The Sun is Setting on Copper Telecom Lines

By: John Shepler

It has been rumored for a long time and now it’s really underway. The end of over a century of copper wire based phone and network lines is here, with a key event on June 30. That’s the start of AT&T’s first major wave of wire center decommissioning. Over 277 of these facilities will go dark when completed, with more waves of decommissioning to follow. In the end, we’ll have completely moved on from Alexander Graham Bell’s original network.

What The Loss of Wire Centers Really Means
In simple terms, a wire center is where all the wires connect. It’s the building that connects the central office switching with all the local loops. That’s often thousands and thousands of individual twisted copper pairs that are bundled into larger cables. Your analog phone line, the “landline” or POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) line, is one of these loops. You can trace the wire pair directly from the phone jack on your wall all the way to the line card at the central office that provides power and signaling to run the phone handset.

Those twisted pairs can carry a lot more than individual phone calls. They can be set up with digital termination equipment to provide DSL and T1 broadband or PRI digital multi-line phone service. They may also be used in special applications such as fire alarms, elevator phones, gate entry systems, security systems, and fax machines.

Decommissioning means taking these lines out of service. No more wire center. No more copper line service.

In actuality, the phone companies that own these lines have already been discouraging their use through higher service prices and refusal to add more customers. Another group, copper wire thieves, have been doing their own decommissioning by cutting and stealing cables and then burning off the plastic insulation so they can sell the copper at recyclers. Copper prices are way up due to the expansion of data centers, electric vehicles, and solar power, to name a few.

What Replaces Copper Telecom Lines?
Like the incandescent light bulb, it’s time to move on from 19th century technologies. The new options are primarily fiber optic and wireless.

Fiber voice and broadband started with phone company Optical Carrier standards but has migrated to Carrier Ethernet standards to be compatible with the vast majority of company networks. Ethernet over Fiber service ranges from 10 Mbps up to 100 Gbps, with Gigabit Ethernet and 10 GigE becoming popular standards.

You need what is called an Ethernet Port at your end. That connects via fiber to your service provider, often an Independent network operator but perhaps a traditional telco. The speed of the Ethernet port limits the amount of bandwidth you can have. A Gigabit port lets you order up to 1,000 Mbps. A 10 Gigabit port supports anything up to 10,000 Mbps.

There are different flavors of fiber optic service. Your Internet access can be on a fiber line that is shared among many businesses and residential users to save cost. You may prefer to order Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) so that your connection to the Internet itself in essentially on a private line.

Direct Cloud Access is a similar service without the Internet being involved at all. You have a private fiber service from your facility to your cloud service provider. This gives you the best low latency and low congestion for higher productivity and smoother voice calls and video conferences.

You might also want to consider dedicated point to point fiber to interconnect your facilities across town or around the world. These private lines offer high performance and better security than what you could hope for on the Internet.

Wireless Options
Of course you have mobile phones, tablets and laptop computers that connect to the Internet using 5G cellular broadband. Another flavor of that services is Fixed Wireless Access. It comes in a box with higher gain antennas and Ethernet connection. It’s the 5G broadband without the phone features. There are also options to add outside antennae for better coverage and some controllers offer multiple providers for service continuity if one company goes offline temporarily. FWA can be as speedy as fiber, but without having to run the fiber line itself.

Some Wireless Internet Service Providers do not use cellular networks. Instead, they have their own towers and beam and point to point signal to a small dish antenna on your roof. These are very private lines and can have Gigabit or higher speeds.

Satellite broadband and satellite phone have been around for years. The broadband using geostationary satellites can be very reliable and speeds have been improving with newer generations of satellites. The half second or more of latency due to the distance to geosynchronous orbit is one sticking point. LEO or Low Earth Orbit satellite constellations, primarily SpaceX Starlink, reduces the latency to something similar to terrestrial broadband. Bandwidths are also competitive for many applications. Just stating now is direct to handset service that turns satellites into alternative cell towers. Soon there will be no dead spots, even in the most remote areas.

What to Do About Specialty Services?
Those fire alarms, fax machines and elevator phones that were designed for twisted pair copper and nothing else still have hope. AT&T, among others, is offering a “POTS Replacement” service that consists of 4G LTE cellular wired to support these services along with built-in battery backup. Why 4G LTE? This standard can mimic the old phone lines and is still readily available.

The One Remaining Copper Service
There is still one very popular copper broadband service, but it is not from any phone company. This is Cable Broadband that is brought in on coaxial copper wiring. In reality, the cable companies have converted to fiber optic transmission, but the latest DOCSIS standards let them keep their existing copper coax into your building and still achieve speeds of 1,000 Mbps or even 10 Gbps… competitive with fiber.

Is your company experiencing an upcoming loss of service due to copper decommissioning? No time to wait. Find out what copper replacement services are available for your business needs. You may be surprised to find you can actually get more capability at a lower cost.

Why Symmetric Bandwidth?

By: John Shepler

Bandwidth is bandwidth and the more the better, right? Well, not so fast. There is bandwidth and then there is bandwidth. All connectivity solutions are not the same. Let’s see why.

Sharing Isn’t Always Caring
Some connections are dedicated. Some are shared. You need to know which you are ordering.

A dedicated connection means a fixed amount of bandwidth that you are contracted for and are guaranteed to have all the time. The classic T1 line, SONET fiber optic, and many Ethernet over Fiber and private wireless solutions are dedicated. They may be set up as point to point private lines , cloud connections or last mile Internet access.

The advantage of dedicated lines is that your network capacity is always there even when you are not loading it up to the max. This improves latency and congestion compared to your other choice, shared bandwidth.

Shared bandwidth connections have other company’s traffic on the same line as yours. You have no idea how many there are or what they are doing. You may well feel their presence, however, as your WAN connection speeds up and slows down for unknown reasons.

So, why on Earth would you share bandwidth? Simply to save cost. Shared lines are dedicated lines that the carrier has sliced and diced to support many users instead of just one. If there is enough bandwidth and not so many users, you may not have a problem and can save considerably on monthly rates. Typical shared bandwidth services include cable broadband, wireless 4G LTE and 5G, and some passive optical fiber optic services that are available at bargain rates.

Symmetric vs Asymmetric Bandwidth
Symmetric bandwidth is when you upload and download speeds are the same. Asymmetric bandwidth means that one direction has much more capacity than the other. The high speed link is almost always the download path. Download speeds may be 10x faster than upload speeds.

Why? Asymmetric setups were designed to mimic the way people actually use the Internet. For the most part you download videos much more often than upload them. You enter short addresses in your browser and download web pages and content far more than you upload them. Or… Do you?

Business users may use their networks much more symmetrically than typical residential users. Business users likely transfer large files back and forth. Many of their applications reside in the cloud with data flowing up and down. VoIP phone and video conferencing are inherently symmetrical. Voice and images go both ways. Remote back-up is asymmetric for the most part… but the other way. Most data is being uploaded to the remote storage.

Traditional telecom networks are designed with symmetric bandwidth in mind. Consumer solutions, which are also typically shared bandwidth, are asymmetric in nature. For casual users and small businesses this may not be an issue. However if you are a heavy bandwidth user, depend on software as a service, do extensive video conferences or back-up your data to remote storage, you will likely be better served with symmetric and dedicated solutions.

Is your business running out of bandwidth or are you just frustrated with the solution you have now? Discuss your real needs with a technology expert and get quotes for multiple options that will work for you. There’s more available and at better prices than you think.

Bandwidth to Support Your Data Center

By: John Shepler

Data centers are hot these days. Oh, not just the temperature of the air exiting the servers. Data centers are hot business. As businesses are transformed digitally and AI is implemented to improve productivity, all eyes are on the data center and what it takes to gain the benefits of this technology.

Not Yesterday’s Server Closet
You can see advances in data center technology as information tech has grown in importance. Once a company is big enough to have more than one PC, it needs networking to interconnect computers and shared resources such as storage, printers and servers. Hot and noisy racks of equipment are quickly moved out of the office and into their own room, which might be the size of a broom closet. Hence, the server closet.

Little rooms soon become big ones with lots of equipment, special floors and ceilings for wiring, uninterruptible power and heavy duty HVAC. This is the genesis of the data center. Today’s businesses are dependent more and more on information technology and require substantial data centers and staff to process and serve that data 24/7.

Some companies still choose to maintain their own data centers in-house or at remote facilities. Others outsource that function to colocation facilities or cloud service providers. Still others see the skyrocketing demand for data center services to support crypto and AI and look to get a piece of the action.

What Connections Do You Need?
Even if you keep everything in-house, you’ll need external connections. That’s at least broadband Internet and telephone connections. If you have other locations in the same area, you can’t go trenching your own cables. You’ll need carrier connections from point to point or connect everything via the Internet.

There are two flavors of Internet access. They are called dedicated and shared. Dedicated Internet Access or DIA offers the highest performance. Dedicated means that the connection is for your use only and no other company is on the same circuit… at least until you get to the core of the Internet. Since most of the congestion occurs in that first mile, DIA can avoid many slowdowns during peak usage times. Fiber optic DIA is available from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps, with 100 Gbps available in some areas.

Shared Internet Access is what is available with Cable broadband and Fixed Wireless Access. Your cost is lower because you are not the only one using the line. How well this works depends on how sensitive you are to interruptions and how many high volume users are sharing the same link.

Your data center servers will also likely need Internet access. Most colocation and cloud facilities have multiple carriers serving their facilities. This give you the option to have redundant connections so that if one goes down, another service provider is unlikely to be out at the same time. You can set up an arrangement like this for your own in-house data center. Just be sure that the two or more Internet Service Providers are not sharing the same fiber or other facilities or you may lose all service with a single point failure.

You can also get dedicated Ethernet point to point fiber optic service between two or more of your own locations. This gives you high performance networking without the security issues and variable performance seen on the Internet.

Connecting to the Data Center
If you choose to place your equipment in a colocation facility or contract for cloud services, you’ll need a way to connect from your company building to the remote data center. Some companies choose to do this through the Internet, but you can get much higher performance and better security with a dedicated point to point line also called direct cloud access. This is a private fiber optic circuit that runs from your facilities to the cloud service provider no matter how far away. You’ll generally have lower latency and more consistent performance than connectivity via the Internet.

Do you need a high performance connection to a data center or cloud service or Internet service to the Internet? If so, get highly competitive prices and availability of connection services for your business locations now.

Overbuilding Offers Broadband Choices

By: John Shepler

There was a time when you had just a single choice for Internet connectivity. That was the incumbent local phone company. Now you may have many other choices, as competing networks move into your area. Let’s have a look at overbuilding and the opportunities it provides.

In the Beginning…
In the beginning there was only one network and that was the PSTN or public switched telephone network. The phone network is the original telecom network that started with Alexander Graham Bell and expanded to cover the world. It’s a very specific network, designed for voice communications. Computers came later. Any computer that wanted to talk to any other computer had to mimic human telephone users. Hence, the acoustically coupled audio modem.

That had to change fast. First, with ditching the acoustic coupling. Then overcoming the 64 Kbps limits of a standard phone line. Telephone companies developed digital phone lines to multiplex or combine multiple circuits in to one larger capacity circuit. Business quickly adapted the copper DSL and T1 lines, and then SONET fiber optic lines, for computer connectivity.

Still, there was one place to get service and that was the phone company. After all, Ma Bell owned all the wires. Even when “deregulation” was introduced, those competitive carriers were simply rebranding telco lines they got at wholesale rates.

Cable: The First Overbuilder
Each town has a single incumbent local phone company. But each town also can have a community antenna company, later called a cable company, to deliver television. Utility poles might have power, telephone and cable wires running one above the other all over town.

The cable companies made technical upgrades. First, they added modem service to offer Internet access. Then they converted their networks to digital, with fiber optics as the backbone and coaxial copper as the drop to the premises. This, plus regular modem standard upgrades, allows cable to offer broadband Internet service that meets or exceeds what the phone company can provide.

When two different providers install networks to serve the same locations, that’s called overbuilding. It’s one on top of or over the other. It could also mean excessive building, but that hasn’t generally been the case in the almost insatiable demand for broadband.

Fiber Overbuilds in Cable Territory
Cable pretty much overtook landline telephone, including DSL broadband, for residential and small business Internet. So much so, that the telephone companies are decommissioning their copper assets. Twisted pair copper technology just couldn’t keep up.

What the telcos have done is overbuild their own copper networks with fiber optic cables. They actually had a specialized fiber service called SONET before cable came around, but it was too expensive for residential and smaller businesses. They’ve now adopted the more standard Carrier Ethernet over Fiber technology that is directly compatible with most computer networks.

Recently, competing fiber optic network companies have been overbuilding both cable and telco networks with their own fiber. Some cities have contracted with these companies to install fiber that passes every home and business. This is in direct competition with cable broadband that is already serving many if not most of those customers.

Telco Overbuilds with Fixed Wireless Access
The telcos have been busy building out wireless networks to serve mobile phones and computing devices. It this case there may be several competing wireless companies serving each town. The big three in the US are AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. You never had a choice in landline phone service or cable, but you have had this advantage in wireless.

Now wireless is challenging cable and even fiber. As cellular networks upgraded to 4G LTE and 5G, the broadband speeds have increased. In areas where microwave 5G bands are installed, the speeds can easily compete with cable and fiber.

A proliferation of towers, large and small, is expanding the coverage so that a cellular modem, basically a phone that does just broadband, can provide primary broadband service for residential and business users. If the wireless companies have their way, they’ll displace cable in the same way cable displaced landline phone.

What does all this overbuilding mean for you? The competition tends to lower prices and increase service bandwidth. In other words, you wind up getting more value for less cost.

Which broadband option is best for your business? Check pricing and coverage for fiber optic, cable broadband and fixes wireless access now.

The Cable vs Fiber Broadband War

By: John Shepler

There’s a broadband battle underway right now. It pits cable business broadband against Ethernet fiber optic bandwidth. These are the two leading technologies that will dominate business Internet now and for the foreseeable future. There is also a third contender warming up that we’ll discuss a bit later. Let’s see what the two big players have to offer.

Fiber Takes Over From Copper
The first century of telecommunications was dominated by twisted pair copper wires that provided the last mile for landline telephones, multi-line business phones, point to point computer connections and, when it started developing, the nascent Internet. The ground is chock-full of multi-pair cables. Some will be pulled out and recycled. Others will be left to slowly disintegrate.

Their technological replacement is fiber optic cables. Glass fibers take the place of plastic coated copper strands. Optical fibers have tremendously more bandwidth carrying capacity. A copper T1 line can deliver 1.5 Mbps. A fiber can deliver a Gigabit per second up to at least 10 Gbps. It’s no longer uncommon to have 100 Gbps fiber optic service available for business use.

Fiber itself has undergone a technical evolution in protocol from the early SONET telecom standard to Carrier Ethernet, otherwise known as Ethernet over Fiber. This upgrade made sense as telecom traffic changed from largely audio phone calls to digital computer packets.

What Fiber Optic Service Can Provide
Fiber broadband is readily available and can offer 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps bandwidth. This bandwidth is usually symmetrical, meaning the same speed for upload and download. It is also generally dedicated. That means you don’t share your fiber capacity with any other businesses. It’s all your traffic from your building to where it joins the Internet. This makes for much more consistent Internet performance.

Many companies have been moving from having their own in-house data centers to hosting that equipment at a co-location facility or leasing the same capability from a cloud provider. If your business software is running remotely, it often makes sense to have a direct connection from your offices, factories and warehouses to the cloud provider and avoid any potential congestion from the Internet.

Direct connections are also useful between company facilities, such as branch offices and any owned data center facilities. Essentially, you are extending your LAN out to include all your locations.

How Can Cable Compete with Fiber?
Cable got its start as a community antenna that fed a small town or city. Like fiber, cable has come a long way technically. Analog has transformed into digital. Still, isn’t cable a bandwidth limited copper connection?

Less than you might think. The drop or final connection to your business is still the familiar coaxial copper cable. The innards of the system have long ago upgraded to fiber, just like the telecom industry. That means most of the distance travelled is over fiber optic cables, some with as many as 100 fibers. The TV and Internet signal is converted to drive a copper drop cable just before it reaches your building. This system is referred to as HFC or Hybrid Fiber Coax.

The other big advance in Cable broadband has been the upgrading of cable modems using the DOCSIS standard. Most modems are now DOCSIS 3.1 that has the ability to support downstream data speeds of up to 10 Gbps and upstream speeds of 1 Gbps.

DOCSIS 4.0 is in the process of being deployed. This equipment upgrade will support downstream speeds of 10 Gbps plus upstream speeds of 6 Gbps.

Clearly, today’s cable broadband is easily a match for all but the most demanding fiber speeds. One difference between Ethernet fiber and cable broadband is that cable is usually asymmetrical to match the typical usage of retail customers on the Internet. In other words, the demand for download speed is usually more than the demand for upload speed. Often download is 10 times as fast as upload.

Another difference is that cable broadband is a shared access service in the last mile. This means that some heavy users may impact the performance of other users from time to time. For consumers, this is usually not a problem. For a business that depends of steady high performance for employee productivity using cloud services, it could present an issue.

Why Pick One Service Over the Other?
For consumers and many smaller businesses, cost is tie-breaker. Cable business broadband is generally less costly than Ethernet over Fiber for similar bandwidths. However, if you need symmetrical bandwidth, dedicated Internet access, dedicated point to point connections, or a dedicated line to your cloud provider, fiber optic connections can be well worth the added monthly cost. It should also be mentioned that some Cable companies are now offering access to their internal fiber optic networks as a premium bandwidth service.

Wireless is the Next Competitor
There is a new entry to the broadband wars that is also worthy of consideration. That is fixed wireless broadband. Once a niche service over very small areas, fixed wireless is now being offered by the major cellular carriers. What has made this possible is the advancement to 4G LTE and 5G. Mobile phones with 300 Mbps or more Internet service are now common. By providing a high performance modem without the telephone features but including Wi-Fi or LAN connection, carriers can deliver high speed broadband over their wireless networks already in place. Advantages include very reasonable pricing and little or no construction cost. You pick up the modem at the cellular store or have it shipped to you and install it yourself right away. It’s also perfect for pop-up stores and construction sites that are only temporary locations.

Which is best for your business? Cable broadband? Ethernet over Fiber? Fixed Wireless? Get pricing and availability for each of these bandwidth options and then choose the right solution for you.

Cost Saving Shared Fiber, Wireless and Coax

By: John Shepler

You need connectivity but are feeling the pinch of inflation. Is there any way to get a business online and not break the bank? Sure there is. If they work for you, shared bandwidth wireless, cable coax and fiber optic connections are available at bargain prices. Let’s have a look at these.

What is Shared Bandwidth?
You are probably too young to remember telephone party lines, but how about roommates at school? That’s the sharing economy. It’s based on the idea that if something is expensive you can still have it as long as you join with others to foot the bill.

Internet connections can be had the same way. A fully dedicated high speed symmetrical fiber optic link can run into the big bucks every month. If that’s what you must have, then you’ll just have to come up with the lease fee. But, if your usage isn’t all that demanding, you can probably share the line with others, not limited to users within your company, to split the cost.

Now, this is where shared bandwidth services differ from the old party lines. Back in the day, a single analog phone line would serve multiple households in the same area. When you picked up the handset, you might hear a dial tone or you might hear someone else’s conversation already in progress.

The polite thing to do was hang up and wait awhile before you tried again. More often that not, curious individuals would simply cover the mouthpiece and eavesdrop on the call.

Shared bandwidth isn’t really like that… for the most part. You and another customer aren’t going to see each other’s traffic on your screen. The routing in the system keeps your data streams separate. However, all your bits are intermingled on the same line. A clever hacker can figure out how to monitor whatever traffic they can access.

The way around that limitation is encryption. Encrypt all your traffic and you’ve created a secure tunnel through the public Internet. That’s critical for using WiFi hotspots, but important for any shared access or easily tapped-into connection. Most websites and email services have gone to secure connections that are encrypted, but all your file transfers should also have this layer of security.

Shared Bandwidth Via Coax
Cable broadband is the originator of the coaxial copper connection. This standard was originally designed for analog cable TV and community antennas. Eventually a cable connector came standard on the back of TV sets. Later, Cable providers became Internet Service Providers by developing a modem that could connect to their coaxial line and share the bandwidth between TV and Internet.

The modem technology that does this is called DOCSIS for Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification. The most common version is 3.1, which is capable of multiple Gigabits on the downline side. The newest is 4.0, which can support 10 Gbps downstream and 6 Gbps upstream.

Shared Bandwidth Via Wireless
Smartphones have had excellent Internet service starting with 3G and 4G LTE. The small screen requirements are easily supported and were quite useful even with the old 2G standard. The standards also serve tablet computers, laptops and in some cases desktop computers, especially when other ISPs are offline. The bandwidth is often enough from a shared smartphone connection. The one limitation for desktop usage is that you might run up against monthly data limits.

With 5G service, cellular providers have begun promoting the use of their Internet service at fixed locations. They even have a name for this: Fixed Wireless Access. Instead of sharing your phone with your desktop, you buy a 5G gateway that may offer an Ethernet port for your network or WiFi hotspot. It connects to the provider like a phone, but without the mobility or voice service. There is simply an incremental charge to your cellphone bill each month. If you have good signal strength, you may get bandwidth of a hundred or two hundred Mbps without a wired connection.

Shared Bandwidth Via Fiber
Fiber optic service used to be only for major corporations and priced accordingly. Now fiber is so widespread that you can get Ethernet over Fiber Dedicated Internet Access in most reasonably populated areas. Bandwidths are available from 10 Mbps up to 10 Gbps and even 100 Gbps in major metro locations.

Fiber Internet is highly desirable and prices have dropped dramatically over the years. Even so, you may still want a lower cost option. Did you know that you can still have fiber for a bargain price? The technology involved is called PON or Passive Optical Networking. The provider takes that high bandwidth dedicated fiber line and divvies it up among 32 users using a passive splitter. Each customer still gets a fiber line, but the bandwidth on that line is being shared among multiple users just like cable broadband. In fact, cable companies are pioneers in building out this technology. You get fiber bandwidths, but with pricing that is more similar to cable services.

Limitations of Shared Bandwidth
While you won’t be seeing your neighbors messages popping up on your screen, you will likely still feel the effects of sharing. During periods of heavy usage, the service slows down. You might even detect congestion that brings everything to a crawl and then, just like with traffic jams, magically disappears. VoIP phone calls can break up. Video conferences can stutter or freeze. Cloud applications can become sluggish.

Another characteristic of shared bandwidth connections is that they are usually asymmetrical. That means that the download speed is much higher than the upload speed. Typically, a factor of ten or so. For Internet browsing or email, this may make no difference. It could impact video conferences and large file transfers up to cloud storage.

You can improve on this with a dedicated Internet access or with a software defined wide area network or SD-WAN. This is a technique for combining multiple Internet connections. The SD-WAN controller assigns traffic to the most appropriate link, with sensitive applications like phone calls getting the highest priority on the fastest paths. SD-WAN can let you combine a fast shared and low cost line with a small dedicated line. The result can be a service that gives you all the performance you need at a lower cost than a high speed dedicated fiber line.

What bandwidth service is most appropriate for your business? Find out what shared and dedicated Internet and private line services are available at better prices for your particular location.

Fiber Without The Fiber

By: John Shepler

You’re stretched for bandwidth. Perhaps the telco is telling you that they won’t renew your T1 or ISDN lines, as they are dropping their support for copper telecom services. You know the solution to either of these dilemmas is an upgrade to fiber optic bandwidth. Once it is installed, you can get all the bandwidth you need now and upgrade easily in the future. One problem. There are no fiber buildouts near you.

That leaves you with two unpleasant possibilities. Either pay a small fortune in construction costs to have fiber pulled-in, or forget fiber because there is none to be had for your location. Not so fast. There is another possibility. Get fiber performance without the actual fiber.

What Acts Like Fiber But Isn’t Fiber?

It isn’t those little glass strands that are so valuable to your business. It’s the bandwidth they carry. Your network doesn’t need to know or care how the traffic is carried in the metropolitan or wide area networks. There just needs to be enough bandwidth with low enough latency, jitter and packet loss. Anything that does that is virtually fiber.

Let’s take a look at two good options for high speed business Internet connectivity that can give you fiber optic performance but without the issue of having to install fiber where there isn’t any.

No fiber, No Wires At All
The first possibility is Fixed Wireless Access or FWA. Back in the day, this was known as microwave relay. Telephone companies put up massive towers with equally massive horn antennas to beam microwave signals from point to point. The traffic was bundles of telephone calls or television transmissions.

Today there are thousands of towers dotting the landscape in town and throughout rural areas. These were erected to support cell phone service. After several generations of technical advancement, we arrive at the newest standard: 5G or fifth generation. The 5G system uses a variety of bands in the megahertz and gigahertz range. The highest frequency or shortest wavelength equipment runs well into the microwave part of the spectrum and has massive bandwidth capability.

The higher the population density, the more 5G capability you’ll find. For smaller businesses, a fixed location cellular modem that plugs into your network can give you the reliable connection you need with lots of bandwidth available at reasonable prices. In other areas 4G LTE is a reasonable alternative and a very mature technology. If you need dozens of Mbps rather than hundreds or thousands, a 4G LTE modem with specially designed antennas for better signal capture can get the job done.

Not all fixed wireless is dedicated to the cellular phone industry. Some use licensed and unlicensed bands to deliver wireless Internet access over a limited area. You may have a small dish or other antenna installed on your building and aimed at the provider’s antenna. That gives you a strong signal regardless of weather conditions. Some private FWA providers can offer gigabit and higher bandwidths that feature low latency, jitter and packet loss just like fiber. Very high usage or even unlimited usage plans are available. Unlike new fiber installations, you can get service up and running in days rather than months or longer. Installation fees range from nothing to a reasonable one time fee.

It’s a Cable, But No Fiber Inside
The second good option to fiber optic service is cable broadband. Yes, this is the most recent incarnation of the Cable TV revolution. What’s new is that cable has gone far beyond its community antenna roots. Most of cable's infrastructure is now fiber. Surprised? Fiber is the only way these companies can transport all those TV channels and all the data.

So, if the cable companies use fiber why not just get them to connect you to their fiber network. They will, if you are close enough to a fiber access point and the construction issues aren’t too great. Otherwise, they’ll simply run the last few hundred feet or so with the familiar coaxial copper cable.

Can cable service on that coax really replace fiber? In a lot of cases, yes. The reason is that the cable modem standards have been massively upgraded over the years. Today’s DOCSIS 3.0, 3.1 and 4.0 modems deliver hundreds of Mbps up to 10 Gbps. That’s right. You can get some of the highest fiber optic speeds delivered via a DOCSIS 4.0 modem connected to a coax cable.

Will Non-Fiber Work For You?
In many, many cases, Fixed Wireless Access and cable broadband can make good substitutes for Ethernet over Fiber optic bandwidth. There are a couple of caveats, however. Wireless bandwidth isn’t as unlimited as what you can put through one or more fiber strands. As such, you may find that there are limits to your speed or usage, depending on what services are available for your location. Cable broadband is an inherently shared service, meaning that bandwidth may vary somewhat depending on how many users are on the cable and how much bandwidth they are using at any given time.

Even so, many businesses don’t need or need to pay for dedicated bandwidth of 1 to 100 Gbps. You may find that wireless and cable offer tremendous cost savings and can deliver all the performance you really need. Why not check out the range of bandwidth options available for your business now?

Gigabit Ethernet Replaces DS3 and T3

By: John Shepler

T3 lines and DS3 bandwidth have long been a staple of telecom service offerings. The rise of Carrier Ethernet WAN, point to point microwave for business and DOCSIS 3 cable broadband is causing these traditional telco services to fade into legacy services. Let’s have a look at what’s available for your business in the 50 to 1000 Mbps speed range.

Telco’s T1 Line Upgrade
The pioneering work on digital transmission over long distances was done by Bell Labs right after WWII. Their first product was called T-Carrier and consisted of T1 and T3 services that were compatible. T1 lines could replace 24 analog phone lines with one multiplexed T1 line.

T1 was designed to run on the same twisted pair copper wires that supplied analog POTS landlines for easy deployment. T3 is an upgrade that ran on coaxial copper lines and microwave towers at 45 Mbps. It can handle 672 voice lines. The protocol that runs on T3, called DS3, can also be carried on SONET fiber optic circuits. When the Internet arrived, both T1 and DS3 were offered in clear channel versions to carry packetized data. T1 runs at 1.5 Mbps. DS3 or T3 runs at 45 Mbps.

Carrier Ethernet over Fiber Takes Over
Computer generated data far exceeds telephone traffic these days. The near ubiquitous standard is Ethernet on the LAN running the Internet Protocol or IP. With T1 or DS3, you need to do a protocol conversion at each end to go from the computer standard to the telephone standard and back again. The introduction of Carrier Ethernet keeps everything in one standard, Ethernet, from end to end.

Carrier Ethernet has been deployed in two versions. The slower version is Ethernet over Copper or EoC. This is a direct replacement for T1 lines and fractional DS3 service and runs from about 1 Mbps to 20 Mbps or so depending on the length of the circuit. The key feature is that it uses the same twisted pair wiring as T1 line or analog phone lines.

The faster version of Carrier Ethernet is Ethernet over Fiber or EoF. This is the technology that is rapidly taking over the world. EoF gives you end to end Ethernet from about 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps and even 100 Gbps in some areas. As you might expect, Ethernet over Fiber easily replaces T3 lines or DS3 bandwidth over SONET. It also offers the ability to easily upgrade to higher speeds than 45 Mbps any time you want. With a Gigabit Ethernet port, you can start off at 50 or 100 Mbps and scale up to 1,000 Mbps with just a phone call or click of a mouse online. There is no need to change out equipment. Only the speed of the line and your monthly billing will change.

The other big advantage of Carrier Ethernet, and some say the most important one, is the cost reduction compared to traditional telco services. You can get EoF service at DS3 bandwidth speeds of 50 Mbps for a fraction of what you would pay for actual DS3 over SONET. 100 Mbps, 1000 Mbps and 10,000 Mbps are suddenly affordable when you upgrade to Ethernet over Fiber.

Wireless is Fiber Without the Fiber
There are situations where fiber just doesn’t work despite all its advantages. One is is rural or remote areas that haven’t been wired, perhaps not even for telephone. The other is in dense urban areas where fiber has yet to be installed. The cost of construction is astronomical in both situations but that doesn’t mean you are out of luck. Just skip the fiber or wires completely.

Point to point microwave was a staple of telephone long haul. Microwave relay towers would retransmit the phone calls every 30 miles or so. Microwave is still applicable on a smaller scale over reasonable distances. In downtown business districts a dish on the roof pointed at the provider's antenna a few blocks away can give you Gigabit level bandwidth with very little construction cost. it’s also fast to install compared with pulling cables under the street.

In more rural areas, a WISP or Wireless internet Service Provider gives similar service usually at somewhat lower bandwidth levels, but similar to DS3 or better. Customers point their antennas at the service tower which can be miles away, but in a direct line of sight.

Another popular arrangement is to take advantage of the fact that every cell tower is also transmitting Internet traffic for smartphones. 4G LTE is commonly available and can give you the performance of fractional DS3 at least on download. Many smaller businesses can get all the performance they need from 4G without any of the wiring headaches. This is especially valuable for mobile or pop-up stores and individual entrepreneurs. Now that 5G is well into deployment, cellular can easily replace DS3 and higher speeds.

One thing to be aware of with wireless services, especially cellular, is that there are usage limits to most plans. That’s because the system can handle less traffic than fiber and the bandwidth must be shared fairly among users. Even so, if you can get 300 GB per month plans and pay much less than DS3 or even a T1 line, wireless can make a lot of sense.

Cable Broadband Can Mimic Fiber
The old Cable TV networks have been vastly upgraded and are now mostly run on fiber. It’s just that last link into your building that is run with coaxial cable. The protocols have also been upgraded along with the switch from analog to digital television. DOCSIS 3.0 and 3.1 offer high speed performance at bargain prices. You might be surprised to know that DOCSIS 3.0 can support bandwidth up to 1 Gbps download and 200 Mbps upload. The newer DOCSIS 3.1 standard is good to 10 Gbps download and 1 to 2 Gbps upload. When DOCSIS 4.0 is deployed, that upstream capacity will increase to 6 Gbps.

Cable broadband is extremely popular with residential users and many businesses. You just can’t beat the pricing. The only limitations are that cable isn’t available in many rural areas and the bandwidth is multiplexed or shared among many users. Thus speeds can vary. Like wireless, there is a large difference between download speeds and upload speeds. Uploading is typically a tenth or less the speed of downloads. That reflects the way Internet traffic usually flows. In many cases, this may make no difference to your operation, but it you need very high upload and download speeds and dedicated bandwidth, especially for cloud services, you may need fiber optic service through cable companies or other competitive fiber network providers.

Do you still have an old DS3 or T3 contract or simply need high performance, low cost bandwidth in the 50 Mbps or above range? If so, discover what Gigabit Ethernet services are available for your business.

DOCSIS 4.0 Expands 10 Gbps Cable Broadband

By: John Shepler

Fiber Optic service is expanding faster and farther than ever. It’s the gold standard in the quest for unlimited business bandwidth. Many businesses, frustrated by their inability to get fiber lit into their buildings or locked-out by the high cost of fiber construction, turn to their next best option: Cable broadband. Now the latest cable standard, DOCSIS 4.0, brings symmetrical streaming and increased upload speeds to ordinary coaxial copper cable service. Would you believe 10 Gbps download and 6 Gbps upload? Fiber has some serious competition from cable.

What is DOCSIS?
DOCSIS is the technology that enables traditional cable TV providers to also offer broadband Internet service on the same cable at the same time. The term is an acronym for Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification. It is the product of Cable Television Laboratories, Inc., CableLabs, a non-profit group supported by the cable system operators.

DOCSIS has evolved along with the Internet. The original spec was DOCSIS 1.0 released in 1997 and defined standards for 40 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload. VoIP and QoS mechanisms were added by the early 2000’s, along with a boost in upstream data rates to 30 Mbps.

A significant improvement was introduced with DOCSIS 3.0 in 2006. Now cable companies could offer 1 Gbps downstream and 200 Mbps upstream with channel bonding. Support for IPv6 was also introduced at this time. With these improvements, it could be said that cable was a serious competitor to fiber optic services.

DOCSIS 3.1 in 2013 increased maximum downstream capacity to 10 Gbps with 1 to 2 Gbps upstream and is widely embraced by cable operators. DOCSIS 4.0, the latest version, increased the upstream rate to 6 Gbps in 2017. DOCSIS 4.0 is still in the early stages of production testing and deployment. The ultimate plan is to have full duplex symmetrical bandwidth on cable of 10 Gbps.

How Can Copper Cable Run So Fast?
Truth be told, it’s been a lot of years since cable TV networks were built with coaxial copper cable from the antennas at the head-end all the way to individual households and business locations. Virtually all systems of any size now use a technology called HFC or Hybrid Fiber Cable. The core network is fiber optic cable just like fiber network providers operate. The difference is that those companies run fiber right to the demarcation point within the building, while cable service terminates the fiber somewhere in the neighborhood and the makes the final run with the familiar coaxial cable. It was HFC that really enabled cable providers to offer serious broadband service.

Access Cable Fiber Networks Directly
Cable networks serve extensive metropolitan areas and their suburbs. Multi-system operators have fiber that interconnects their networks and connects to the Internet backbone. Major cable companies have gotten into the business of competing directly with competitive fiber optic networks by offering businesses the option to connect to their fiber networks without going through the copper interface.

There are advantages in going the fully fiber route. You may be able to get faster speeds and fully symmetric and dedicated connections by avoiding the cable modem. Remember that cable broadband is an inherently shared service. You are on the same last-mile Internet connection as dozens or hundreds of your neighbors. As such, you may find the the congestion level and speed of service vary throughout the day. It all depends on what everybody else is doing.

This is the reason that businesses, especially those with significant business processes running in the cloud, opt for dedicated Internet access and point to point private lines. You can get those at low speeds with traditional telco services such as T1 lines and higher speeds with DS3 bandwidth, SONET fiber optic services, Ethernet over Fiber and MPLS networks.

What service will meet your needs depends on how sensitive your operations are to line speed and latency, along with jitter and congestion. Cable broadband, especially at the DOCSIS 3.0 and above levels, provides many, many businesses with highly usable and reliable service at excellent pricing levels. Other companies with more sensitive needs may need to access fiber itself and set up more dedicated and private connections to achieve the performance they require for maximum productivity.

Find out now what cable, fiber and twisted pair copper broadband options are available for your business and what each has to offer.

When You Need Massive Bandwidth

By: John Shepler

Most businesses do just fine with common bandwidth offerings from telco, cable and fiber service providers. Sometimes, though, your application just won’t squeeze through the pipe. You need more than typical WAN bandwidth. You need massive bandwidth.

How Massive Are We Talking?
Over the last few decades, mirroring the growth of the Internet, WAN bandwidth needs have multiplied from a paltry T1 level of 1.5 Mbps up to 10 or 20 Mbps for the smaller businesses, at least 100 Mbps for companies with many employees, to a now commonly expected Gigabit per second.

Those bandwidths levels are easily accommodated by most service providers. Copper twisted pair can bring in 20 Mbps or so. Cable broadband is good for at least 100 Mbps and pushing 1 Gbps in many areas. Fiber optic service easily delivers 1 or 2 Gbps and can readily scale to 10 Gbps. Where you might find yourself limited is in rural or underserved locations where your choice is still T1 lines, LTE or 5G wireless, or synchronous satellite broadband.

Massive bandwidth starts at 10 Gbps and goes up from there. Can you reasonably take advantage of 100 Gbps up and down? OK. How about 400 Gbps, 800 Gbps or even a full Terabit per second? Those are carrier level services, but not out of the realm of possibility for the most data or streaming intensive businesses.

Who On Earth Needs THAT Much Bandwidth?
What were absurd levels of bandwidth are now aspirational and may become common sooner than you think. One big driver is the move of everything digital to the cloud. When your data center was just down the hall, nobody worried about bandwidth. You can string as much fiber as you want above the ceiling tiles. Once you pay for installation, usage is pretty much free.

Not so much anymore. When the connection leaves your building you lose control. You’re not going to string any cable across town, much less across several states. For that you need to hand off your traffic to a carrier or service provider. This third party will then lease you the amount of bandwidth you need, or at least can afford, for a monthly fee. The carrier, not you, takes care of all maintenance and reliability between locations.

Some companies get a surprise when they realize that the 30 Mbps Internet connection that was more than adequate when the data center was on premises is now painfully slow when all the applications are in the cloud. One solution is to install a high speed direct line to the cloud service provider and keep the old Internet connection as-is. That solves the bandwidth problem and avoids business critical apps having to deal with the vagaries of Internet performance.

Another application that just won’t play on standard connectivity is content distribution. If you are sending massive amounts of content consistently, you may need to avoid the standard Internet and move over to a purpose built privately run network called a content delivery network. These are designed to handle continuously high levels of video or data without congestion.

Sometimes you only need massive data for a brief time. Say you have Terabytes of disk drives full to the brim and you want to send that to the cloud for safe keeping or to a customer who needs those design or simulation models on their system. Shoving it through a normal connection will take forever. Is there a better option?

Colocation and Cloud Data Centers
If there is one place that you’ll find massive bandwidth already installed and running, it is in cloud and colo centers. Both are massive facilities with nearly unlimited servers, disk drives and bandwidth connections from multiple carriers. The difference between cloud and colo is that cloud centers provide all of the equipment and service needed. A colo or colocation facility lets you bring in your own equipment and set up your own data center in their racks and cages. It’s like what you would have at home, but in a shared building with plenty of space, backup power, HVAC, security and even round the clock staffing.

Some colos will provide a direct fiber hookup between your company and any others located in the same facility. if you need to connect outside, you won’t have to worry about finding a service provider or paying hefty fees to bring in service from afar. They are already inside and serving other customers. You just get a hookup at whatever bandwidth you need.

More Exotic Massive Bandwidth Options
There really is no limit to how much bandwidth you can utilize these days, other than your budget. If you can afford it, consider these options:

Wavelength Services
Most fibers are now lit with DWDM or dense wavelength division multiplexing. That means multiple lasers feeding the same fiber, but on different frequencies or wavelengths. A wavelength can handle perhaps 10 Gbps and each fiber strand can handle perhaps 100 wavelengths. Combine them all and the total bandwidth is mind boggling.

Many carriers are now leasing entire wavelengths for your use. It’s like a fiber within a fiber. Some will combine multiple wavelengths to create 100 Gbps and higher bandwidths for you, or you can lease the wavelengths and multiplex them yourself.

Dark Fiber
The ultimate in bandwidth and control is had by leasing one or more dark fiber strands. Dark means that the fiber is in the cable but totally unused at present. You add the laser termination and multiplexing equipment at each end and “light” the fiber.

Dark fiber is as close to having your own in-house cabling as you can get outdoors. There is nobody else’s traffic to contend with. You decide how much capacity to press into service. Run out of bandwidth? Just upgrade your terminal equipment. Same fiber, more Gbps. You don’t have total control. The carrier still owns and maintains the fiber physical plant, including cabling and repeaters. The rest is up to you.

Are you feeling unduly restricted when it comes to bandwidth to efficiently run your business and take advantage of new opportunities? If so, look into higher bandwidth fiber optic services now. You may find them more affordable than you think.

Gigabit Internet Near Your Business

By: John Shepler

No doubt about it, you need more broadband speed to conduct business than you ever have. Most businesses have an online presence now. The few that don’t still need the Internet for business processes and to offer WiFi hotspots for their customers. If yesterday’s connection solutions seem to have slowed to a crawl, you clearly need an upgrade. Gigabit Internet broadband could be exactly what you need now and for the foreseeable future.

Is Gigabit Internet Really Right for Me?
What you really need is invisible connectivity. No matter what you are doing, the speed of the line shouldn’t be getting in your way. In fact, you should completely forget about how you get to the Internet. It should just be there.

You probably need more speed than you think. Over the last 20 years, the “Internet” has evolved from email and some very simple HTML brochure-type websites to fully functional online operations. Many of your customers never set foot in your place of business anymore. They do everything online. It’s second nature. Their phone is really a web browser that is always in their pocket. Their desktop computer has relatively little boxed software anymore. Most everything is done online and in real time. Your phone system? Probably VoIP technology these days and more likely, integrated with a video conferencing system for unified communications.

How about your business processes? Do you keep manual books? How about customer or patient records? Your customer relationship management systems are all software based and most likely cloud based. In fact, fewer and fewer companies host their own data centers anymore. It’s all about the cloud and what isn’t cloud related is all about connecting to the outside world, especially customers and suppliers.

Making your connection invisible to you and your employees involves certain technical characteristics. The line must run fast enough. That’s speed or bandwidth. It also must respond quickly. That’s latency as much as speed. Long latency in the system means sluggish response. It must also be accurate and efficient in the sense that it doesn’t lose bits. That integrity is essential in the case of voice and video streams. Dropped bits garble conversations and make video distorted and even jerky. A high quality Gigabit Internet connection can go a long way to making all of this fairly easy to accomplish.

Your Gigabit Internet Connection
Is Gigabit Internet near you? Most likely, yes. Perhaps you checked around a few years ago and found nothing available. It’s highly likely that situation has changed. The demand for higher and higher speeds, especially 4G and 5G wireless broadband speeds, has resulted in a building boom for fiber optic and microwave circuits. In addition, new technology modems have enabled cable broadband systems to be able to deliver Gigabit speeds over their existing fiber and coaxial copper infrastructure.

Even if you don’t think you really need Gigabit speeds right now, you should seriously consider having that capability. You’ll need them sooner than you think. What you want is a DOCSIS 3.1 modem or a Gigabit Ethernet port to deliver your Internet connection. That way you can start out with, say 100 Mbps business broadband, and upgrade to as much as 1,000 Mbps, a Gigabit, later.

Know Your Broadband Types
You should know that there are two basic types of Internet broadband services. They are called dedicated and shared. Dedicated Internet Access has the highest prices, but is the most solid, reliable connection you can get. The "dedicated" name means the bandwidth is 100% dedicated to your use only. Whatever you don't use remains available when you need it. A dedicated connection also tends to be symmetrical, with upload and download speeds identical.

Shared connections, like what you get with cable broadband and 4G and 5G wireless, are far less costly, but are shared among multiple users. You many notice this as fluctuating line speed throughout the day. Shared connections also tend to be asymmetrical with download speeds about ten times upload speeds. Whether either of these characteristics matter depend on how you are using the service.

What Internet connection is best for your business? Find out now what Gigabit Internet broadband services are available near you.

Escape the High Cost of Bonded T1 Lines

By: John Shepler

The T1 line was the first professional-grade digital communications pipe. Over a half-century later, it is still widely used for point to point private lines and for PRI telephone trunking. It also makes an excellent first mile link for dedicated Internet access for small business. While the price of T1 lines have dropped dramatically over the years, it can still be a pricey solution, especially if you need to bond several together to get enough bandwidth. Are there any good alternatives?

The Good and the Bad of T1 Lines
At first, T1 lines were the only game in town. Once fiber became available with much higher bandwidth, T1 still had a cost advantage in the days before broadband everything. Would you believe that 1.5 Mbps was pretty impressive back in the day? It’s a symmetrical 1.5 Mbps. That’s the same speed in both directions. It’s also full duplex or both directions at the same time. T1 is a dedicated line. You have all the bandwidth and if you don’t use it, it just sits there idle until you do.

Bonded T1 Lines Increase Speed
Bonding is a process of making big lines out of little ones. If you bond two T1 lines, you get 3 Mbps. Four lines gets you 6 Mbps. Six lines and you have a respectable 9 Mbps. I understand that in the wilds of Alaska they’ll bond 8 or 10 lines together. That’s about the limit.

Now, the downside. Those 2, 4 or 6 bonded lines cost 2, 4 or 6 times as much as one T1 line. There’s no economy of scale. At, say, several hundred dollars a month each, that’s gets pretty pricey pretty fast. For that much money, why not just get a fiber optic connection?

Fiber Instead of Copper
Fiber, indeed. A nice side effect of the big telecom move to 4G LTE and 5G wireless is that the T1 lines they used to run to cell towers can’t possibly deliver the bandwidth. So, there has been a big buildout of fiber to the tower along with wireless fiber, also known as microwave transmission. That means that fiber service is far more available than it used to be. It’s also a lot less expensive due to increased competition from new providers and a technology switch from SONET to Carrier Ethernet. If you haven’t checked out fiber pricing and availability in awhile, you may be surprised at what has popped up while you weren’t looking.

Keep the Copper, But Use Ethernet
All that twisted pair copper in the ground can still be used to deliver decent bandwidths by bonding it for Ethernet over Copper instead of T1. EoC is a different technology and can deliver 10 or 20 Mbps easily. The downside is that bandwidth falls off rapidly with distance. This approach works best in populated areas where a telco office isn’t far away. If you can get it, Ethernet over Copper is very affordable and gives you the performance of bonded T1 at a fraction of the cost per Mbps.

How About Cable?
I’m amazed how many times prospective customers ask for gigabit fiber or dark fiber but wind up buying cable broadband. Why? Cable has a tremendous cost advantage. You can often get fiber bandwidths at T1 prices and most service levels are easily afforded by any business. The bandwidth is shared, not dedicated. It’s also asymmetrical, meaning that the download speed can be ten times the upload speed or more. These may or may not be issues, depending on how you use the service. Some applications just won’t tolerate anything but a private line. Most everything we do everyday isn’t that demanding. Many cable services have consistently high bandwidth and low latency. What hiccups there are tend to be transitory and long term outages have become rare on the major service providers.

Mix and Match
To get the right combination of performance and cost, you might want to consider a combination of services. For VoIP telephony and maybe business processes in the cloud, get a dedicated T1 or fiber connection. For general Internet use or customer WiFi, business cable broadband gives you a lot of performance for the price. Run the networks separately or use an SD-WAN system to intelligently direct traffic.

What bandwidth options are best for your business? Get pricing and availability on a wide variety of bandwidth services now so you can make the best decision and perhaps save considerable cost as well.

DOCSIS 3.1 Makes Cable Act Like Fiber

By: John Shepler

Cable broadband, once thought to be a low-end networking option, has been quietly getting a major technological overhaul that makes it competitive with fiber optic bandwidth for many business applications. Companies that once wouldn’t consider cable for more than a backup connection now find the combination of high performance and low cost too compelling to ignore. Let’s take a look at what’s happened behind the scenes and what options cable offers now and in the near future.



Magic #1: The HFC Cable Plant
When cable started out as cable television, it was little more than a set of really tall antennas feeding tuners and distribution amps at the “head end” to create an equivalent to what you would get off the air…if you could get such good reception. The all-analog collection of signals got boosted and distributed all over town, but what came out the connector on your TV was very much a more potent version of OTA (Over The Air) Television.

Time passes and the handful of OTA channels were augmented by dozens and dozens of non-broadcast channels delivered via satellite to that same head end. These “cable channels” quickly ate up all the capacity of the big coaxial cables that fed the little coax cables that fed the TVs. Cable companies launched rebuilding programs to increase capacity… but not by doing more of the same. Instead, they strung new fiber optic bundles and then connected their existing delivery cables to the new fiber optic trunk lines. This combination is called HFC or Hybrid Fiber-Coax.

The HFC system, combined with all-digital transmission creates a huge increase in capacity to accommodate a hundred or more TV channels with extras that can be used to deliver Internet broadband over the same cable. Note that the cable that connects to your TV or modem looks the same as the old analog cable. It is. But, it only needs to run a short distance before it hooks up with the enormous capacity fiber optic network. You get the best of both worlds… high capacity fiber to the curb plus inexpensive passive coaxial cable for termination of the service in the home or business.

Magic #2: DOCSIS Broadband
DOCSIS is a cable broadband standard that stands for Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification. It was created specifically for cable companies to be able to also deliver Internet. To do that, DOCSIS signals fit into low frequency spectrum not used for TV signals and spare standard television channels on the cable.

The first version, DOCSIS 1.0 was released about the same time as the Internet was taking off, 1997, followed by version 1.1 in 1999. A faster version 2.0 came out in 2001. That’s the one most of us cut our broadband teeth on, after finally running out of patience with dial-up telephone Internet. A few years ago you probably upgraded to a DOCSIS 3.0 modem, which brings the system up to today’s standards.

DOCSIS 3.0 makes cable a serious contender for business broadband service. It supports the latest Internet Protocol version 6 (IPV6) and has a downstream (download) capacity of 1 Gbps with an upstream (upload) capacity of 100 Mbps. In practice, may users run something like 25 to 75 Mbps down and 5 to 7 Mbps up.

Magic #3 DOCSIS 3.1 Thinks It’s Fiber
The newest technical upgrade to HFC systems is called DOCSIS 3.1. It sounds like an incremental change, but the performance jump is enormous. DOCSIS 3.1 offers downstream speeds of 10 Gbps max with upstream of 1 to 2 Gbps max. Cable bandwidth is called asymmetrical because the download speeds are typically 10x the upload speeds. A further enhancement, not yet deployed, is Full Duplex DOCSIS 3.1 that will offer 10 Gbps upload and 10 Gbps download. That’s pretty much the high end of what you’ll get with fiber or by leasing a fiber optic wavelength… at a fraction of the cost.

The Appeal of High Speed Cable Broadband
Cable broadband is the most compelling Internet access for any business that can get it. You do need to be in a location with cable already running down the street, but you stand a much better chance of having cable available than fiber. It’s mostly out in rural areas that neither fiber or cable are available and high speed satellite becomes the service of choice.

The big appeal of cable is how much bandwidth you get for the money. You’ll easily pay 5x to 10x as much for SONET or Ethernet fiber optic services. In some cases, that extra expense is worth it. Cable bandwidth is shared among the pool of users, while higher priced telecom services have dedicated bandwidth for your use only. SONET and Ethernet over Fiber services are symmetrical and come with service level agreements that guarantee a certain level of performance and availability at all times.

If your business is running a server farm in-house or distributing large software packages or video streams, you’ll need a high speed dedicated service. But, if your business uses cloud services, collocated hosting, or has simple needs for web browsing and email, cable broadband may have all the capacity you can use and at bargain rates. You should at least give it consideration before you sign an expensive lease. Our expert consultants can help you make the best decision based on the particular needs of your business. Compare DOCSIS cable with other copper, fiber and satellite bandwidth options available for your business location.

Faster Internet Connectivity

By: John Shepler

More is often better when it comes to Internet access speed. Yes, at some point the bandwidth of the line is so wide and the latency so low that your connection appears to be transparent. That’s not the case for most of us. We’re bandwidth limited to what we can afford and what is available. So, do we have to settle for limited throughput? Not necessarily, and certainly not until we’ve checked out all the options now available.

Times Have Changed
One thing that holds us back in achieving faster Internet connectivity is the status quo. We’re comfortable with our Internet service provider and may not give it much thought. You might have just lucked into a good broadband service years ago or did a thorough search before selecting your current provider and service level. Just remember… that was years ago. In Internet years, that’s forever!

The Oldies: T1 and DSL
T1 lines and DSL were once the hot tech services. In fact, they may have been the only thing affordable at the time. Sure, there were T3 lines (also called DS3 service) and telco provided SONET fiber, but those were grossly expensive and only ordered if you REALLY needed them.

DSL is pretty much yesterday’s tech. T1 lines, however are still alive and well. They’re either on very old contracts that haven’t been reviewed in years or for special needs like rural locations where there isn’t much else. Todays T1 lines cost about half what they did a decade ago and you can bond them to create higher bandwidths. For most of us, though, there are better choices.

Cable Business Broadband
Today’s most popular entry level broadband service is business cable. It’s 10x to 20x the speed of a T1 line for less cost… if you can get it. In metro areas, no problem. Outside of town, not so much. The DOCSIS standard has been upgraded over the years so that 100 Mbps bandwidth is fairly easy to find. Even 1,000 Mbps is possible with DOCSIS 3.0, the current standard. A max speed of 10 Gbps is possible with the latest release, DOCSIS 3.1.

Note that these speeds are typically only available for download. Upstream capacity is often a tenth the downstream bandwidth. That works great for typical Internet access, but can be a limitation if you upload large files extensively. Also, cable broadband is a shared service. You share the available bandwidth with others on the cable rather than having it all to yourself.

Fiber Optic Ethernet
If future-proof highly reliable high speed Internet access with nearly unlimited dedicated bandwidth and low latency is what you really want, then fiber optic Internet connections are the real answer. The pioneering but expensive legacy SONET fiber services, such as OC-3, OC-12 and OC-48, are being quickly replaced by Ethernet over Fiber or EoF.

Carrier Ethernet is a perfect match to your local area network and offers scalable bandwidth from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps, and up to 100 Gbps in select areas. It’s the most cost effective service you can get in terms of $ per Mbps. You also have the option of starting with the bandwidth you need today and quickly scaling up as needed in the future, usually with no hardware changes required.

High Speed Wireless
While fiber is the most desirable connectivity, it isn’t available everywhere. This is especially true in rural areas or even just beyond the metro limits. If fiber lines run to or close by your building, then you are in luck. Otherwise construction costs might be totally unacceptable regardless of the monthly lease fees.

If wires, including cable and fiber, aren’t the answer for you, then wireless may get the job done. There are two good options to consider. One is fixed point business Internet that picks up the tower signal using a small antenna on your building. The other is two-way business satellite that uses a small dish pointed at the southern sky to do the same thing.

Fixed Point Wireless
These providers are also known as WISPs or Wireless Internet Service Providers. Small Business Internet is similar to cable broadband but without the cable. You may get up to 50/5 Mbps of shared bandwidth for a very reasonable monthly price with no data caps. Enterprise Business Internet offers symmetrical dedicated bandwidth like Ethernet Fiber from 10 Mbps up to 1 Gbps with low latency for sensitive traffic like voice and video. Like other services, you’ll need to be in a location that is served by a strong WISP signal.

Satellite Wireless
The one nearly universal Internet connectivity service is broadband business satellite. Perched thousands of miles over the equator, satellites the size of school busses beam strong signals that blanket the USA and beyond, including islands and ships at sea. Two-way satellite has long been used by gas stations, restaurants, bank branches and other small commercial locations that have limited access needs. The new generations of “birds” are serious contenders with wireline and fiber. Look for bandwidth options around 15 Mbps now and up to 100 Mbps soon. Latency is pretty much stuck around half a second due to the enormous distances involved. That may or may not be a factor depending on how sensitive your applications, like voice, video and cloud services, are to these time delays.

Did you know that there were so many options to get faster Internet connectivity for your business? Whether you are a large, medium or small organization, check out your options for high speed broadband Internet service at your location.

Gigabit Metro Fiber Ethernet Means Business

By: John Shepler

More and more companies are running out of bandwidth as demanding applications eat up every Mbps of LAN, MAN and WAN bandwidth they can access. Are you doomed to fight a losing battle or is there a good technical solution available?

More Bandwidth to the Rescue
Don’t expect to roll back the clock and be able to do business today and tomorrow with the connections you ordered yesterday. X.25 is long gone. T1 lines have about had their last hurrah. Ethernet over Copper is a temporary solution, at best, to buy you time for what you really need to do. That is, connect to the world via fiber optic bandwidth

But What About Cable?
Cable broadband, also called D3 or DOCSIS 3 for the technical standard, is actually a good solution for some applications. Just don’t kid yourself. That cable connection doesn’t really go very far until it hooks up with the cable company’s metro fiber plant. The junction box may be a few blocks away or it might be handing on the utility pole you can see from your office.

The same is true for T3 or DS3 bandwidth, the longstanding upgrade path from T1 lines. The connection to your equipment may be a pair of coaxial cables, but they only go out to the street. At they point they join up with a SONET fiber optic system owned and maintained by the local telephone company.

What’s Special About MetroE Fiber?
Ethernet is the newer and future-proof technology for carrying digital traffic on fiber optic systems. It is based on the same Ethernet standards used for your local area networks. Certain standards have been added to fit with carrier operations, but otherwise it is switched Ethernet.

That means the interface between your LAN and the carrier’s MAN or WAN is trivially simple. Just plug in and go, like you would with any router or switch. No special interface cards are needed. Chances are that the carrier who is providing your service will install a managed router at your business to define the network edge.

Metro vs Internet
Metro Ethernet, strictly speaking, is a network that serves a particular city or city plus suburbs. The most common use has been to interconnect business locations that are geographically close. These may include headquarters, data centers, warehouses and branch offices. Some companies choose to include suppliers and important customers on their MetroE network for high connection speed and security.

Metro Ethernet is a point to point or multipoint service that directly connects particular locations. You can elect to order ELAN service that actually extends your local network to the other locations. It’s just like you ran your own cables across town, but without the prohibitive expense of doing so.

The Internet is another animal. It’s actually a massive worldwide network made up of national, regional and city-wide networks that all agree to a common standard. Metro Ethernet is not the Internet, but it can connect to it. MetroE networks can also connect to each other over longer distances, especially when ordered through the same carrier.

Why Order Metro Ethernet?
You can think of Carrier Ethernet or Metro Ethernet as the new gold standard in telecommunications. It gives you high bandwidth connections that are easily scalable and low in latency, jitter and packet loss. You have exclusive use of the bandwidth you’ve ordered. It’s also generally covered by a service level agreement to ensure that you get the highest level of availability.

That’s important because the tradeoff between Metro Ethernet and Cable Broadband is not so much in the connection method. Cable provides you with a shared bandwidth service that varies in speed depending on how heavy the usage is. Service is generally on a “best effort” basis rather than any particular guarantees of performance or availability. Thus, the lower price for a given bandwidth level. Some businesses, especially smaller ones, find this tradeoff well worth making. Others with large user bases and critical applications may find that only dedicated service is acceptable.

By the way, many Cable companies also offer Metro Ethernet service on their fiber backbones. It’s a different class of service with a different pricing structure than the coax connected business broadband offering.

Is Metro Ethernet For You?
If you are running out of bandwidth or already at the limit, or simply want a service that can easily be upgraded in the future, you should take a serious look at Metro Ethernet for your business. You may be able to get a break on construction costs or even have them waived if you sign a long term contract, have high enough bandwidth requirements or can join forces with other business customers in your building. There are likely multiple carriers serving your area. Find out what each can offer with a set of competitive quotes for Metro Ethernet service now.

Your Options For Business Internet Broadband

By: John Shepler

The range of broadband Internet connectivity solutions available for your business location is greater than ever before. Let’s take a look at what’s available and appropriate for companies of all sizes.

Starting at the Top
We’ll start at the top, since Gigabit Internet is the gold standard that everyone would really like to have… if they could afford it. Chances are, you probably can if you have a medium or larger size company in most locations or smaller businesses in select areas.

Where You Are Counts
This is an important point for all connectivity services. What you get and what you pay for it depends a lot on your particular business location. That’s because not all areas are built out equally. Major metro downtowns have a wealth of services and are highly competitive on price. Large business and office parks are also well connected. In smaller towns or out in rural areas, pickings are slim, as they say. Even so, you can get some form of broadband Internet connection no matter where you are.

Options at 1 Gbps
The most popular form of Gigabit Ethernet or GigE service for business right now is Gigabit Ethernet over Fiber. It is a more modern technology than SONET and excels in both ease of connectivity and price. The ease of connectivity comes from the fact that Carrier Ethernet is really just an extension of the same switched Ethernet that runs on your company LAN. Features necessary to long distance operation and maintenance have been added to the Ethernet standard. Otherwise it’s the same packets you already know and love.

Gigabit Ethernet is priced at a fraction of what traditional SONET OC3, OC12, OC48 etc costs. These are still viable options and are embedded into many, many regional and national networks. Ethernet can run over SONET or be natively hosted on the fiber. Competitive providers have pushed prices lower and lower, to the point that if you really need this much bandwidth you can probably afford it.

Another advantage of Carrier Ethernet is that it is easily scalable. You can install fiber services with a Gigabit speed port today but only take 100 Mbps service if that is all you need. The price will be considerably less and you can upgrade to 200, 500, 750 or 1,000 Mbps whenever you like. No equipment changes will be needed.

Even Higher Speeds
The relentless migration of data centers to the cloud and higher performance hosted business applications have pushed demands on WAN networks to higher and higher speeds. While most companies are getting used to the idea of having Gigabit connectivity, some, like video producers and larger medical complexes, find that bandwidth a bit limiting. No problem. If you can get Ethernet over Fiber, you can likely get 10 Gbps as easily as 1 Gbps. In larger markets, 100 Gbps is readily available for business use.

Fractional Gigabit Options
If your needs are more modest, say in the range of 50 to 500 Mbps, you have multiple options for service. Certainly, rate limited GigE can work in this range. You can also opt for traditional DS3 service at 45 Mbps. This bandwidth, which once was a corporate standard, is provisioned on copper coaxial cables. Most of the delivery is done over fiber, however, running as a service on OC3 fiber to the curb.

How about business cable broadband? The price is certainly right and you can easily get bandwidths to 100 Mbps, and often 300 Mbps. In some areas Gigabit service over cable is available. Limitations of this service are that the bandwidth is shared, and thus varies during the day. It is also asymmetrical with download speed 10x that of upload speed. Finally, there are usually no service level agreements. Its a best effort service. Even so, if the cable runs by your location and the service will meet your needs, you’ll pay only a fraction of what equivalent fiber bandwidth costs.

The Low End
Small businesses may find 50 Mbps more than they need, especially if the Internet is used primarily for email, purchasing, web browsing and similar applications. In this case, cable broadband at 30 Mbps can be your lowest cost option. Ethernet over Copper will give you symmetrical bandwidth from 5 to 50 Mbps and is also very cost effective.

Have you considered a T1 line? Yes, the bandwidth is only 1.5 Mbps, but it is rock solid and suitable for things like credit card verification and email. Not so much for video or other demanding applications. The beauty of T1 lines is that they have been around so long they are available just about everywhere you can get landline telephone service. That means out in rural areas where just about nothing else is available.

Business satellite broadband is another option for just about any location where power is available and you have a clear view of the Southern sky. The downsides of satellite are that usage is limited to a fixed number of GB per month, just like cellular, and the latency from the satellite being so far up make applications slow to respond and telephone calls more like two-way radio conversations.

How About SDN?
Software Defined Networks are taking the industry by storm. These are collections of similar or dissimilar broadband services that are managed by a special controller that makes instant decisions about which path each packet should take. The effect is that your WAN connection becomes more robust and even lower cost options can be integrated to create a high performing network.

Which business Internet option is right for your business? Get quote for multiple business Internet broadband services and see which fits best to your requirements.