Ethernet Point of Presence Locator

You’ve been hearing about lower cost bandwidth options and wondering if you can get more Mbps for less money. The question is, “how can you find out?” What you need is an Ethernet Point of Presence Locator.

What’s that and what’s a point of presence? Ah, these are the keys to getting a better deal on business bandwidth.



Point of Presence, or POP, is a location where carrier services are located. For instance, a major competitive carrier may well have a central office located in your city. Within this facility is termination equipment for the carrier’s metropolitan and long haul fiber optic network. In other words, this carrier POP is like a station where you can get on and off their high speed voice and data network.

The same carrier may have POPs that aren’t part of their office facilities. Many carriers have POPs within colocation centers. Those are public facilities that specialize in housing server equipment for business users. They offer rack space, security, fire suppression, back up power and bandwidth. The bandwidth is provided by however many carriers choose to establish carrier POPs in the colo facility. Because your equipment is located within feet of the carrier POP, construction costs to provide you with bandwidth are little to nothing.

So, you’re looking around and don’t see any colocation centers or carrier central offices anywhere near your building. Does that mean that you are out of luck? No, not at all. There may be all sorts of POPs that aren’t readily apparent. The most prevalent example is the “lit” building. Lit means lit for fiber optic services. To light a building, fiber optic cabling and termination equipment must be installed and turned up. That’s generally only done when there is enough demand by one or more clients in the building for high bandwidth services. But once a building is lit, it can be used as a jumping off point to provide services to other buildings nearby.

The beauty of finding a lit building and its associated Point of Presence is that construction costs are minimal if you are next door to such a facility or within a short distance. The big cost of providing fiber optic bandwidth services is having to trench the fiber cable underground or suspend it overhead on utility poles for miles and miles. Bandwidth, especially Ethernet bandwidth, can be quite affordable if you don’t have to bear the capital expense of extensive fiber construction.

So, if they are not visible to the naked eye, how do you find these lit buildings? Fortunately, you have access to the Ethernet Building’s Point of Presence Locator. You simply enter the address of your building and get a map of nearby lit buildings in seconds. You can then get prices for bandwidth services you are interested in. It’s quick and easy, so give it a try. You may be surprised by how much fiber optic capability is hiding right next door or down the street.

Poken Pulse Business Networking Gadget

Business networking is something we all do, so much so that it becomes second nature. It’s the way we do business networking that’s about to change in a big way.

The business card is the medium that’s been used for generations to share contact information. Ironically, the more we equip ourselves with smartphones and netbooks, the more we order boxes of little paper cards to hand out. They may come from a print shop, your computer printer or you can design them online. But in the end, you still wind up with a pack of paper slips in your pocket to hand out when you meet people in person. Wouldn’t it be a good idea if your offline business network contacts were as easy to store and search as your online relationships?

That’s the idea behind Poken. It turns the business card into a virtual object that is sharable using a standardized gadget you carry in lieu of cards. A companion online portal stores your uploaded contacts and displays them in easy to use lists or a timeline with photos.

All of the Poken gadgets are basically the same. They consist of a coil antenna hidden beneath a four-fingered white hand icon. That icon is the Poken logo. Also inside the gadget is a small microprocessor, USB connector, pushbutton, LED indicators and a replaceable battery. The main difference between Poken are the plastic shells. Many are decorated as humorous characters called pokenSPARK. The model designed specifically for business is embedded in a flash memory drive and called the pokenPULSE.

Here’s how the networking process works in the Poken age. When you meet someone you’d like to exchange contact information with, you notice that they have a Poken gadget handy or you ask them, “do you Poken?” If the answer is yes, as it increasingly will be, you simply touch the hand logo on your Poken with the hand on theirs. Hold them together for a second or two to make the connection and then pull them apart. Both hands should be pulsating with a green glow. That means the data transfer has taken place.

What data is transfered? It’s a unique code that identifies you as a Poken user. There’s no personal data actually stored in the gadget, so if you happen to lose your device nobody will be able to invade your privacy. Your Poken device is matched to your account. You need the ID and password to gain entry, just like any other secure website.

Please note that the Pulse is both a Poken gadget and a standard 2 GB USB flash memory. You do need to take the same care to protect any data you store on the flash portion of the Pulse as you would with any other solid state memory device.

When you get back to your computer, you plug the Poken into a USB port and upload the contacts you’ve made since the last upload. Your new contacts will be added to your online contact database. Look at the timeline and you’ll see the Poken cards for each of the contacts you’ve made. You’ll recognize them immediately, because you’ll see a photo as well as their name and other contact data. You’ll also be able to click on the website links they’ve provided, including their FaceBook, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages. Perhaps they’ve also included a company website and blog.

You control what’s on your Poken card, so you can share as much or little information as you wish. It’s just like a business card, but more attuned to the online nature of business these days.

Would you like to start using Poken yourself, or perhaps equip you entire team with Poken gadgets? They’re easy to use, easy to carry along and so inexpensive you may want several for your own use. Don’t forget that the Poken Pulse replaces the USB flash memory device you probably carry now.

Telephone Installers Business Networking

If you make your living selling or installing business telephone systems, there's a business networking service you should be aware of. It can help you garner more warm leads for your products and services, and expand your line card with no additional investment.

What I'm speaking of is the VAR Partner Network, an online service of Telarus, Inc. Telarus is a master agency representing over a dozen competitive voice and data carriers. But it's much more than that. Through its VAR Network Telarus actively seeks businesses who need not only communications line services, but equipment sales and installation work as well.

VARs, or Value Added Resellers, are independent business owners. The VARs who will be interested in this network are those who sell, install or service business telephone systems, point of sales equipment, company LANs, network optimization and security appliances, and related technology. The reason Telarus is recruiting VARs in this field is that many customers who buy line services also desire one stop shopping for their related telephone and network equipment.

Rather than take a pass on this business and risk customers going elsewhere, The VAR Network gathers the prospect's requirements and enters them into an online database. That database actively processes the leads and directs them by email to appropriate VARs who have the necessary expertise and area located physically close to the client. One or more VARs may be alerted to the business opportunity. It's up to the VAR to contact the prospect and close the sale, if desired.

OK. That's how you, as a VAR, get free equipment leads. But how do you expand your line card at no expense? Simple. Remember that most customers for business phone systems not only need a PBX or IP PBX, but they also need phone lines to plug into it. Those T1 PRI digital telephone lines are part of the core business that Telarus seeks. Businesses installing phone equipment are perfect prospects for related line services. So are corporations expanding their network operations. How would you like a piece of that action?

You can easily collect a percentage of every T1, DS3, or Ethernet line that your customers install, for the duration of their service contract. The way you do that is to take a few minutes and input your customer's requirements into your VAR Network online back office. Your consulting partner at Telarus will use that information to get competitive price quotes from appropriate carriers. If your customer elects to go with one of the deals, Telarus will take care of preparing all the paperwork and making sure the line services get turned up as soon as possible. You get a cut of the commissions for... what... ten minutes of data entry?

Pretty sweet deal, isn't it. Actually everyone benefits. Your customers get access to lower cost services than they would typically know about. And they'll probably thank YOU for getting them the deal. You'll probably find that this expansion of your business is actually more lucrative than the equipment leads from the network. That's because you can go out and offer line services to your existing customers as well as any new ones. It's a way of generating additional business income from current accounts with minimal effort.

Would you like to get in on this action right now? You can. There's no cost or obligation to join. Once you're in the system you'll start getting leads and you can approach clients with your new line of bandwidth and telephony services. Take a few minutes to look at the VAR Partner Network and sign-up easily online.