SDN Performance Takes a Leaf of Faith

By: John Shepler

If the cloud has done anything, it has turned a magnifying glass on once mundane WAN connections. Back in the day, it was OK for file transfers to take a bit too long or the Internet to be a little dicey. After all, the really critical operations were confined to the company LAN and in-house data center. No more. Once your services are hosted in the cloud, WAN performance becomes just as critical as LAN performance.

The New WAN Problem
There’s only one problem. YOU don’t own the WAN like you do your LAN wiring. You are at the mercy of wireless, cable, DSL, fiber and copper wireline service providers. Any issues in their networks have an immediate impact on your business.

How Do You Protect Yourself?
The answer is increasingly SDN or Software Defined Network solutions. SDN covers a lot of technology, but one very popular implementation for business is the integration of multiple, diverse WAN connections. You have several connections to the cloud, but they are coordinated by SDN.

Nature Knows How
Bigleaf Networks calls their process for doing this “Natural Networking.” They create a redundancy of connections with fault tolerance similar to how leaves protect themselves in nature. Here’s how Bigleaf explains their system:


Pretty clever, right? The SDN performance optimization that Bigleaf provides can also save you money. Without traffic management, many businesses wouldn’t even consider “best effort” broadband services like wireless, cable, DSL or low cost fiber options. The cost of outages and variations in performance was too great. The only acceptable WAN solutions were multiple dedicated private line services set up with automatic instant failover. These lines can get pretty expensive and you still have the headache of having to manage this system yourself.

Don't Do It Yourself
Bigleaf makes optimizing multiple Internet connections painless. They provide the managed router that tunnels traffic to their gateway clusters in the cloud. It’s all plug-and-play for you. For the ultimate in reliability, they even have an option to install redundant routers and switches at your site to match the redundancy of their cloud cluster.

Are you frustrated with the performance of your business broadband connection for cloud services? It’s time to take a closer look at what Software Defined Networks can do to improve both quality and reliability of your WAN services. Bigleaf technology is now offered by Telarus, along with services from over 50 data, voice and cloud providers. Discuss your issues and needs with an expert consultant now at no charge.

Do You Still Have Broadband?

By: John Shepler

If you’ve had the feeling that Internet broadband speeds have been accelerating lately, you’d be right. Broadband service was an amazing improvement on dial-up access when it was first introduced and then quickly took over. For a lot of years a few Mbps seemed plenty fast enough. Then 10 Mbps became the benchmark to shoot for. Now businesses are moving quickly to 100 Mbps and beyond, while the FCC is codifying 25 Mbps as the threshold where broadband begins. What does this really mean and what does it portend for the future?

What Does The New Standard Represent?
Official broadband standards have never been a leading indicator. They are set after a technology is well proven and the need clearly demonstrated. The move from 4 Mbps to 25 Mbps is quite a jump and it tells you something important about where bandwidth requirements are going. Is 25 Mbps the end of the road for awhile? Not likely and here’s why.

Few individuals and fewer businesses are going to pay up for higher line speeds for simple bragging rights. Something is driving the need to upgrade and then upgrade some more. The big factors are the move from local to remote resources and the nature of content itself.

The Rapid Growth of Computing Requirements
Remember message boards? Digital communications used to mean ASCII text transmissions. No need to press up against the speed of light just to get a few KB of characters to a distant server. It was the text-based model of computing that prompted Bill Gates to declare that 640K of RAM was plenty for the original PC, because who could possibly need more? Well, nobody did when the migration was starting from 64KB 8-bit processors. In just a few years, 640 KB was a joke. How long before 640 GB becomes a limitation? Probably sooner that any of us think possible.

Processor speeds have bumped up against some practical manufacturing limits, but the way around that is multiple processors. Memory, both RAM and Disk (now solid state), are sill growing. Bandwidth? Why is anybody surprised that WAN bandwidth requirements are going up when processing capability and memory are steadily increasing?

What's Next?
Computers always seem on the verge of not being able to keep up with us because of the functions we ask them to do. Text? That’s kids stuff. Photos? Easy. HD and 4K video? That’s more of a challenge. Will 4K be fully deployed before 8K starts to take over? What then?

You might think that software is getting less sophisticated because of the relatively small size of downloaded apps compared with some of the huge software packages that used to come in fancy cardboard boxes. That’s an illusion. The real power of of the apps we use is in all of the back-end processing that is going on at some remote server. Now everything is being tied to locality (with GPS) and highly personalized. A lot of this personalization is subtle and automatic. The system watches your behavior instead of you having to manually input a bunch of parameters.

Big data was a big bottleneck when it had to be handled locally. Just how much of a database can you put on a PC and how much grief is it going to be to keep up to date and accurate? Enormous data bases in equally enormous data centers can present a wealth of opportunity. The way the investment in gathering and managing all this data makes sense is to keep it simple for the end user. That doesn’t mean the system is simple. It just means that you and I are only dealing with the tip of the iceberg when we access these systems.

Big Data, Big Support Required
Big Data and sophisticated business applications have driven IT to a new architecture: The Cloud. The cloud pools all the processing and memory you can possibly use in a system that allows individual tenants to scale resources up and down at will. What you don’t need right now can be used by someone else. The resources they release can be put to work on your growing applications. As long as there are sufficient resources above and beyond what everybody needs at the moment, the system appears to be infinitely expandable.

What often isn’t infinitely expandable or even seems that way is bandwidth. The WAN connection, be it a dedicated line or Internet connection, has become the new bottleneck. Think of those clouds as enormous lakes full of data and you are getting your share through an old garden hose.

The way businesses are going to continue accelerating productivity is to let the machines do more and more of the work. Paper pushing is already a thing of the past in most clerical operations. Manually filling out forms is as obsolete as standing at a drill press or using a scythe to cut grain. Make no mistake that performance will continue to increase and probably accelerate. If you don’t make it happen, competitors will. That means more and more sophisticated processing, more mobility, and more data to present in simple, usable formats, more flexibility in manufacturing (think 3D printing) and larger data communication channels.

How Much Bandwidth Is Enough
In the long run, we have no idea how many Gbps or Tbps or Pbps will be needed. Right now, we can make some good estimates on what’s needed immediately and what that will grow to over the next few years.

Single digit Mbps connectivity has had its day. The only place T1 lines are still appropriate is for simple point of sale terminals and remote locations where there really isn’t any better solution. Bonding T1 lines can take you to 10 or 12 Mbps, but that’s just a stopgap. You’ll be needing more in the future.

If the consumer threshold for broadband is 25 Mbps, then that seems like a reasonable amount for businesses too. Granted, most business users aren’t creating or consuming a stream of HD movies all day. But they are accessing cloud applications, doing desktop or conference room video conferencing, sharing large files among business locations and running the phone system in the cloud. Remember that one consumer or a family is using that 25 Mbps. Your business demands per person may not be as consistently high, but you have lots of them on the same line. Productivity is also more of an issue when you are paying people. You don’t really want them sitting around waiting for the computers.

That argues for at least 10 Mbps for really small operations and 25 to 50 Mbps more commonly. Fast Ethernet at 100 Mbps used to be expensive and hard to come by. Now it’s reasonably priced and readily available. It doesn’t seem unreasonable for a medium size office to have 100 Mbps broadband… especially when that 100 Mbps may not cost much more than the 1.5 Mbps T1 line you budgeted for when you first got broadband many years ago.

Larger companies or sophisticated operations creating video content or doing 3D printing on an industrial scale can easily justify Gigabit Ethernet. So can school districts and anybody else with hundreds of simultaneous users.

How about really big companies? The new threshold may well be 10 Gbps Ethernet or 10 GigE. That service is readily available in metro areas and 100 GigE is starting to deploy nationwide on some carriers. This is where the upper end will be soon. Can Tbps service be far behind? It’s in development now.

Ethernet is the Way to Go Now
Note that all of these recommended services are Carrier Ethernet based. That’s where the industry is going for ease of interfacing and rapidly scalability. Like cloud resources, connectivity changes will be on-demand as well.

How is your company doing for broadband? Feeling the squeeze as you try to get more packets through the old lines? Feeling put upon now that the FCC has declared your connection as below broadband standards? Not to worry. Faster fiber optic bandwidth connections are plentiful and now cost much less than you might think. This is a good day to make a broadband upgrade.

Same Budget, More Bandwidth

By: John Shepler

Is your network sluggish? Are slow file transfers, telephone calls breaking up, pauses in audio and video streaming, unpredictable delays in getting a response from cloud services, and slow web page loading getting on your nerves?

Is Bandwidth The Answer?
You may well need more bandwidth. You don’t necessarily need to increase the speed of your internal LAN. It’s more likely that your outside, or WAN, connection just isn’t getting the job done anymore.

How Can You Tell?
It’s a likely problem if you’ve had the same level of service for years, yet your business has grown or you’re using a higher percentage of multimedia content than you used to. Even a decade ago, T1 lines were standard for small and some medium size businesses. At that time consumer broadband speeds were also a few Mbps. Users were happy because email and Web pages were relatively small. Many business applications were things like credit card verification and after-hours inventory updates.

Look what’s happened recently. Emails are huge. Why? Because they often contain photos and other high resolution images. Web pages are more interactive and more visual that they’ve ever been. Many contain embedded video players.

The Cloud In The Room
This is nothing compared with the growth of the cloud. Cloud services offer near infinite capacity, ease of scaling up and down as needed, and no requirement for capital investments or maintenance activities. This has proven an irresistible combination for many businesses. What gets lost in all the excitement are the increased bandwidth requirements.

What’s happened is that all the traffic that used to flow effortlessly through your Fast Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet Local Area Network now has to be transported up to the cloud and back down. All those packets have to go through a carrier network for hundreds or even thousands of miles. They have to do that with a minimal time delay and at a price you can afford.

Declining Cost per Mbps
Fortunately, WAN bandwidth services have gotten a lot more competitive, lower in cost and available in a wider variety of options during this same period of change. You may not be aware of it if you’ve simply kept renewing your old line contract or paying month to month since it expired. There’s an excellent chance that you can get the bandwidth you need today without having to jack up your budget… if you’re willing to look at alternatives.

New Quotes Needed
The first thing you need to do is get a fresh set of competitive quotes. By competitive, I mean pricing from as many carriers as possible that serve your location. In the heart of metropolitan business districts you’ll have lots of options. Farther out there will be fewer choices, but almost always two or more. This works to your advantage because the more competition there is, the lower the prices for the exact same service. A number of carriers may have entered your marketplace when you weren’t looking.

Expanded Options
You may also have more options for getting the same job done. For instance, Ethernet over Copper runs on the same wires as T1 service. It offers the same highly reliable dedicated and symmetrical bandwidth. But, Ethernet over Copper can give you twice or more bandwidth than the older T1 technology for the same cost. You may also be able to get higher bandwidth levels with the newer Ethernet services.

How About Fiber?
Impossible to get where you are located? Way too costly? Perhaps not anymore. Fiber buildups have quietly accelerated and carriers have expanded their service footprints around the country. Some of this is driven by the cell phone industry that needs fiber bandwidth to their towers to support 4G LTE. Other runs have been built by the Cable industry that needs much higher bandwidth to deliver digital video channels and video on demand.

The bottom line is that all these fiber operators have bandwidth to spare and they are in fierce competition to get buildings “lit” with their network. They want your business a lot more than they did some years ago. It’s not unusual to find several fiber optic services available where there were none the last time you looked.

New Fiber Options
Like copper-based bandwidth, fiber service is also available in two technologies. The legacy service is SONET, with bandwidth levels such as OC-3, OC-12 and OC-48. Ethernet over Fiber is the newer technology and offers highly scalable fiber services in a wide variety of bandwidth options from 10 Mbps on up to 10 Gbps in most areas. Some locations can now get 100 Gbps if needed.

Just like Ethernet over Copper, Ethernet over Fiber has a cost advantage over SONET. It’s not unusual to get twice and much bandwidth or more for the same cost as your old Optical Carrier contract.

How Much More Bandwidth Can You Get Now?
You may feel that you are limited in bandwidth by budget constraints. It’s possible, even likely, that the budget you have now can be worth 2x, 3x or more high performance business bandwidth in today’s market. Don’t wonder if this is the case. Find out now by checking out the range of bandwidth options and competitive pricing for copper and fiber services available at your business location.

Business Gigabit Ethernet Bandwidth Advantage

By: John Shepler

It’s time for a bandwidth upgrade. You’ve been getting by with bonded T1, DS3, OC3 or OC12 fiber service and it’s not getting the job done anymore. What about a move up to Gigabit service? Is that practical? Can it be done without destroying the budget? Yes, if you are savvy about what to pick for your next bandwidth service. Let’s take a quick look at something that may have only become available since you signed your last line lease. It’s Gigabit Ethernet.


In case you’re still wondering why you shouldn’t just upgrade with classical switched circuit line services instead of moving into Gigabit Ethernet, there are several points to consider.

T1, DS3 and SONET have been around for decades and are highly reliable telecom services. But did you know that all of these are designed around telephone company needs in transporting large numbers of simultaneous calls. This technology long predates the rise of packet switched networks.

As such, you are dealing with a protocol conversion when you go from your network to the WAN connection and back again. That works, but it’s less efficient, harder to scale and pricier than just keeping everything Ethernet from end to end.

Let’s talk about scaling for a second. Any service can be rate limited by the carrier so that you only get a portion of the available bandwidth. This is called fractional service. The reason to do this is that you don’t need the full bandwidth the line can provide and may be offered a cost savings if you take just a fraction. That cost savings hasn’t traditionally been anywhere near proportional to the speed reduction.

The bigger problem comes when you run out of bandwidth. Bonded T1 tops out about 10 Mbps or so, DS3 is 45 Mbps, OC3 runs 155 Mbps and OC12 delivers 622 Mbps. If you want to move up from one of these services to another, you need the provider to come in can change out equipment. Each interface is unique to that service level. The result is a step change in price level and delays of weeks or more to get the changes made.

Carrier Ethernet was designed from the get-go to be more scalable. Your interface is an Ethernet connection regardless of the service level. What varies is the maximum speed of the installed port. That can be 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps, 1000 Mbps or 10,000 Mbps. Carriers typically install 100 Mbps or 1000 Mbps ports for most businesses to be sure there is more than enough bandwidth available.

You can have a Gigabit Ethernet port installed at your location and then elect to start off with 100 Mbps or 400 Mbps or the full 1000 Mbps. Later, you can scale up or down with just a phone call to your provider. There are no equipment changes needed unless you need to move up to, say, 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

Don’t forget that Ethernet gives you a choice of services. You can opt for E-Line, a simple dedicated point to point connection. But, you can also choose E-LAN, a fully meshed any to any connection that is perfect for linking multiple business locations on the same network. This is a layer 2 service, so you’re able to create one large bridged network. This beats trying to do the same by ordering multiple line services and switching or routing them at your headquarters.

High levels of bandwidth that didn’t make sense a few years ago are now easily affordable by medium size businesses, school districts, medical centers, banks, and other organizations. Get a quick quote on business Gigabit Ethernet bandwidth for your location or locations and see if it doesn’t make sense for you to upgrade now.

Metropolitan Area Networks

We’re all familiar with LANs. Those are the local area networks used in nearly every business to interconnect computers, centralized storage, printers, wireless access points, WiFi hotspots, scanners and, increasingly, telephones and video equipment. When we want to connect to the outside world, we might think of a long haul or WAN connection to the Internet or distant business location. But there is another important type of network in-between the LAN and the WAN. That’s the MAN or Metropolitan Area Network.

The Metropolitan Area Network is an important service in its own right. For many companies, the only long-haul connections they may need are a dedicated broadband Internet and long distance telephone services. Most all of their traffic stays local. Not local as on the LAN, but geographically local. That means within the bounds of a city, suburbs and nearby locations.

This is where the term Metropolitan Area Network got its name. It’s a network that spans a given metropolitan area and not much further. You don’t find MAN services out in the countryside. Not that there aren’t important customers beyond the city limits, mind you. It’s just that MAN networks tend to be build upon fiber optic networks and very little fiber exits out in the boonies right now.

As you might suspect, the greatest concentration of MAN services will be found in business districts of major cities. That’s simply because the greatest population density and number of businesses are also found downtown and in the business districts of adjoining suburbs. Fiber optic cable construction and equipment are expensive. Service providers need lots of traffic from lots of customers to justify the expense of building out a MAN.

It’s possible to construct your own private MAN by ordering point to point lines between each of the locations you want to connect, or by establishing a star network with corporate headquarters at the center. Many companies buy MAN services instead because the costs are lower for a given bandwidth level. That makes sense, since the network infrastructure cost can be amortized over a large user base. A properly run MAN will give you the performance and security you require at a savings over creating your own private network.

How do service providers build a MAN? A classic approach is to construct a fiber optic SONET ring around the city, linking all the important office buildings, industrial parks, data centers and carrier hotels. SONET is the Synchronous Optical NETwork standard for legacy switched circuit telecom services. It features two lit fiber strands sending traffic in opposite directions for redundancy. If one fiber fails, the other picks up the load within 50 mSec.

Newer MAN services are build upon Carrier Ethernet or Metro Ethernet. The core network may still be running SONET or it may be an IP core network. Either way, the customer only sees an Ethernet interface. It may be an E-Line point to point connection or an E-LAN multipoint to multipoint connection. MPLS networks implemented as a MAN have the advantage of being able to handle nearly any type of traffic.

Downtown, you may also have the option of using a wireless MAN. These are based on fixed wireless transmissions between a carrier’s tower and radio equipment at each location served. These are short range services and require line of sight between buildings. If it happens to work out for you, wireless has the advantage of fast installation and low construction cost compared to bringing in fiber to locations not already lit.

Does your business need to communicate between two or more locations in town? If so, Metropolitan Area Networks are what you are looking for. Get prices and availability for now.



Note: Photo of New York City courtesy of I, Laslovarga on Wikimedia Commons.

Wireless SIP Trunking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ethernet Over Copper Vs T1

The standard business bandwidth connection is the versatile T1 line. These connections are available just about everywhere, they offer a dedicated and reliable bandwidth and prices have been getting lower over the years. It’s hard to go wrong with a T1 line, but there’s another service that is gaining popularity that you should also consider. That’s EoC or Ethernet over Copper.

EoC is an Ethernet WAN connection that can link multiple business locations or give you a high speed dedicated Ethernet connection. It also makes a good on-ramp to private cloud networks such as nationwide or international MPLS networks.

What Ethernet over Copper and T1 lines have in common is that they are both provisioned over multiple twisted pair telco wiring. That’s what’s in the bundle of telephone wiring that’s connected to your business now. Both T1 and EoC can use multiple wire pairs to increase bandwidth in a process known as bonding.

There are technology differences in the protocols and modulation schemes that are used to transport the signal between your business location and the closest carrier office, but you generally don't need to be concerned about that level of detail. Both technologies can transport your packets quickly and reliably. What you need to really compare is how much bandwidth you can get for a particular price level.

Where available, EoC often offers both higher bandwidths and lower prices. Part of that is due to the efficiency of the technology involved in transmitting higher bandwidths over common copper wiring. The other factor reducing prices is that EoC is often promoted by competitive carriers looking to establish a foothold or even dominance in a particular market.

What sort of bandwidths are available? T1 lines offer a rock solid 1.5 Mbps per line. Each additional line bonded-in increases that by 1.5 Mbps, so a double bonded solution is 3 Mbps. Bonding is practical up to about 10 or 12 Mbps. Above that, other solutions such as DS3 are often more cost effective.

Ethernet offers a wide variety of bandwidth options, including low speeds of around 1 Mbps, the standard 10 Mbps Ethernet that is also the basic Ethernet LAN speed, and other steps up to around 45 Mbps. That seems to give EoC a bandwidth advantage, but there’s a rub. Ethernet over Copper has distance limitations. You need to be within a few miles of a carrier point of presence to get this service. T1 and bonded T1 does not have these limitations.

If you are located in a small town, rural area or are otherwise not eligible for EoC service, there is another option rapidly becoming available called EoDS1 or Ethernet over DS1. This uses the data specification for T1 lines, called DS1, to transport Ethernet. In effect, this is Ethernet delivered over a T1 line using special interface equipment at both ends.

So what’s best service to order? The answer depends a lot on where you are located. Why not get a set of competitive quotes for your business location so you can make an informed decision? Take just a second to put in a request for Ethernet over Copper vs T1 Pricing and Availability. A friendly Telarus consultant will be happy to review the options with you and make recommendations for your particular situation. Sorry, no residential service available.

Speed of Metro Ethernet Zooming

What’s faster than a speeding bullet? Superman.

What’s faster than conventional business bandwidth solutions, such as T1 and DS3, and also cheaper? Metro Ethernet.

What’s new and in demand at an incredible rate of adoption? Sorry Superman, it’s Metro Ethernet.

Metro Ethernet is the WAN connection service that’s a real triple threat. Its speed may be one or two orders of magnitude above what you have now. It’s spreading like wildfire among business users. It’s generally cheaper per Mbps than your other bandwidth options, even the venerable T1 lines.

But can it leap tall buildings in a single bound? Your data certainly will. It will zoom in and out of your building at megabit to gigabit rates. That’s another advantage of Metro Ethernet - it’s scalable. You can start with enough bandwidth to meet your current needs and perhaps a little extra margin. When business picks up and your WAN connection becomes a bottleneck, you call up your service provider and ask them to increase your bandwidth.

Scalable bandwidth isn’t a characteristic of all network connections. Often if you want a higher service bandwidth, you need to go through a lengthly order and provisioning process. Metro Ethernet is designed with scalability built-in. The only real limitation is whether you have a fiber optic connection or use bonded copper pair.

Copper pair bonding is desirable for a lot of businesses because it frees them from the limitation of the single T1 line at 1.5 Mbps and allows them to move up to 3 Mbps, 5 Mbps, 10 Mbps standard Ethernet speed and even the equivalent of DS3 at 45 Mbps. All of these service levels are available over twisted pair copper, as long as you are reasonably close to the carrier’s facilities. In metro areas where you’ll find Metro Ethernet, that’s often the case.

Of course, fiber optic service to your building gives you a much larger range of service options. You can easily get 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, 1000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet, and often even 10 Gbps Ethernet.

Even more impressive than the line speeds are the lease rates for Metro Ethernet services. Don’t drop your coffee cup if you are quoted a rate that’s just a fraction of what you are paying now for traditional telecom services. It’s for real. Competitive carriers are looking to capture their share of the business bandwidth market and you can get some excellent deals on 1 to 5 year contracts. Recently I’ve seen Metro Ethernet services that offer more bandwidth for less cost than even T1 lines.

Would your company benefit from switching to Metro Ethernet or other Carrier Ethernet services? Find out by checking availability and pricing for Metro Ethernet service now.

Telecommunication DS3 Affordable For Business

Businesses today are looking for higher and higher bandwidths to support higher productivity computer-based processes. What do you do when your T1 line is maxed out and you still need more bandwidth?

If your needs are incremental and you’ve slowly used up the margin in your T1 bandwidth, the next logical step is to have a second T1 line bonded with the first. That gives you a WAN connection with 2x the capacity or twice the 1.5 Mbps that T1 service offers. A 2x bonded T1 ups your bandwidth to 3 Mbps. You can continue this process by bonding in additional T1 lines to get 3x, 4x, 5x and so on. Additional bonding is technically possible, but above this level another T-carrier service starts to be more cost effective. That’s T3 or DS3 service.

DS3 stands for Digital Signal 3 or digital signal level 3. It’s a technical designation for the characteristics of a TDM or Time Division Multiplexed digital signal service running at 44.736 Mbps. This is typically called 45 Mbps service. T1 lines have a similar specification called DS1.

How fast is DS3 compared to DS1? DS3 can transport 28 DS1 level signals. That’s the equivalent of bonding 28 T1 lines.

But you are not going to pay the cost of 28 T1 lines to have DS3 service. In fact, your monthly lease price is only a fraction of that. Exactly how much? You’ll need to check DS3 availability and pricing for your business address to find that out.

DS3 pricing is location dependent. The cost is determined by the distance from your business to the nearest carrier POP or Point of Presence. It’s also influenced by how built-out high speed data services are on that route. If there is fiber optic service already installed in your building or one nearby, you’ll have more service options and likely better pricing that if you are in an isolated location.

The termination for DS3 is copper-based. But the service itself can be provided over copper, fiber optic cable, or even wireless. DS3 over copper is often called a T3 line or T3 carrier.

There is another option available in metropolitan areas that gives you DS3 speeds of 45 Mbps at even lower costs. This is Ethernet over Copper or EoC. It’s a fairly new service, but one that is expanding rapidly for business users. Lower bandwidths are also available. Check Ethernet over Copper availability for your business location now.

More Bandwidth, Less Money

What does every business want employees to provide? Higher productivity. The usual quip is "do more with less." Well, how would you like to really get more for less? You can do that with bandwidth. You get more Mbps from your WAN connection and pay less. Sound interesting?

I'll limit this discussion to WAN or Wide Area Network bandwidth, although it can easily apply to LAN or local networks as well. If you want to explore possible cost savings for your in-house networks, take advantage of the VAR Network to locate contractors in your area that have this expertise.

So, how is it possible to get more bandwidth for less money? Conventional wisdom is that the more Mbps you use, the more you pay. That's still true as a rule. But what makes you think you have the optimum solution now? Chances are you are paying more than you need to under your current contracts. Once you see what you may be missing out on, you'll have a tough decision to make. Either pay less for your current bandwidth usage or pay the same and get a higher bandwidth level.

The first thing that you may be missing out on is a true competitive marketplace for your communications services business. Many companies simply call the local telco or check the Yellow Pages to find somebody that can hook them up for voice and data line service. That will get you up and running, but the chances that you are getting the optimum pricing are unlikely.

What's a better way? Use a telecommunications broker like Telarus, Inc. to research the available options for your location and get you the best deal. You can access this service by calling a toll free number or using the GeoQuote (tm) online search tool available at T1 Rex. This service is available at no cost for companies with a valid business address and telephone number in the United States. What will Telarus do that you can't? They'll access a dozen or more competitive carries and get you an list of competitive quotes prioritized by lease price. They'll also work with you to better define your requirements if need be.

You know yourself that having a dozen offers to choose from is better than having just one place to shop - especially when that provider knows they are the only game in town. Well, they may not be the only carrier that services an area but perhaps the easiest one to find.

Here's another thing you may be missing out on. There are newer bandwidth services available that might not have been offered in your area even a year ago. Two that come to mind are Wireless Fixed Internet access and Metro Ethernet. The Wireless offering is an alternative to DSL for smaller businesses and is available in most business locations. Metro Ethernet offers high bandwidths for less cost per Mbps that competing services such as DS3 or SONET fiber optic. If your requirements are under 50 Mbps, you may be able to get EoC or Ethernet over Copper transport that doesn't require the expense of new fiber installation.

So how do you find out whether these new options or others may save you a bundle? Once again, just use the GeoQuote (tm) online search tool. Some types of services will give you an instant price online. Others need a little more investigation, but you'll soon get a reply from a friendly Telarus consultant. Chances are, you'll soon be enjoying more bandwidth for less money.

WAN Connection Strategies

Within the corporate environment, LAN networks have standardized on twisted pair copper and fiber optic Ethernet connectivity. But once you leave the building, it's a potpourri of telecommunication standards. How do you select the right service for your needs?

Technology has divided pretty much along two lines, so to speak. They are the traditional TDM or Time Division Multiplexing standards based on circuit switching and the newer IP or Internet Protocol standards based on packet switching. Even this division is blurred because TDM networks can transport IP services and IP networks can transport TDM services.

Core network technology may not matter unless you have a specific need. For instance, Metro Ethernet can offer you level 2 switching capability so that you can connect multiple sites around town as if they are on the same LAN.

A better approach may be to go after the lowest cost service that meets your requirements. Let's take a look at some of what's available.

T1 lines are still the best choice for many businesses that need dedicated Internet connections, point to point data exchange, or outside lines for PBX telephone systems. Yes, T1 is a TDM standard. But connecting a T1 line to a packet network is as simple as installing a managed router often supplied free by the carrier. Otherwise a plug-in CSU/DSU card may interface your router to the T1 demarcation point.

T1 has a variant called T1 PRI or ISDN PRI. This is a high capacity digital telephone trunk line that gives you up to 23 outside phone lines plus Caller ID. ISDN PRI is usually a much better deal than individual analog phone lines for more than 6 - 12 lines.

One huge advantage of T1 lines is that they are almost universally available in the U.S. This is valuable for businesses located in smaller towns or rural areas where T1 service may be all you can get. But heavy competition in metro areas also makes T1 a good choice for downtown and suburban companies. Line lease rates have plunged in recent years. Bonding lines to multiply bandwidth keeps T1 being the preferred choice for many businesses. T1 lines can also be used as SIP trunks to support enterprise VoIP phone systems using IP PBX.

DS3 and SONET are the larger TDM technology services. They use fiber optic rather than twisted pair copper for delivery. Availability is generally limited to metro areas when fiber is already "lit" or easily installed.

The direct competitor to T1 and DS3 is now Metro Ethernet, also known as Carrier Ethernet. This is inherently a packet based technology and directly compatible with Ethernet LANs. Ethernet can be delivered over copper at 10 to 45 Mbps bandwidths, but higher speeds require fiber. Where available, Ethernet WAN service is often much lower is cost than other services. It can be priced at half the cost per Mbps compared to equivalent TDM services.

MPLS or Multi Protocol Label Switching is an IP network technology that is quickly replacing older Frame Relay networks for meshed connections to multiple locations. The "multi" in MPLS means it is capable of transporting any protocol, including TDM services. Most often it is used to establish a secure private network among many business locations.

Still wondering what will work best for your company. The easy way to find out is to get a list of competitive telecom services available for your location and recommendations from experts who know the industry and aren't tied to any one particular carrier. You may be surprised at how many good options you have.