy to Internet communications. Those techniques make it virtually private.

Let’s look at what makes a good private network in the first place. One thing you need is complete control over access. Only those people and devices that you explicitly allow on the network should have any access to it. The wired network in your company is private because you’ve strung the wires and know where everything is connected. But if you rent space in a larger office building and use that building’s network, you can’t be sure that your data is completely secure. Someone might be tapped in and listening somewhere in the facility.

Another example of networks that people think are secure but really aren’t are wireless access points or wireless routers. If you use the wireless device as it comes out of the box without enabling security features, you run the risk of eavesdroppers being able to tap into your data.

Control of access through control of the physical network and access lists for wireless access is a good start for privacy. But what about the common carrier networks that link your facilities around the country? Those WAN or wide area networks can be either private or public. If you lease a point to point T1 line, the only connections are at the two ends. Such links become part of your private network.

The next step up is privately owned and operated networks where you are not the only user. MPLS networks fall into that category. They offer a degree of privacy because access to your nodes is controlled per your direction. But there is other traffic on the network cloud from other companies. That’s why MPLS networks are called virtually private by nature.

Now let’s consider the Internet. It’s public through and through. Does that mean you can’t use the Internet for private communications? Of course you can. It’s done every day by companies large and small and millions of individual users. How do they do this? By encrypting the data traveling from point to point over the Internet. When you log into a secure website, you use SSL or Secure Sockets Layer. That’s a protocol that encrypts your data so that only someone with the proper key can read it. Only you and the site you are communicating with have that particular key. Others might intercept your data stream, but it’s all gibberish to them.

When data is encrypted at one end and decrypted at the other, it is said to travel through a tunnel in the Internet. That’s what’s meant by tunneling. Various encryption techniques can be used to create these tunnels and give you a virtual private connection. When someone is said to be using a VPN, they are generally talking about a broadband connection to their employer that is encrypted on their computer by a VPN software application. VPNs allow users located outside of a company’s secure facilities to securely access business data using DSL, Cable broadband, high speed satellite, or wireless Internet access.

What type of private or virtually private network connections are right for your organization? Get expert consultation and the most cost effective WAN network and VPN services now.