10 Mbps Up and Down

Have you heard that 10 Mbps is the new 1 Mbps? I've heard it said that 10 Mbps is the new T1. Those statements are pretty close, since T1 speed is 1.5 Mbps. Either way, there’s a move afoot to higher bandwidth levels and it should come as no surprise that 10 Mbps is becoming the new benchmark for SMB business bandwidth. Let’s see why.

T1 bandwidth established itself in the last couple of decades as the telephone industry made this digital technology available to businesses not related to telecom. One big impetus was the rise of the Internet. When the Internet opened up to business in the 90’s companies of all size suddenly got interested in getting online. That meant web servers, email and broadband connections. T1 lines were reasonably speedy for the time and readily available over twisted pair connections.

A lot has happened since the turn of the century. We still use web servers and email, but web pages have grown tremendously and much of the content is now audio, video and interactive. Commerce has moved online. Brochure pages have become full-fledged retail stores. Companies with both online and bricks & mortar operations may have common inventories that are managed in the cloud.

As you may well realize, the bandwidth of yore won’t cut it for today’s applications. Sure, a generation ago a T1 line could be shared by dozens of employees who thought they found the holy grail of high speed connections compared with the dial-up they were used to at home. Nowadays, 6 to 10 Mbps is considered about average for residential broadband. Some users are inclined to pay up for 2x or 3x that amount in order to support their insatiable video habit. You may not be sanctioning long periods of video watching at work, but you still need line speed to keep up productivity.

Look at what’s happening right now. Businesses large and small are relocating to the cloud. Data centers are going dark, as servers are moving to colo facilities and being sold off in favor of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). PBX systems are meeting a similar fate. The telephone closet is emptying out as companies go with hosted communications. What’s left is a phone on every desk plugged into the LAN along with a PC. These are augmented by smartphones and tablets. All that IT infrastructure is gone.

Well, it’s not really gone. It’s just located somewhere else and likely part of virtualized shared resources. What companies may forget in their zeal to gain the economic benefits of the cloud is that connectivity is now a choke point. The problems of running out of LAN bandwidth were solved so long ago that everyone takes lack of network congestion for granted. The memories of moving up from 1 Mbps to 10 Mbps to 100 Mbps and perhaps 1000 Mbps have become fuzzy and faded. Surprise! Those growing pains are being revisited in the form of connections to the cloud.

The bulk of traffic is now flowing back and forth to the cloud for companies that moved to hosted solutions. What that boils down to is that you need LAN quality connections to the WAN. Clearly T1 lines at 1.5 Mbps aren’t up to that. This is where 10 Mbps makes a lot more sense as a baseline. Don’t get too comfortable with that number. It’s going to be 100 Mbps before you know it.

For the moment, let’s take 10 Mbps as a baseline connection requirement. How do we get that without breaking the bank? There are a couple of easy growth paths that will give you 10 Mbps in both directions. That’s important with cloud services because you have data flowing both up and down. Your T1 line is symmetrical like that. It’s 1.5 Mbps upload and 1.5 Mbps download. Wouldn’t it make sense to simply hot rod a T1 line to get more speed?

Don’t laugh. That’s exactly what we’re going to do. You can’t jack up the speed of a single T1 line or it won’t be a T1 line anymore. In fact, it won’t run at all. T1 is a synchronized service that runs at 1.5 Mbps or shuts down. However, there is no reason you can’t run 2 T1 lines and combine their bandwidth. That process is called bonding. Bond 7 T1 lines together and you get 10.5 Mbps. Exactly what you need and a little more.

Another service that will get you to 10 x 10 Mbps bandwidth quite easily is Ethernet over Copper (EoC). This service runs on twisted pair telco cable, just like T1, so there is little or no construction cost involved in an upgrade. The modulation scheme is newer and trades distance for speed. That means that within a few miles of the telco central office you can easily get 10 Mbps and perhaps 20 or 30 Mbps over copper. Closer in that figure rises to DS3 levels of 45 Mbps. What’s more, EoC tends to be less costly on a per Mbps basis than bonded T1 lines.

Is your business straining its WAN connection to get the bandwidth you need? More speed may be less expensive than you think. Get competitive quotes for 10 Mbps bonded T1 and Ethernet over Copper services and see if now is the time to make the move.

Bandwidth Deals for MSPs

Management Service Providers, MSPs, can increase their value added to their clients by expanding the information technology services that they provide to include finding better deals on WAN bandwidth. Few companies realize how much the telecommunications services marketplace has changed over the last few years and the range of lower cost options available to them.

The most basic bandwidth service that most companies should consider is T1 voice and/or data services. T1 lines are highly reliable, usually come with a service level agreement, and have dropped in price by half to two-thirds this decade. Businesses that signed a lease years ago and simply renew without a competitive review of their options could be astounded by how much less they could be paying. Those pressed by additional bandwidth demand may find that they can get 3 Mbps, 6 Mbps or higher symmetrical bandwidth for what they are currently charged for 1.5 Mbps T1 service.

T1 telephone and T1 dedicated Internet access are the two traditional service classes. But companies with heavy telephone use, such as sales organizations or call centers, can benefit from the higher telephone system performance offered by ISDN PRI service delivered over T1 lines. Another lesser known service is T1 Integrated. The integration involves a using a single T1 line to deliver both telephone and Internet service. You can get up to 12 outside phone lines plus broadband Internet service with T1 Integrated lines. Dynamic bandwidth is often available so that all bandwidth not in use for telephony is automatically assigned to the Internet connection.

Many medium size companies or smaller operations with high bandwidth needs are moving to DS3 service at 45 Mbps. This service level, usually delivered via fiber optic connection, has also seen dramatic price reductions. So much so that companies that used to consider T1 services as the best they could afford are now moving up to DS3 bandwidth. A money saving option for those businesses that experience occasional high usage peaks but a lower average level of activity is burstable DS3. The basic line charge is lower than a full DS3 but with the ability to accommodate surges automatically.

An exciting new service unheard of a few years ago is Ethernet. Metro Ethernet offers the ease of network management with bandwidth options of 10, 100 or 1000 Mbps to better match LAN speeds. Remote data center access and disaster recovery are two popular applications. Ethernet can now be extended beyond the metro area by competitive carriers with nationwide fiber optic networks and POPs ( Points of Presence) of their own. Where available, Ethernet solutions, can be the lowest priced high bandwidth solutions by a factor of two or more.

Could your clients benefit from lower cost and more diverse WAN bandwidth options for voice and data? If so, our team of bandwidth experts stands ready to assist you in being the hero.

Is WiMAX Worth the Wait?

WiMAX, the new wireless broadband communications standard, has been eagerly anticipated for several years. We've watched with anticipation as the concept turned into standards, equipment certification began, and initial pilot projects were launched. WiMAX is still coming, but will it still be as exciting when it gets here?

WiMAX is the acronym for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access. It's a truly international standard that will be useful in applications as diverse as cellular backhaul, mobile Internet, business broadband, and perhaps even a WiFi replacement. WiMAX has power and range as well as bandwidth. WiFi hotspots have proliferated and become very popular for accessing the Internet while on the go. But WiFi coverage is measured in feet. WiMAX coverage is measured in miles.

So, does that mean we're about to send all of our DSL and cable modems, WiFi access points, and cell phones to the recycling bin? Not much chance of that. These technologies are pretty well entrenched. What's more, other wireline and wireless solutions are building out to offer competition for the forecasted WiMAX tsunami.

Cellular broadband is the most aggressive in upgrading tower sites to increase upload and download speeds. Just as the CDMA networks, notably Verizon, Sprint and Alltel, begin to cover most heavily populated areas with EV-DO, an upgrade to EV-DO Rev A is launched.

EV-DO offers speeds similar to what you expect from DSL broadband. Burst speeds are up to 2.4 Mbps download, although 700 Kbps is probably more a typical speed in crowded urban areas. Upload is a mere 153 Kbps burst with 50 Kbps probably more typical. Bandwidth is sufficient to support aircards and built-in access for notebook computers. It's also been an enabler for streaming video and music downloads on cell phones.

EV-DO Rev A increases the bandwidth to a 3.1 Mbps download burst, which should incrementally improve real world performance. The big improvement is in upload speed to 1.8 Mbps. With Rev A, applications such as VoIP and video transmission become practical for mobile users.

What's more, there is a Rev B upgrade in the works for EV-DO. It further increases downlink speeds by 3x to a burst rate of 9.3 Mbps using a technique called DO Multi-carrier to bond 3 channels. Peak rates up to 14.7 Mbps are possible by allocating more station bandwidth to EV-DO transmissions.

A competing technology, known at LTE or Long Term Evolution, is in development. Download speeds are up to 100 Mbps with 20 msec latency. While it may be at least a couple of years before LTE is deployed to cellular base stations, it's clear that cellular-based broadband has the potential to compete with other wireless technologies including WiMAX.

WiMAX got everyone excited with a prediction of 70 Mbps bandwidth over as much as 30 miles coverage. The range as well as the potential link speed is what sets WiMAX apart. But a network of cellular broadband stations could do pretty much the same job. In fact, WiMAX might see its greatest application in providing backhaul services for those competing cellular stations.

As of this writing WiMAX deployment is off to a slow start. The real impediment is the billions of dollars that need to be invested in transmitting infrastructure to operate a nationwide network. Sprint and Clearwire have been in discussions to combine forces in using their existing bandwidth to blanket the country. The current 700 MHz spectrum auctions could also release choice frequencies for WiMAX use.

Pre-WiMAX implementations are already providing wireless business links in some major cities. Covad is offering what they describe as "T1-class wireless broadband" in 200 California cities, plus Las Vegas and suburban Chicago. Bandwidths from 1.5 Mbps to 100 Mbps are offered as available. Wireless bandwidth is especially valuable to businesses not already lit for fiber optic service but needing to expand their WAN connections.

Is your company looking for the optimum bandwidth services to support your digital telephony and data transmission needs? If so, check out a suite of options that include wireless, wireline, fiber optic and satellite delivery.