Fiber Optic Connections from USA to Paris, France

By: John Shepler

For many companies, business is a global effort. Some simply import and export. Others have offices and factories worldwide. All need connectivity from their business locations in the United States to other locations thousands of miles away. More importantly, they need the right type of connectivity.

Direct Internet Access (DIA) will get the job done for many smaller organizations that simply need email, file transfers and web access. More sophisticated operations want to link their local area networks in each location as if they were one giant LAN.

Others need low latency to support two-way video conferencing, VoIP telephony, financial trading, cloud access and other real-time delay sensitive applications.

Ethernet over Fiber and MPLS networks are the first choice of most companies with important electronic business processes in the US. But, what is possible if you need international access, such as to the European continent?

Zayo has been a leader in both domestic and international high performance bandwidth solutions. They operate an extensive fiber optic network nationwide. Many customers use the Zayo network to link their various operations from state to state. What you may not realize is that Zayo also connects transatlantically to an expanding fiber network that also covers Europe.

You can think of the Zayo long haul European fiber network as a loop that interconnects London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Paris. From there you can get to just about any location on the Continent via Zayo or other metro and WAN connections.

What’s new is a greatly expanded presence in Paris, France. Zayo is becoming a major network provider in the Paris metro area by acquisition of the French infrastructure company, Neo Telecoms.

What resources is Zayo adding to its international network assets? First, an already built-out fiber plant consisting of 350 metro route miles in Paris. That fiber connects more than 500 on-net buildings plus 9 colocation centers across France. Zayo will now have an additional 36,000 square feed of data center space serving France.

Neo Telecom created Paris’ first fiber optic MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) to support business in the city. Their services include dark fiber, IP, Ethernet, wavelength and colo. More than 600 enterprise customers and other carriers are already on the network. They are primarily involved in the financial, tech, media and telecom sectors.

Zayo itself operates 77,000 fiber route files in the US and Europe plus 27 carrier-neutral colocation facilities in the United States.

Does your company do business in both France and America? If so, you now have a single provider in Zayo who can meet your domestic and international network connectivity needs. You may be especially interested in Gigabit Ethernet and MPLS IP network services that can transparently link your LAN’s worldwide and to collocated data centers and cloud services.

Other services of interest include 25,000 miles worth of dark fiber, wavelengths with up to 100 Gbps bandwidth in metro and intercity links, traditional SONET fiber from DS3 to OC192 for point to point, hub/tail and dedicated rings, mobile infrastructure and Tier 1 IP network peering.

Now would be a good time to investigate the ever expanding domestic and international colocation and interconnection services available from Zayo and other high performance service providers. Call toll free (888)-848-8749, or submit an online inquiry anytime.


Note: Map of France courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Fiber Makes the Upgrades Easy

By: John Shepler

Fiber optic bandwidth has long been a standard of business connectivity, especially for applications requiring extreme line speeds. The good news now is that fiber service is becoming available to more and more business locations. IT managers and other executives are increasingly faced with the choice of whether to continue embracing their legacy copper wireline services or make the upgrade to fiber optic service. Let’s see what helps tilt the balance in favor of fiber.


First of all, Fiber is the Future
You can easily read the signs that point in this direction. Fiber optic bandwidth has gone from being an extremely expensive option to being price competitive with copper on a per Mbps basis. Bonded T1 and Ethernet over Copper will only take you so far in satisfying an accelerating need for MAN and WAN bandwidth. When copper runs out of capability, fiber is often the only solution.

Copper Asset Retirement
You’ll also notice the media stories of how carriers are either phasing out their copper assets or planning to do so. The change has been slow in coming because all that buried and overhead copper is already paid for. However, maintenance is not free. Corroding copper wires result in frequent truck rolls. Some of the justification for holding onto the copper plant is the preponderance of legacy analog phone lines plus T1 and ISDN trunks that use the same twisted pair lines. As carriers transition from circuit switched to packet switched architectures, those analog and TDM circuits start to fade away.

Ethernet over Fiber
The new juggernaut is Ethernet over Fiber. It’s a combination that meets a lot of needs. Fiber provides the bandwidth capacity. Ethernet offers its inherent support for IP networking. Ethernet also has some new standardized services available. E-LAN or Ethernet LAN service is becoming the easiest and most cost effective way to link multiple business locations in a meshed any-to-any communications architecture. The designed-in ease of scalability with Ethernet over Fiber is a huge boon for companies that want to minimize their costs in an uncertain business climate.

SONET, the Legacy Fiber
The legacy competing fiber service is SONET, a technology designed by and for the phone companies. SONET has predetermined bandwidth levels that include OC-3 at 155 Mbps, OC-12 at 622 Mbps and OC-48 at 2.4 Gbps. The terminal equipment is specific to these levels, so changes require truck rolls for the carriers to swap out customer premises equipment and perhaps make engineering changes to the network. Delays of weeks and months for system changes are not unusual.

Ethernet Scalability
Ethernet over Fiber doesn’t operate at fixed bandwidth levels. Instead, there is a maximum bandwidth capability determined by the installed port speed. Popular port options include 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, 1 Gbps Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gbps 10 GigE. The beauty of this arrangement is that you can install a Gigabit Ethernet port, but only order a couple hundred Mbps of initial bandwidth. When your line starts to reach its capacity, a simple phone call to your provider can double or quadruple bandwidth in a matter of hours or days. No hardware changes are needed.

Ethernet Cost Advantage
You should also be aware that Ethernet over Fiber usually has a cost advantage over SONET. Competitive carriers with their own IP core networks can completely bypass the incumbent telephone companies and give you point to point or dedicated Internet connections. You may well find that you can get twice the bandwidth for the same money that you pay now or cut your monthly telecom bill in half.

Private IP Networks vs The Internet

By: John Shepler

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Big Data Makes Big Push For 100 Gigabit Bandwidth

By: John Shepler

Just a few years ago the notion that businesses and government agencies needed 100 Gbps WAN bandwidth seemed absurd. Why, the provider’s core networks ran mostly at 10 Gbps, with some moving to 40 Gbps to handle high traffic levels from many simultaneous customers. Today, those same customers are expecting their service providers to give them the option of 40 Gbps and even 100 Gbps connectivity.

What could be causing this massive increase in bandwidth requirements? Two words: Big data. Big Data offers big opportunities to enhance business processes and mine databases, but it consumes big processing, big storage and big bandwidth. Big storage and big processing have been the focus of cloud computing providers as well as data center expansions. Big bandwidth is now the last piece of the puzzle to be put in place to create an integrated solution.

Where is all this bandwidth going? Some of it goes to interconnecting multiple business locations. Other connections go to remote data centers for disaster backup and recovery. Some is needed to communicate with customers and suppliers. In the case of content producers, large amounts of bandwidth are needed to transport that content to the local service providers, like cable companies, or directly to the end user. The latest wrinkle is the rapid rise of cloud computing solutions. Putting those cloud resources to best use is proving to require massive increases in bandwidth.

The reason that cloud computing needs big bandwidth is that most of the traffic that used to be carried on the LAN now needs to be carried through the WAN. The enterprise data center with all its processors and disk drives is generally located in proximity to the users so that the organization can have control of the network connections. This has the dual benefit of minimizing costs because there are no traffic fees and increasing security because the entire network is under local control.

The cloud changes this equation. Processing and storage is moved to a remote data center and most of the local data center facilities go dark. The local network still connects all of the PCs, printers, SIP telephones, switches, routers and other devices. Some servers may still stay local. But the big data processing is done elsewhere where there are enough compute resources to crunch all that big data into more bite size pieces. The issue is how to get all that data to and from the cloud.

What happens when you skimp on WAN bandwidth? The cloud keeps running at full speed, but its inputs and outputs slow to a crawl. Think of a WAN connection as a pipe, as it is sometimes called, and you can visualize how too small of a pipe keeps the flow (of data) at a trickle. The local experience is that the system isn’t very responsive and interactions can become unpredictable. There can be big congestion delays where nothing happens on the screen for long periods of time. What’s worse, you don’t know if you’ll have a result in half a second, half a minute or who knows how long? That’s a productivity killer if there ever was one.

People to cloud communications is critical for high employee productivity, but machine to machine communications can be more important. It’s the machines that generate data at a rate humans can’t possibly equal. Those machines might be data banks, sensors, machine tools, video cameras & displays, server farms and so on. What’s important is that they are not constrained by the capacity of the communication channel.

tw telecom is one of the latest carriers to announce that it has introduced 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps business Ethernet services in the 75 metro markets that it serves. These services are in addition to the 2.5 and 10 Gbps bandwidth options that have been in place for some time. Traditional fiber optic technology offers up to 10 Gbps on a single fiber strand or one of several wavelengths that share that strand. Bonding multiple wavelengths using DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) increases that carrying capacity up to 40 or 100 Gbps with a single connection to the user.

Who needs 100 Gbps bandwidth? Right now it’s only the largest corporations, financial institution, research labs or government agencies. But how long ago was it that DS3 at 45 Mbps was considered big bandwidth and OC-3 entry level fiber at 155 Mbps was plenty for most enterprises? Today 100 Gbps is on the cutting edge of technology. Tomorrow that level might be considered par for the course or even entry level for many businesses.

Would your organization’s productivity benefit from a bandwidth increase? You may not need anywhere near 100 Gbps, but you should know that fiber options from 10 Mbps to 1 Gbps are readily available and more affordable that you imaging. Get fiber optic bandwidth options available for your business locations.

Leased Line Prices Lower, More Variety

Leased telecom lines have long been the standard of business connectivity from point to point or for dedicated Internet access. Let’s take a look at what leased line options are available and how prices have changed dramatically in the last few years.

First of all, it might be useful to define what a leased line is and how it differs from other bandwidth options. Leased lines are pretty much what the name implies. You contract with a telecom service provider, a carrier, for a period of typically 1, 2 or 3 years in which you have exclusive use of a line service. There is no other traffic on your line. You can choose to load it up 24/7 or let it idle overnight. The cost is the same. Pricing is based on so many Mbps every month.

Note that this is Megabits per second and not total Megabits of traffic every month. The bandwidth sets the maximum speed of transmission and the maximum number of bits that can go over that line in a month. In practice, few dedicated lines are loaded to the maximum. Users deliberately leave some reserve or margin to handle peak vs average needs. In normal operation the lines are highly loaded at times and lightly loaded at other times.

Dedicated telecom lines are highly reliable and guaranteed to be available for a high percentage of time. You see this expressed as 99.9% or 99.99% uptime. The holy grail of availability is 99.999%, also called “5 nines”. When you order a leased line, it generally comes with a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that spells out the promised availability, mean time to repair if a line should fail, and what compensation you get if the provider isn’t able to meet the requirements of the SLA.

As you might suspect, leased lines are professional grade service used by businesses and organizations. They are not a consumer product. In fact, many carriers won’t even install a leased line to a residential address. That’s seldom a problem because there is an order of magnitude difference in price between leads lines and residential broadband.

Why are consumer line services, like cable and DSL, so much cheaper? For one thing, they are based on shared bandwidth. You and dozens or hundreds of your neighbors are actually sharing a leased line that the service provider has installed to their facility. If nobody is on that line but you at any given time, then you get all the bandwidth to yourself. Not the speed of the leased line, but some lower maximum rate depending on how much you pay each month. If many of your neighbors are streaming video, the line speed slows to a crawl for each of you. Most businesses can’t stand that unpredictability in performance. They need the solid bandwidth of leased lines.

Consumer line services don’t come with any sort of SLA. They are offered on a “best effort” basis. That means you get what you get and if something goes wrong it gets fixed when it gets fixed. This lack of commitment also helps to keep prices lower on residential bandwidth. Point to point connectivity for consumers? Forget it. All of these services access the Internet. If you want a secure point to point connection you need to set up a Virtual Private Network (VPN) for the locations you want to connect.

T1 lines have long been the staple of the leased line business. You can order a point to point T1 that connects two locations directly. You can order a dedicated Internet access T1 that connects you to the Internet. You can even order a T1 telephone trunk that give you up to 24 outside lines for your business phone system.

T1 prices have plunged from over a grand to under $300 a month in most locations. For that you get exclusive use of 1.5 Mbps for a long as your contract goes. If that isn’t enough bandwidth, you can bond multiple T1 lines together to get 3, 4.5, 6, 7.5, 9, 10.5 or 12 Mbps.

What competes with T1? It’s a newer service called Ethernet over Copper (EoC). This is a wireline service that offers high bandwidth and lower prices, but with some distance limitations. Entry level EoC service is generally 3 Mbps for the same price as a single 1.5 Mbps T1 line. Bandwidth can easily range up to 10 or 20 Mbps, with 45 Mbps and even 100 Mbps available in some locations. The more bandwidth you order, the lower the price per Mbps.

If you need more bandwidth than copper offers, you move up to fiber optic leased lines. DS3 at 45 Mbps is often carried by fiber optic line to your location and then by copper coaxial lines to your equipment. SONET is all fiber and starts at 155 Mbps. It goes up to 1 or 10 Gbps in most areas and 40 Gbps to 100 Gbps in some locations.

Ethernet over Fiber (EoF), like EoC, offers scalable bandwidths from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps at a considerable discount over legacy SONET fiber services. Unlike copper Ethernet, there are no distance limitations for fiber optic Carrier Ethernet.

These are the major dedicated line services available for business. For international connections or linking multiple sites, Ethernet Line service over MPLS networks may be more cost effective. MPLS isn’t a dedicated line service, but virtual dedicated connections can be set up to guarantee performance over the MPLS network.

Does your business have a need to connect directly between two locations or to the Internet? There are likely multiple competing providers with both copper and fiber technologies available for your location. Check leased line prices and options to see what’s available right now.


Note: Photo of Ethernet cables courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Ethernet and Colocation For Texas Business

The Lone Star State is a land of big spaces, big business, big data and the need for big bandwidth. Alpheus is a carrier with both Texas roots and a focus on the needs of Texas business. Let’s take a look at the services they offer to meet the needs of companies in banking & finance, energy, government, healthcare, information technology, legal and media sectors, among others.

With a Network Operations Center (NOC) in Houston, the Alpheus fiber optic network connects major cities in Texas. Their Texas regional network connects to Dallas, Fort Worth, Waco, Bryan, Austin, San Antonio, Laredo, McAllen, Harlingen, Corpus Christi, Victoria and Houston. Core network reliability exceeds 99.999% or “five nines,” the gold standard for telecommunications.

Alpheus serves both enterprises and carriers within their Texas footprint. Network services include Dedicated Internet Access (DIA), Metro Ethernet, Private Line and Managed Wavelength. One of the newer services is Ethernet-Over-Local-Area-Network (E-LAN). This is a Carrier Ethernet service standardized by the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) and used to bridge multiple local area networks so that they act as one much larger network.

If you’ve been trying to tie business locations together with traditional telecom services, you know that there is a transition between your network edge and the telco providers network. Usually this means a protocol conversion and specialized interface hardware. What E-LAN does is eliminate that transition by keeping everything in the Ethernet protocol from end to end. A simpler service called Ethernet Line or E-LINE provides a dedicated point to point Ethernet connection between two locations as a replacement for private line services such as T1, DS3 and OC3.

Alpheus Carrier Solutions include Metro transport with rates ranging from DS-1 (1.5 Mbps) to OC-192 (10 Gbps), Texas Long Haul for connecting from Texas Metro markets to virtually anywhere in North America at the same speeds as Metro Transport, Metrolocity Peering to cross-connect with other service providers with bandwidth speeds from DS-1 to OC-12 (622 Mbps), Ethernet services to 10 Gbps, and 2.5 Gbps managed wavelengths. Ethernet interfaces include 10/100 Mbps FastE, 1000 Mbps GigE and 10 Gbps Ethernet. Scalability is flexible from 1 Mbps on up to 10 Gbps to match user requirements.

Alpheus Waves and Gigabit Ethernet services offer 3 levels of protection. Load sharing consists of two interfaces with two physically diverse unprotected connections. Your provide the protection switching. Network protection is configured to protect against network outages but not client issues. Unprotected services are just that. There is no network or client protection.

Alpheus operates four Data Centers with colocation services available. These are 777 Walker (2 Shell Plaza) in Houston, 1905 E. 6th Street in Austin, 2323 Bryan in Dallas and 307 & 309 West 7th St. in Fort Worth. The Austin and Houston data centers are SAS 70 Type II Audio Certified for critical operations that need to meet that requirement.

Colocation solutions include full and half cabinets, private cages, relay racks, flexible power configurations and the Alpheus Tier 1 regional fiber optic network with connections to over 75 carriers. “Remote Hands” service is a way to let Alpheus engineers perform simple troubleshooting and maintenance tasks, plus lend a hand when emergencies pop up. Remote Hands include server & equipment reboot, equipment and card testing, secure cabling connections and removal of customer equipment.

Is your business located in Texas and in need of connectivity or colocation services? There are excellent options available to you for a simple inquiry. Get competitive quotes from Alpheus and other top tier carriers for bandwidth services and equipment colocation and see what works best for your situation.



Note: Map of Texas courtesy of WikimediaCommons.

Instant Ethernet Fiber Network Quotes

Fiber optic bandwidth is in higher demand than ever before. More companies are now involved in video production and distribution, medical imaging has gone electronic, and IT in the cloud is bandwidth demanding. If only it wasn’t so difficult and time consuming to find out what fiber services are available and how much they cost...

How does instantly online sound? Too good to be true? Not anymore. The Telarus GeoQuote bandwidth search engine has been upgraded yet again. This time it includes the ability to get instant online quotes for Ethernet over Fiber in bandwidths from 10 Mbps on up to 1 Gbps (GigE). It’s not for residential users, but for business locations that need professional grade bandwidth. If that’s your company, go ahead and run an Instant Fiber Network Quote now...



GeoQuote is a patented software system developed by telecommunications broker Telarus, Inc. over the last 9 years. This breakthrough technology first made it possible to get T1 line quotes online in a matter of minutes by automating the same methodology that carriers themselves use to determine line prices. It was revolutionary in the last decade, when such price quotes often took days or weeks to obtain. Now that capability has been expanded to include Business DSL, Business Cable, Fractional T1, Internet T1, Bonded T1 lines, Satellite broadband, Fractional and Full DS3, Ethernet over Copper and Ethernet over Fiber.

To us the system, you simply enter some basic contact and location information, pick the service you are interested in, and push the button. The GeoQuote servers go to work crunching the database information appropriate to your particular business location and then deliver a list of services along with pricing.

How accurate is GeoQuote? The pricing should be considered budgetary, although it is highly accurate. What might be missing is any buildout costs peculiar to your particular situation. These have to be assessed on a case by case basis.

Not all locations have fiber optic service available. If that is true for your location, the system obviously can’t return a price for Ethernet fiber. However, you likely will qualify for another service such as Ethernet over Copper, DS3 or bonded T1. Also, there are services that may be available but must be manually quoted. That includes high bandwidth fixed wireless, SONET fiber optic services like OC-3, OC-12 and OC-48, and multi-location MPLS networks.

Not to worry. The product specialists at Telarus are skilled at working with the dozens of service providers offering business bandwidth. Let them give you a call to talk over your requirements and you’ll likely find that you have many more options that you thought possible and at lower costs that you’d expect. If you want to make contact or run an instant quote, do so now through our Fiber Network Quotes site.

3G Fixed Wireless For Business

We all know how 3G cellular wireless service has transformed the mobile phone into the smartphone. Did you also know there is a fixed wireless service available that uses the same technology? It’s a unique solution to getting business grade Internet access where everything else is too expensive or not available at all.

What the cellular industry has done is to build out a vast infrastructure of wireless base stations all over the country. You can think of these as a blanket of mobile phone coverage and you’d be right. You can also think of this infrastructure as a blanket of broadband coverage. You’d be equally right. The familiar cell towers are transmitting both voice and data signals on different channels through their microwave radio equipment.

On the data side, the 3G (3rd generation) wireless broadband service acts like a collection of Wi-Fi hotspots with much greater coverage and all linked together. You need a wireless modem aircard and a subscription to pick up this service. It doesn’t use the same channels as WiFi. It’s also not free, but for businesses the cost can be lower than other alternatives.

Many small and even medium size businesses use T1 lines that are available almost everywhere. Cost varies with location, but is typically several hundred dollars per month. Fixed wireless broadband can be had for half of that for a primary connection and even less if you only want backup service.

Unlike DSL and Cable, other SMB bandwidth choices, T1 and 3G wireless are available just about anywhere you want service. That includes locations that are off the beaten path if they can still get solid cell phone service. Fixed wireless is unique in that installation can be in a matter of days and you can have it installed at temporary business locations, such as fairs, conventions, and short term holiday stores.

Accel Networks is a leader in 3G fixed wireless for business. Their equipment and system are optimized for consistent bandwidth and high reliability. That includes proprietary RF optimization and RF level management and a proprietary antenna design that maximizes signal strength. This goes far beyond the simplistic design of the USB aircard modems you buy for mobile computing.

The other advantage of Accel Networks is that they have agreements with all three major providers (AT&T, Sprint, Verizon) to ensure extensive signal coverage. You know that no matter which carrier you pick, there are places where you’d be better off with one of the other carriers. It’s a matter of who has the most towers and channel licenses in a particular area. Accel picks the carrier that has the best signal at your particular business location. Since this is fixed service, it doesn’t matter that they’d make a different choice if you were located in another town.

What is 3G fixed wireless best for? Credit card verification is extremely popular. Accel Networks specializes in this technology and offers a layer 2 PCI compliant network meeting credit card industry requirements.

Most small businesses need credit card verification, but many also need general access to the Internet for Web browsers, email, and perhaps automated ordering, inventory, bookkeeping or data transfers between locations. Accel Networks managed broadband wireless solutions offer a minimum of 750 Kbps download and 250 Kbps upload broadband speeds. They also provide a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that includes 99.9% availability, minimum acceptable data rates, maximum acceptable latency, and mean time to restore.

Is fixed wireless a good fit with your business? Get a complete set of options and prices so you can compare 3G Fixed Wireless For Business with competing services, and then choose what’s right for your situation.

Why Choose An MPLS VPN?

How do companies communicate among geographically diverse business sites securely? They use private networks or virtually private networks. MPLS networks are emerging as the virtually private networks of choice. Let’s see why.

The ultimate in performance and security is the totally private network. Private means for your use only. You don’t buy a private network, you build one. Many companies have done this by setting up a star network with a central router at their headquarters location. Each remote location connects to headquarters over a private point to point line, such as a T1, DS3, OC3 or Ethernet private line. It is up to the IT staff to manage this network and make sure all locations have the bandwidth and ability to reach other locations that they need.

What’s wrong with this? Not a thing if you have infinitely deep pockets. The cost of all those private line services mounts up as more locations are added. Don’t forget the staffing cost to keep everything running. You’ll need to buy lines that have enough bandwidth to meet peak loads, meaning that most of the time they’ll be running at a fraction of the maximum capacity. You’ll be paying for that maximum capacity as if you were using in continuously.

The staggering cost of proprietary private networks has encouraged many companies to look for lower cost alternatives that still get the job done. One alluring option is to piggyback on the public Internet, arguably the largest and lowest cost network solution in the world. You could just connect all your sites over the Internet, but that makes management squeamish for good reason. The unregulated Internet is something like the Old West, with stagecoach robbers lurking behind every rock. In this case it’s cyber criminals and curious hackers drooling at the thought of rifling through your corporate files.

Does this mean that using the Internet for wide ranging connectivity is an unacceptable option? No, not at all. The trick to using an unprotected public resource like the Internet is to install your own security. You do this by encrypting your packets so that they are unreadable to anyone who is not authorized. It’s SSL encryption that makes it possible to buy and sell on the Web with confidence. The general term for using encryption to protect data on a public network is tunneling.

So, is tunneling through the Internet to get from site to site the best cost solution? Yes, if cost and/or the ability to connect with the public at large is your highest priority. But what about performance? Ah, I’m afraid the Internet does leave something to be desired in that regard. Bandwidth, latency, jitter, and bit errors are completely uncontrolled. You may not care if all you are doing is serving up Web pages to people on DSL or Cable connections. But trying to optimize productivity when you are running your critical corporate data to corporate offices, factories and warehouses around the world can turn into an exercise in frustration. Oh, you want to establish high quality two-way video and telephone connections on the same network? Good luck with that.

This is where MPLS VPN networks rush in to save the day. An MPLS network is not for the general public. You have to pay more than Internet prices to use it and it only serves its clients. What you get for the extra cost is a privately run high performance network that is carefully engineered to support voice, video and data. There’s no encryption as we think of it on the Internet, but an MPLS network is considered to be a VPN. Why is that?

The answer is in the technology. MPLS stands for Multi-Protocol Label Switching. IP routers are not used to direct packets from place to place. Instead, each packet gets a special label as a wrapper. That label is used to route the packet instead of the IP header information. Labels are added as packets enter the network and removed as they leave. In a sense, the packets are protected by their labels in that they only travel paths set up in advance by the network operator and are unreadable by other clients or external snoops.

Most of the time, MPLS technology and network operators provide enough security that encryption isn’t needed. Even so, if you are particularly sensitive about the privacy of your data you can always encrypt your packets before they enter the network and decrypt them on the other end.

The reason that MPLS VPN networks are replacing proprietary point to point networks is that they offer a significant cost reduction. While you have all the bandwidth you need, any unused resources are available to support other clients of the network. The cost of the entire network is spread over the total user base, which makes the pricing attractive for you.

Are you in need of a multi-location business network or simply want to check pricing to see if you are spending too much now? If so, check MPLS VPN network availability and pricing now. For comparison, you can also get pricing on private point to point lines and IP VPN networks using the Internet.

What is Metro E?

Metro E is short for Metro Ethernet, a popular and rapidly expanding network connection service.

Metro E is Ethernet like the protocol you run on your Local Area Network (LAN). But it has been standardized and adapted to also run on a Metropolitan Area Network (MAN). The organization behind this standardization is the MEF or Metro Ethernet Forum. It’s an industry standards organization dedicated to Carrier Ethernet.

Here’s why you should you know about Metro E and seriously consider using it for your business connectivity. Metro Ethernet services are better suited to today’s packet switched networks than the legacy telecom services such as T1. Connectivity is almost trivial. Ethernet is what nearly all networks are running as a protocol. The connection from your service provider is an Ethernet jack. That’s it. No need for special conversion equipment to connect to your switches and routers.

Metro E is supported by a number of incumbent telecom carriers, plus many new competitive service providers that have no connection to legacy telephone services. Nearly all of these new competitors have built their networks on fiber optic lines and IP or MPLS core networks. Metro Ethernet services are easily transported on these networks. The result of all this competition is that Metro E prices are often considerably lower per Mbps than T1, DS3, or OCx bandwidth. It is not uncommon to get 3 Mbps Ethernet service for the same price as 1.5 Mbps T1 and similarly reduced costs at higher bandwidths.

Like other telecom services, Metro Ethernet can be set up to provide point to point connectivity between two business locations. Unlike older technologies, Ethernet Line Service can be configured as a layer 2 connection between two LANs, effectively connecting them to make one larger LAN. Ethernet LAN Service, or ELAN, can do the same thing for multiple locations. It’s a high performance and cost effective way for businesses to tie-together branch offices, factories, headquarters and warehouses. It works just as well for hospitals and their related medical centers in the area.

Another use for Metro E is as an access network connection. Metro E links are used as last mile connections to larger MPLS networks for national or worldwide service. They are also used as dedicated broadband Internet connections for small, medium and large organizations.

Metro E bandwidth tends to be easily scalable. Service at 3 Mbps is a popular entry level bandwidth. Many companies move up to 10 Mbps, a standard LAN speed. Fast Ethernet at 100 Mbps, 1000 Mbps and 10 Gigabit Ethernet are other standard LAN speeds that are also supported by Metro E providers. While these speeds are popular, most providers offer incremental bandwidths between each of these levels. You can order any bandwidth up to the limit of your installed Ethernet port. Start with what you need now and easily upgrade as the need arises.

One thing you should know is that the Metro in Metro E generally means just that. This service is available in most metropolitan areas, but rarely in rural areas. It may be possible to get Ethernet connectivity over T1 lines, called EoDS1. This is a way to extend service to include remote business locations.

If Metro E the right service for your business situation? A quick way to find out is to request a list of Metro E service levels and prices for your business location or locations.

Why Look For Fiber Lit Buildings?

Are you familiar with the term “fiber lit building?” It’s a fairly new concept. A fiber lit building is one where fiber optic service is already installed? How do you find them? Just use this handy resource...



The Ethernet Buildings Lit Building Locator is something of a mapping service. Think of it as a treasure map. The treasure itself is the availability of large bandwidth services without the need for expensive construction costs. If you have a need for higher levels of bandwidth, the lit building is where you want to be.

What kind of bandwidth are we talking about? With fiber optic connections, there really isn’t much of an upper limit. You’ll run out of money before you tap out all the bandwidth that can be brought in on fiber. A fiber strand can easily support Gigabit Ethernet or 10 GigE. With wavelength multiplexing, dozens of 10 Gigabit services can be multiplexed onto a single fiber. Most cables have many strands, even dozens or a hundred individual glass fibers bundled together.

Now, in a practical sense terabits per second of bandwidth probably won’t be provisioned to buildings where you would rent space. Even so, it’s nice to know that you can get DS3, OC3, 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet bandwidth to support your organization. Those are typical services running over fiber optic connections. Which ones are available will depend on what has been installed in a particular building. If you need a different service, even if it isn’t current installed, you may well be able to request that protocol and bandwidth level with minimal or no construction costs assessed.

How do you find out where the lit buildings are and what type of services are available at them? Simply run a quick inquiry using the Lit Building Locator for a location map. You can then request pricing for particular services of interest.

Why Colo Bandwidth Pricing Is Lowest

Want to see something that will make you jealous? Get a pricing quote for colocation bandwidth.

Sickening, isn’t it? Or is it? Sure, the cost per Mbps at the colo center is much less than you are paying to bring in the same bandwidth to your server racks. Even if you can get a serious cost reduction on your line services by using a telecom broker like Telarus, you’ll still pay less when you co-locate. Is that fair?

Sure it is. The cost reduction you find at colocation facilities comes from a couple of sources. First, there are likely to be a lot more carriers serving that facility than your building. They flock there because they know that they’ll find lots of bandwidth hungry customers all in one spot. These carriers can hear the cash registers going ka-ching! all the while they are bringing in their fiber optic lines. Of course, that ka-ching! sound is ringing in every carrier’s ear. Pretty soon they are battling to get the most customers with the highest bandwidth requirements. That drives prices down and encourages even more customers to move into the “carrier hotel,” as colos are often called.

Beyond fierce competition from multiple service providers, bandwidth costs are low because connection costs are trivial. You know the last mile connection? Yes, the line from your facility to the carrier’s closest point of presence? If you are using copper or SONET fiber, chances are that the last mile is being leased from the incumbent local telephone company. They put the cables in the ground and they expect to get paid for their use, especially if they are being used by a competitive carrier. Inside the colocation center there is no last mile. You have a hard time running a mile of cable even if you wrapped it around the building a few dozen times. That last mile is reduced to the last 100 feet, and it is often installed by colo center personnel. They simply run a drop, fiber or copper, from the carrier “meet me room” to your rack. Plug it in and you are connected.

Lots of competition and easy connections are the reasons behind those mouth watering colocation bandwidth prices. The question becomes, “how can you get in on the action?”

The obvious answer is to move to the colo facility. But what about the costs of space and utilities? They’re probably lower than what you pay now, especially if you are renting. Economy of scale keeps the cost of electricity, HVAC, security, fire suppression, and backup power at reasonable rates. You can even outsource the installation and maintenance of your equipment to the colocation center technical staff. They’re always on duty anyway. Is your staff?

Before you brush off the idea of packing up and moving your high bandwidth server equipment to a colo center, run the numbers. Compare costs of facilities and bandwidth and see which makes more sense. It can be a real eye-opener... and cost saver.

Ethernet Offers Lower Cost Carrier Grade Fiber Solutions

High bandwidth users, such as major corporations, large medical centers, independent phone companies, video production houses, and Internet service providers, have a new option to get the carrier grade bandwidth they need at prices much lower than they’ve been used to paying. The game changer is Carrier Ethernet.

Carrier Ethernet describes a metropolitan and long haul bandwidth service based on Ethernet rather than traditional telco TDM technologies. Within a single metropolitan area, the service is often called Metro Ethernet. These services are professional grade bandwidth solutions that offer high reliability as well as high dedicated bandwidths.

Ethernet can be carried over long distances on existing SONET/SDH fiber optic networks, or the newer MPLS networks that are favored by competitive service providers. Last mile connectivity can be over fiber, twisted pair copper or wireless.

Ethernet over copper? Yes, in fact it is called just that. EoC uses multiple copper pair telco cables and new generation terminal equipment to transport Ethernet via copper cabling that is already provisioned to most business locations. How much bandwidth can you expect from such a solution? Standard 10 Mbps Ethernet and fractional bandwidths such as 1, 2, or 5 Mbps are typical selections. High level bandwidth up to DS3 replacement levels of 45 Mbps are sometimes available depending on distance to carrier facilities.

For Fast Ethernet at 100 Mbps and above, fiber optic transport is essential. Larger businesses and organizations now consider 100 Mbps a reasonable bandwidth level to support their highly computerized operations. The good news is that Ethernet pricing is not only competitive with TDM based services such as DS3 and OC3, but actually much cheaper on a Mbps basis. You may be shocked to hear that you can get 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet service at prices you’d expect to pay for DS3 at 45 Mbps. If you have a long-standing bandwidth contract, you’ll likely find Ethernet service a downright bargain.

Even Gigabit Ethernet at 1000 Mbps is within reach of many larger organizations and those whose businesses are bandwidth-intensive. If you need more than that, 10 GigE at 10,000 mbps is available in major metropolitan areas. Even 100 Gbps is coming soon. Why? Because the productivity improvements possible with high speed connectivity justify the cost.

That cost is getting easier and easier to justify. Carrier Ethernet services are expanding rapidly into medium as well as large metro areas. The ease of interfacing and managing an Ethernet WAN service make it the connectivity of choice regardless of price. But with prices lower, not higher, than traditional bandwidth solutions, it’s pretty hard not to insist on Carrier Ethernet.

Would you like to expand your bandwidth service or get a better price on the bandwidth you now use? If so, check Carrier Ethernet and Metro Ethernet availability and pricing now.

MPLS Networks for Global Enterprises

MPLS has quickly become the network service of choice for companies that need to tie multiple locations together. But now XO Communications has upped the ante by expanding its MPLS network reach to all 50 states plus 22 countries on 5 continents.

For companies that do business internationally, this is excellent news. International connectivity has traditionally been costly with only a few major carriers serving this marketplace. Now that a highly competitive player is available, rates are likely to get a lot more attractive.

XO Communications is known for its nationwide high speed fiber optic network and wide variety of access connections. They offer both fiber and copper last mile connections, and even wireless access in some metro areas. This makes it possible for most businesses to connect to the XO network and, from there, to the world.

XO calls its MPLS or Multi-Protocol Switching Network service “MPLS IP-VPN service”. This is an IP network service running as a virtual private network to ensure the privacy of business communications across the network. In addition to being a global VPN, CoS or Class of Service controls are in place to ensure that voice, video and data all get the proper priority on the network.

If you do business internationally and need to connect your far-flung operations, an international MPLS network offers the opportunity to create a full mesh network so that any location can communicate to any other location. In addition to the 50 USA states, the XO network footprint now covers Australia, Bermuda, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand and the United Kingdom.

The XO network is fully managed, with 24x7 monitoring of facilities and equipment to ensure that you’ll be able to stay connected with a minimum of attention needed on your part. Bandwidth options are scalable from DS1 (1.5 Mbps) to OC48 (2.5 Gbps) for traditional TDM connections. Ethernet connections are also available with options from 3 to 1,000 Mbps.

Does your business need to connect multiple sites together in the US or internationally? If so, you may be surprised by how affordable MPLS network services are. Go ahead and get prices and bandwidths for MPLS network connections now. It’s a free service for business locations, with complementary expert consulting included.