Do You Need Bandwidth on Demand?

By: John Shepler

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Contact Center On Demand in the Cloud

Cloud communications services are becoming more sophisticated by the day. It’s a natural extension of the cloud computing revolution. Having successfully moved the data servers to the cloud, many companies have eyed the telecom room and wondered why they still need to support that large, expensive and soon to run out of capacity PBX telephone system.

More and more, it makes sense to move business phone operations to the cloud. It all started with Hosted VoIP or Hosted PBX and has expanded from there. The idea behind hosted PBX is that the telephone switching function can be accomplished just as easily from a cloud data center as it can from a back room in your office. The “big iron” hardware goes away, as do the analog, T1 and ISDN PRI telephone trunks. What you keep are handsets now connected to your corporate network and a high bandwidth WAN connection to your service provider.

What do you gain? No more capital investments for one thing. You move to a pricing model of so much per user per month. You also gain a myriad of additional features such as unified communications that include your smartphones, tablets, laptops and PCs into the communications system. Do you have HD voice? Probably not. HD voice is a VoIP technology that expands the transmitted audio band to increase the clarity of your “phone” calls.

Now that Hosted VoIP is a standard practice, the next step is to move the entire contact center to the cloud. XO Communications, a major player in cloud networking services, calls their system “Contact Center On Demand.” Have a look at this short video to see what it’s all about…


What XO will do for you is provide a single integrated solution that includes Hosted PBX and Contact Center on Demand. This is a comprehensive approach to your enterprise communications that gives you the quality and performance you need to support employees and customers with advanced features and a more attractive cost model. The system easily expands to include all of your business locations, along with mobile and remote workers.

What don’t you worry about any more? Equipment obsolescence, planning for large capital investments, limited feature sets, lack of mobile integration, on-going maintenance, inability to ramp up and down to accommodate seasonal spikes in call activity, and managing disaster backup and recovery.

Is your business ready to for more efficient and featured voice communications? Do the comparison between premises based business phone systems and Hosted PBX / Contact Center on Demand services. See what makes the most sense for your operations.

More Fiber Optic Network Services For Canada

By: John Shepler

Enterprise and wholesale bandwidth users in Canada now have access to expanded high speed network connections throughout the country and to the United States and other international destinations. Let’s take a look at what’s happening, what it might mean and how you can get access to these services.

XO Communications is a major international telecommunications carrier based in the United States. Within the U.S., XO supports fiber connections to 4,000 on-net buildings with more than 1.6 million fiber miles in a 29,000 mile Tier 1 IP network that spans the nation. They also connect internationally to nodes in Madrid, London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Hong Kong and Toronto that feed 55 countries.

Toronto is a recent addition. XO initiated service through its new hub at the 151 Front Street West carrier hotel in Toronto last October. This hub connects to Montreal and back to the U.S. XO network through a 600 mile fiber route to Albany and Buffalo, NY.

XO has now expanded its Canadian services to cover all of Canada’s six time zones with high speed fiber network services that include Dedicated Internet Access (DIA), high speed IP transit for other carriers, MPLS IP-VPN, VPLS, Ethernet, Private Line and Wavelength services for enterprises and wholesale customers. For multinational companies, MPLS IP-VPN can interconnect facilities in 60 countries. The expanded connections in the United States include New York City, Cleveland and Seattle.

Canada and the United States share the worlds longest border called the International Boundary. Cross-border business exceeds $1 billion per day & is growing at 5% a year. Communications between our two countries is vital to that commerce. Not the slow traditional line speeds, mind you. What’s in demand is 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps links. These connections support a wide variety of enterprise needs in the fields, of finance, manufacturing (especial automotive), media,& entertainment including film and television production, retail, plus energy including oil and gas production.

Today’s high productivity business requirements include high bandwidth, high capacity, low latency, packet loss & jitter, and high security. Point to point Ethernet private line services provide that kind of connectivity between two locations. Many large companies have traditionally created their own corporate long haul networks using multiple point to point private lines. A newer and more cost effective approach is to employ MPLS networks to accomplish the same results.

What do MPLS networks offer? They’re also called MPLS IP-VPN because these networks inherently provide virtual private networking by design. They easily transport IP traffic, but are not IP at their core. They use a proprietary switching and routing scheme called label switching, which is the LS in MPLS. Being privately owned and operated combined with label switching technology provides a much higher degree of security than you’d expect from the public Internet. If you feel that you still need an even higher level of security, such as for financial data, you have the option of encrypting the traffic you send to the MPLS network.

MPLS networks enjoy a substantial cost advantage over dedicated private lines because they use a common network infrastructure to serve many customers. Each customer has a committed information rate without interference from other customer’s traffic. It feels like you have the network all to yourself, but don’t have to pay for the construction and operation of a large international fiber optic network.

Do you need connectivity within Canada or cross-border between Canada and the United States? You have more options now than ever before. Find availability and pricing for Ethernet, MPLS, Wavelengths, private lines and Dedicated Internet Access from XO Communications and other major international network service providers.


Note: Map of North America courtesy of WikiMedia Commons.

How MPLS Network Bursting Provides Flexibility

The usual way to order bandwidth for last mile connections or MPLS networks is to commit to a given rate or line speed. You may order a T1 line and you’ll get 1.5 Mbps continuously. Order a 10 Mbps Ethernet service and you get 10 Mbps. On multi-tenant networks, like MPLS VPN, you pay for a committed information rate that sets the highest speed that your connection will run. But what happens if business conditions change or you simply guess wrong? Are you stuck paying for the wrong bandwidth for the life of the contract?

Not necessarily. In these volatile times service providers recognize that many companies need some flexibility in their bandwidth commitments. This is where the idea of bursting becomes attractive. Bursting basically allows you to exceed your committed bandwidth rate for short periods of time. This can happen during seasonal peaks like additional shoppers you didn’t plan on or a sudden increase in traffic due to having your company mentioned in the media. Bursting is also useful when you are adding additional locations for your business and haven’t factored the additional traffic into your bandwidth budget.

Who lets you burst? Some providers offer this feature on their line or network services, some don’t. A traditional T1 line, for instance, runs at a constant 1.5 Mbps. You have exclusive use of all 1.5 Mbps whether you have traffic on the line or not. Whatever isn’t being used at a particular time sits idle. The same is true for DS3 at 45 Mbps or private line Ethernet services at, say, 10 Mbps or 100 Mbps. You can’t make a bandwidth service run any faster than its technical limitation, but you may be able to buy fractional bandwidth service with bursting capability up to the full limit.

Why would you do this? Perhaps you need about 20 Mbps on a rather steady basis, but occasionally that jumps up to 30 or 40 Mbps. You could simply order a 45 Mbps DS3 service and be covered for any contingency. Or, you could order a fractional DS3 at 25 Mbps with the ability to burst up to the entire 45 Mbps capability. The advantage of this approach is that you may pay less per month for the fractional service plus the excess bandwidth used when bursting that if you leased the entire 45 Mbps line.

This works especially well with Ethernet connections. The maximum Ethernet bandwidth is set by the port that is installed in your facility. If a Fast Ethernet port is installed, you can get any bandwidth increment up to 100 Mbps. If a Gigabit Ethernet port is installed, you can order any bandwidth increment offered up to 1 Gbps. Most carriers give you a wide range of bandwidths to pick from. Some even offer bursting options that present significant cost savings. If you find that your needs have increased so that you are always bursting, you can change your line service to a higher bandwidth. That may be much less expensive since the committed rate is cheaper than the bursting charges. Think of overage charges on smartphone data use. That’s very similar to how bursting works.

XO Communications has taken the concept of bursting to their MPLS IP VPN networks. As you know, MPLS is now the preferred way to connect multiple business sites together. There are big cost advantages over simply installing dedicated lines to each location. By using the multi-tenant MPLS network for most of the distance and only installing short last mile connects to each location, you have the advantages of high bandwidth connections at a considerable cost savings. You also have the option to tie all of your locations together in a many-to-many mesh network so that any location can easily communicate with any other. The network takes care of setting this up, you don’t need to make those connections at headquarters.

The core MPLS network has tremendous capacity. It is designed to support many simultaneous users at various classes of service without one user impacting another. You have the feeling that you are the only one on the network, even though there may be thousands of others. The network operator has to provide enough bandwidth to meet the committed rates offered to all it’s clients, even if they all decide to communicate at the same time. Excess capacity can be used to offer bursting to those clients who need it. With XO, you can commit to 100 Mbps but burst up to 1 Gbps. They discard the top 5% of traffic samples as anomalies and only charge you for the committed rate plus the excess rate that you have used during the month.

How about your business requirements? Are they rock solid or do you need the ability to rapidly and automatically respond to spikes in demand? There are great solutions available for both cases. Get competitive MPLS network and line prices now to compare with your current telecom costs.


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

Fiber Optic Speed Using Ethernet over Copper

In the future, perhaps the near future, all connectivity will be by fiber optic communication lines. The largest companies already have fiber assets in place. Some smaller but bandwidth intensive companies have also moved from their traditional copper lines to fiber optic connections. Fiber offers nearly unlimited bandwidth growth once installed. The issue is what to do if there is no fiber available at your location yet.

A few years ago your options were limited. You probably started with a T1 line. This service is available everywhere and easily affordable. T1 lines offered plenty of bandwidth for most businesses when they were first made available decades ago. Today, 1.5 Mbps still works for very small companies but is very limiting for larger organizations or any business with high bandwidth demands.

The reason T1 is available to nearly every business location is that it is provided over standard twisted pair telco lines. These are the same wires that bring in multiline telephone service. Extra pairs in the bundle are available for T1 use.

This offers a growth path for many companies. There are often many unused copper pairs in the telecom cable. Those extra pairs can be pressed into service to bring in multiple T1 lines. A process called bonding combines the bandwidth of those lines into one larger pipe. Bonding 2 T1 lines gives you 3 Mbps, 4 lines are good for 6 Mbps and 8 lines boost that to 12 Mbps.

That’s about the best you can do with T1 service. If you need more bandwidth, your next best bet is DS3, another longstanding telecom service. It offers 45 Mbps. DS3 is fairly common in most business areas, but it no longer strictly a copper wireline service. Most of the distance between the central office and your location is covered by fiber optic lines. The DS3 rides on this fiber until it is terminated at your building. If suitable fiber is available, great. Otherwise you are out of luck.

A new technology has been developed to bridge the gap between T1 lines and dedicated fiber optic connections. It’s called Ethernet over Copper or EoC. This technology uses the same twisted pair copper telco wiring as T1, but supercharges the bandwidth. The way it does this is by using a more advanced digital modulation technique with special terminal equipment at both ends of the connection.

Ethernet over Copper has caught on so fast that it is now the preferred bandwidth solution for low to mid level line speeds. Entry level is typically 3 Mbps, twice the bandwidth of a T1 line for about the same monthly cost. Many companies are now moving to 10 Mbps EoC to support higher business bandwidth demands. The cost of 10 Mbps EoC is only a fraction of what you’d pay for 10 Mbps bonded T1.

An even bigger advantage of Ethernet over Copper is that it can support higher speeds than 10 Mbps. If 10 Mbps isn’t enough, you can often move up to 15 or 20 Mbps. Another desirable speed level is 45 Mbps. This is the same bandwidth as a DS3 connection but without any fiber needed to deliver the signal.

Two competitive carriers are now announcing even higher speed service levels using EoC technology. Integra Telecom has debuted 60 Mbps symmetrical Ethernet over Copper service. That’s 60 Mbps in both the upload and download directions. This service can be provided up to 2,500 feet from the central office that terminates the copper bundle. This is enough to reach over 400,000 businesses.

The technical tradeoff for speed is distance when you employ EoC technology. The higher the line speed, the closer you have to be to the CO and the termination equipment. T1 doesn’t have this distance limitation but is limited to 1.5 Mbps per T1 line.

XO Communications has upped the capability of Ethernet over Copper connections even further. Their newest level is 100 Mbps. This compares favorably with the 155 Mbps bandwidth of the lowest available SONET fiber optic speed, a commonly used fiber service.

Ethernet over Copper is now an established and widely available connectivity service with speeds ranging from 3 to 100 Mbps. It’s certainly a viable replacement for T1 or bonded T1 lines. It also makes sense for companies that need higher bandwidths but can’t wait for their buildings to be lit for fiber. In some cases, the 50 or 100 Mbps line speeds are all they really need and the upgrade to fiber can be delayed until sometime in the future.

Is your business bandwidth limited or do you have an interest in cutting costs on your monthly telecom expense? If so, you should get the latest competitive prices on Ethernet over Copper bandwidth services.

E911 For Enterprise VoIP

The move from switched circuit to packet switched telephony has created some unintended consequences. One of these is emergency calling to 911. We take the 911 system for granted. When disaster strikes, just punch in those three little numbers and help will be on the way. Well, that’s the way it’s supposed to work.

Now consider this. There’s a fire in the maintenance closet down the hall and it’s getting out of control. You pick up your handset and dial 911. You reach the emergency operator and report the fire, then run out of the building and across the street. An hour later, the facility has burned to the ground and no fire trucks have shown up. How could this happen?

The fire trucks did show up within 5 minutes of your call. Unfortunately, they went to your main office in Phoenix. You just called from the satellite office in Indianapolis. Oops! Something is not set up properly on your VoIP phone system.

Such a problem would never arise on an analog landline phone. Why? Because the phone wire is in the ground at it always goes the same place. That’s why they call it a landline. VoIP, however, is a network service. As long as a SIP phone can connect to the network, it can make a call. It makes no difference where that connection takes place. Networks that encompass multiple locations need special consideration when they are converged for voice and data. The same technology that makes it easy to move phones around also makes it easy to lose track of just where they are plugged-in. This is especially true if any of your phones connect via the Internet.

XO Communications, a leader in enterprise VoIP deployments, has an instructional video called “9 Ways to Ensure E911 VoIP Service for Enterprise VoIP Deployments.” Have a look now and see if there is something needing your attention...



Make no mistake about it. VoIP technologies, including Hosted PBX and Unified Communications, offer enormous benefits in cost reduction and employee productivity improvement. Like all new technology, the more cutting edge the solution, the trickier it is to get it right. You want to be working with a top-tier service provider who understands the legal requirements for issues such as E911 and has processes in-place to ensure that your system is set up accurately.

If you are considering an upgrade to your business phone system, get recommendations, options and pricing on competing telephony solutions. Be sure you understand how they ensure accurate E911 call routing.

What XO’s 1,000,000 VoIP Customers Predicts

XO Communications, a major competitive telecom carrier, recently achieved the milestone of reaching 1,000,000 business VoIP end users.



What should be noted is that it came as a surprise, even to XO, that the millionth customer would arrive in only 5 years. You may have raised an eyebrow, too, if you’ve been struggling with the decision on whether or not to embrace enterprise VoIP technology. We’ve all been on calls with someone using a poorly implemented VoIP solution and have been repelled by the distortion, voice clipping, noise modulation and even dropped calls of VoIP done badly. Well, it doesn’t have to be that way. After all, a million business customers must know something, right?

What they know is that professional grade communications solutions are carefully engineered to accommodate the needs of the technology. For instance, XO’s IP Flex service is implemented over a T1 line or similar commercial bandwidth connection. Terminal equipment on both ends ensures that voice packets have the bandwidth, latency, and jitter characteristics they need to travel unscathed from user to service provider. They are protected from interference by data transfers by giving voice priority over data. The circuit is engineered to ensure that you can have all the telephone calls you need in progress simultaneously and still have adequate bandwidth for high speed Internet service on the same line.

The secret to enterprise VoIP is in careful control of the network. That network must include your converged LAN plus the link to your telephone and Internet service provider. SIP Trunking, a larger scale version of integrated voice and data lines, even allows you to include multiple business locations on the same outgoing phone lines. Internal calls stay on your network and avoid telco toll charges completely.

There is a future to telecommunications services, and the million XO VoIP customers shows that we are moving to an IP-centric business environment faster than most of us realize. Those who have made the switch are now enjoying the twin benefits of added services and lower costs.

Is your business, large or small, looking at ways to save on your monthly telecom expenses while maintaining quality of service? If so, then get competitive quotes on Enterprise VoIP Voice and Data Services.

Ethernet over Copper Growing By Leaps and Bounds

What’s the hottest new access network service? It’s clearly Ethernet over Copper. So hot is it that competitive carriers are scrambling to add coverage as fast as they can. An recent example is XO Communications, a major player in EoC, that just expanded its Ethernet over Copper network by more than 30%.

Just what is Ethernet over Copper and why is it so hot? The technology was developed in response to changing network priorities. WAN or Wide Area Network networks have traditionally been the domain of the telephone industry, which has adapted telephone transport technology to also carry data and video.

T1 lines have been used almost universally by businesses for point to point and dedicated Ethernet connections. They can be configured to transport 1.5 Mbps in both the upload and download directions. What’s made T1 so universal is that it is provisioned on two pair of ordinary copper telephone wires.

Ethernet over Copper also makes use of those same copper telephone wires, some of which have been in the ground for decades. Why push this old copper into service when fiber optics is so much more advanced? Simply because there is so much copper available and perfectly functional. Every business location has copper telephone bundles installed by default. If you want fiber optic service, you need to be in a fiber lit building or often be willing to pay the construction costs of extending fiber from the nearest carrier point to presence to your location. If copper will work, construction costs are minimal to non-existant.

But what can you do with copper? You can extend your LAN across town or across the country. You can even connect internationally to include locations overseas. Want a fast, reliable connection to the Internet? EoC will give you just that.

But why Ethernet over Copper instead of just sticking with the venerable T1 line? It comes down to cost, bandwidth and services. EoC is typically cheaper than T1 for the same level of bandwidth. In fact, you can often get 3 Mbps Ethernet for the same price as 1.5 Mbps T1. The most popular service is 10 Mbps Ethernet over Copper, although you can also get 20 Mbps and sometimes up to 50 Mbps over copper. T1 bandwidth can also be increased by bundling multiple T1 lines together, but the cost is often prohibitive above 10 Mbps.

In addition, Ethernet over Copper keeps your network protocol as Ethernet from LAN to WAN and back to LAN. That allows you to create virtual LANs that include multiple locations acting as one bridged LAN network. Ethernet line and LAN services are becoming very popular with businesses that support multiple locations.

Is Ethernet over Copper a service that would benefit your company or organization? Before you sign a contract for any other service, be sure to get pricing and availability of Ethernet over Copper bandwidth. It can be an eye-opener.

XO Nails Down SIP Trunking Savings

How would you like to save over $88,000 a year for your business just by switching to SIP trunking service?

Not so fast, you with the pushcart. To save this kind of money, you have to have the size of operation that spends that kind of money. I’m getting the number from the new Enterprise SIP Savings Estimator offered by XO Communications, a major competitive voice and data carrier.



What kind of business saves the big bucks? In this case, one with 1,000 employees located in 10 locations and making half their phone calls within the company. This is not at all unusual for Fortune 500 corporations. In fact, I’ll bet there are many companies in your city that meet this criteria. Perhaps you even work at one. If you are in charge of information technology or telecommunications, this is something that can make you a corporate hero. With nearly all businesses turning over every rock to find cost reductions, SIP services are well worth investigating.

What’s special about SIP and how does it work the savings magic? SIP or Session Initiation Protocol is the switching protocol behind most VoIP implementations. In fact, when you hear the term SIP, you can bet the discussion involves VoIP telephony to some degree. The selling point of enterprise-level VoIP phone systems is that they are big money savers. But the question remains, “how?”

One big source of savings comes from the fact that we are in the digital age and companies large enough to have multiple business locations have those locations tied together with a WAN or Wide Area Network. Some do this with T1 lines and their own proprietary network topology. Others use a private cloud network, once Frame Relay and now MPLS, to create a mesh network that ties all locations together.

But what about telephone? The local PBX telephone system dominates with analog or ISDN PRI trunk lines for outgoing calls. Here’s where the savings come in. Right now you may need to use the public telephone network to make a call from a branch office to the main office or another branch. You pay for each of those calls. But, if you can press you data network to do double duty and transport voice as well as data, you can keep those internal phone calls on your own network and pay no toll charges at all. It’s almost free, since the data network has to be in place anyway.

SIP trunking is a technique that carries both voice and data on the same network. You don’t even need to connect your phone system to the public network. You can install a SIP trunk to a service provider that handles that at lower cost that you may be paying. The SIP trunking provider can also give you broadband Internet service over the same trunk without computer traffic interfering with voice traffic.

Oh, but you need to be a major corporation to save using SIP services, right? No, not at all. Most medium size companies and many small companies can also save money with SIP trunking in place of the separate phone lines and broadband services they buy now. How can you know if it makes sense for your operation? Easy. Get a competitive quote for SIP Trunking services and see just what the cost savings are. You may be surprised at what you’ve been missing out on.

100 GigE in the Long Run

Long haul fiber optic networks, including core networks for regional and national carriers, are headed up in bandwidth capacity as Internet and private networking users keep demanding more and more Gbps. The most recent upgrades have been to 40 Gbps. But XO Communications and Infinera are getting ahead of the curve by demonstrating 100 Gigabit Ethernet on the XO long-haul DWDM network.

The reason for the partnering of the two companies is that there are two pieces to the puzzle. You need a long haul network with the inherent capacity to carry the signals. XO is a leading competitive carrier with that kind of capacity. You also need equipment that can make good use of available network capacity. That's what Infinera specializes in.

Infinera creates a 100 Gbps transport network by concatenating ten 10 Gbps fiber wavelengths. DWDM or Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing offers up to 160 individual wavelengths, also known as lambdas, on a single optical fiber. When all wavelengths are pressed into service, the total capacity is 1.6 Tbps or Terabits per second of bandwidth. We're not at the point of needing quite this much just yet. But if video streams keep multiplying the way they have been, that type of network capacity is not too far fetched.

Infinera is also providing a service known as bandwidth virtualization. Philosophically similar to server virtualization, this is a technique that decouples bandwidth services from whatever the underlying transport infrastructure happens to be. Bandwidths can be deployed at rates from 1 Gbps to 100 Gbps using protocols such as Ethernet, SONET/SDH, or wavelengths. Without bandwidth virtualization, the network you've installed dictates the type of service available.

All of these capabilities are contained in the Infinera DTN system, a transport chassis containing a band mux module, digital line module, tributary adaptor module and management control module. A full bay provides 800 Gbps of capacity. Infinera and XO Communications are using this equipment to demonstrate long haul 100 GigE service at NXTcomm08 this week. A 100 Gigabit/sec Ethernet signal is injected into the Infinera DTN in Las Vegas, transported to Los Angeles on the XO network, and looped back to Las Vegas where it is recovered and monitored.

Thanks to advances by companies like Infinera and XO Communications, Gigabit Ethernet for business use is no longer something to dream about. It's now readily available in major metropolitan areas with very attractive lease rates. Standard 10 Mbps and Fast 100 Mbps Ethernet is available to many more businesses using fiber optic or Ethernet over Copper last mile connections.

Buy Convergence By The Byte

XO Communications is changing the game on legacy telecommunication carriers by offering IP Network services priced by amount of bandwidth used rather than number of lines or channels in service. What's putting the nail in the coffin of TDM based telephony services is both a switch to an IP based network and the use of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for telephone trunking. By starting with a packet switched network and then transmitting everything in packet protocol, voice and data traffic is easily combined on a single circuit.

Convergence, the idea of using a single network for voice, video and data, is an idea that has been gaining popularity with IT departments looking to simplify network management. It's also popular with executives eying potential cost reductions as networks are merged. The fly in the ointment has been the abrupt disconnect between the local area network and wide area network services. With IP inside the plant and TDM outside, there's an exercise in protocol conversion and call termination needed to make everything work.

XO is changing that paradigm with its IPfolio. Two things make IPfolio different from industry practice. First is that a suite of IP services all run on a single underlying network so seamlessly that you can mix and match at will to create a custom solution for your operation. It's something like a telecom buffet. You can choose from an IP VPN to connect multiple business sites, SIP based telephone trunking for your IP PBX phone system, and dedicated Internet access with dynamic bandwidth allocation. Voice is treated as a data application, the real secret to network convergence.

The second unique feature of IPfolio, and perhaps the more disruptive to the industry, is that your services are priced by how many Mbps you use, not feature by feature or even by service bundles. You can scale the bandwidth you need between 1.5 and 45 Mbps. Within that range, you'll get unlimited local calling and site to site calls between company locations. It is SIP based VoIP telephony, so you are not limited by channel allocations or phone "lines". Pack as many calls as will fit into the bandwidth you are paying for. This service is compatible with leading PBX systems, including those from Cisco, Avaya and other suppliers. Optional services include long distance plans sized from 2K to 40K minutes per month.

The XO MPLS IP-VPN portion of the IPfolio is an MPLS network solution with VPN capabilities to connect multiple business locations securely. It's set up for multiple classes of services to ensure that applications run smoothly and that large data downloads don't disrupt real-time voice communications.

The XO IPfolio tries to encompass all of the communications services that businesses need and offer them with a pricing structure more geared to IP based telecommunications. IPfolio was introduced in 2007 in selected cities and is now available nationwide.

If you think that your company might benefit from converged IP services or more cost effective traditional line services, let our team of expert consultants get you competitive quotes tailored to your needs. You might be surprised by how much you can save over your current solutions.

XO Communications Nears Tbps National Network

If there is any doubt in your mind that the widely discussed bandwidth glut of the great telecom boom in the late 90's has all but evaporated, this news should make it clear. XO communications is implementing an upgrade of its national backbone that was just upgraded last year. The core fiber bandwidth is being extended from 400 Gbps to 800 Gbps on major coast to coast network routes. Just another 200 Gbps and we're talking Terabit/second bandwidth.

Is near-Tbps bandwidth really needed? Apparently so. XO cites a 5x increase in orders for high capacity inter-city network transport services within the last year. Inter-city and metro transport demands are coming from telecom carriers, cable companies, content providers, large enterprises and wireless companies. These major users will then deploy that bandwidth in smaller fractions to serve B2B and B2C applications, including connectivity to branch offices and SMBs (small to medium size businesses). Applications such as VoIP, HD video, video streaming, rich multimedia content, and faster broadband Internet services all sop up bandwidth at a prodigious rate. A Gigabit per second just isn't the cornucopia it used to be.

XO is being smart about their implementation. The plan is to light two new fiber strands using the Infinera DTN system that was deployed last year as part of the network upgrade to 400 Gbps. The 800 Gbps will be organized as 80 10-Gbps channels running over 18,000 route-miles of the nationwide network. XO's inter-city network currently connects 75 major metropolitan areas across the United States.

Fiber optic services offered by XO include Ethernet from GigE to 10 Gbps, IP transit and private line services from OC-3 to OC-192 and wavelength services at 2.5 Gbps and 10 Gbps speeds. XO also offers a complete suite of business services, with over 3,000 fiber-fed buildings on net, plus copper and wireless connectivity including traditional T1 voice and data services. Beyond connectivity, XO offers managed firewalls, VPNs and server collocation hosting.

If your business currently uses or would benefit from digital telephony, dedicated Internet service or point-to-point connectivity, we cordially invite you to discover how services from XO Communications and other competitive telecommunications carriers can give you the connections you need at surprisingly attractive rates. Simply call the toll free number or enter an easy online request through our GigaPackets.com service.

Mid-Band Ethernet Offers Fiber Bandwidth Over Copper

Are you saying, "I feel the need. The need for bandwidth"? Or something like that?

Well, don't feel alone. The demand for WAN bandwidth is nearly insatiable. What's driving the need for bigger network pipes leaving the premises is an increase is the volume of data, measured in file sizes and number of transactions. Everything from radiological images and CAD drawings to offsite backups to ecommerce to wireless backhaul is clogging wide area network lines that used to have plenty of capacity.

In most cases, the increase in demand justifies ordering more bandwidth. That's great until you try to place the order. Where there was no problem whatsoever upgrading from ISDN BRI to a T1 line, there can be a BIG problem upgrading to fiber. Less than 15% of business locations are wired for fiber to the premises. The 85% that aren't already connected face potentially enormous charges to trench-in a fiber connection to the nearest metro ring. While monthly lease fees may be within the budget, the unexpected construction expense is likely a show stopper.

An ingenious solution to this dilemma involves leveraging the copper pairs that are already pulled into nearly every structure standing. Multi-pair bundles are the mainstay of traditional analog telephony. They can also be used to bring in T1 service for digital telephony and broadband Internet access. What has been needed is a way to get higher bandwidths over the installed base of copper wiring.

Enter mid-band Ethernet over copper. This service fills the bandwidth gap between T1 at 1.5 Mbps and DS3 over fiber at 45 Mbps. Mid-range bandwidths are often just right for business applications such as real-time video, mid to large company Internet access, and electronic data transfer. Plus this is native Ethernet running over the WAN, rather than a conversion from packet switching to T1 or SONET time division multiplexing. That makes for greater utilization of the potential line capacity and easier network management.

XO Communications, a major competitive telecommunications carrier, is now offering private data networking for metropolitan and intercity services using Ethernet over copper technology from Hatteras Networks. Where available, you can now get 10 Mbps point to point connectivity with a standard 10BaseT interface at each end. That's even if the terminations are on opposite sides of the country. Think of it as a VERY long LAN. XO supplies the equipment and monitors the line 24x7.

The technology from Hatteras Networks is based on the "Ethernet in the First Mile Project", also known at IEEE 802.3ah. The physical layer employs SHDSL (Symmetric High-speed DSL) with a maximum rate of 2.3 Mbps per pair or E-SHDSL, Extended SHDSL, with a maximum rate of 5.7 Mbps per pair. Two pair can conceivably carry the full 10 Mbps Ethernet, although SHDSL bandwidths decrease with distance from the central office. Hatteras equipment can bond up to 8 copper pair for a maximum bandwidth of 45 Mbps, giving 10 Mbps over extended distances.

XO offers mid-band Ethernet in major cities where they have installed the Hatteras equipment in telco COs using existing copper lines. An alternative elsewhere is to bond conventional T1 lines to create 2x ( 3Mbps), 3x (4.5 Mbps), 4x (6 Mbps) and so on. T1 lines are nearly universally available, as they were engineered to run on 2 pair each of conventional copper phone lines.

Is your business pressed for bandwidth? Our product experts are anxious to help you get the most bandwidth for your dollar, using highly competitive services from XO and other competitive carriers. Just call the toll free number or run a instant online quote using our MegaTrunks Mid-Band Ethernet Service.