How to Get Stable Upload and Download Speeds

By: John Shepler

A solid connection is a wonderful thing to have. Have you been scratching your head, wondering why your upload and download speeds vary all over the place? It’s likely the nature of the bandwidth connection you’ve chosen.

Why Can’t It Be Like a LAN?
Most of us are spoiled when it comes to local area network connections. Our computing equipment comes with Gigabit or at least Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps) network interfaces right out of the box. Cat5E and Cat6 cables are common now, as are gigabit routers and switches. Even WiFi runs fast, especially on the 5 GHz band. Unless your network is overloaded, it’s transparent to you.

So why is communications so sluggish and unreliable on Internet broadband or other long distance connections?

We forget. In the early days of setting up local computer networks, they were sluggish too. Even then, it didn’t seem too bad compared to dial-up modems or X.25 links at 64 Kbps. What’s happened is that LAN networking technology has sped up by leaps and bounds and equipment prices have plunged dramatically. You have to make a real effort just to buy the slow stuff anymore.

The same technological advancements have also applied to Internet and private line connections. The cost savings haven’t been quite as dramatic and there still is a wide range of connectivity in use.

What Makes Line Speeds Vary
General sluggishness is usually due to congestion caused by low bandwidth or a shared link that is over-subscribed. Speeds that vary all over the place are usually due to shared bandwidth with periods of heavy usage that come and go. You might run a speed test and get 100 Mbps. A few minutes later you run the same test and get 10 Mbps for worse. That congestion will eventually let up, but you have no idea how soon.

Any system with multiple users that can’t support full speed simultaneous connections is going to have variations. Those cable broadband options that have such great pricing are subscribed to the point that they keep most users happy most of the time. But they are a shared resource and you can’t be sure how many of your fellow users are on at the same time or what they’ll be doing.

The same is true of 4G LTE wireless and will be true of 5G once there are enough devices deployed to sop up the bandwidth. Radio frequencies used in cellular and satellite have limited capacity, which is why they have data caps and also why too many users will drag the speed down.

In general, any bandwidth service with pricing attractive to consumers is going to be a shared service and also likely to be asymmetrical. In other words, the download speed will be much faster than the upload speed.

Dedicated Connections for Solid Bandwidth

You’ll get far more consistent performance from dedicated bandwidth. Do you remember T1 lines? Perhaps you still have one. The 1.5 Mbps speed is no longer accepted as broadband, but the performance is rock solid. That’s because you are the only user on the line. Whatever bandwidth you aren’t consuming just idles.

For point to point phone and data connections or interconnecting LAN networks at two different locations, dedicated private line bandwidth can’t be beat. Yes, it will cost a bit more than the commodity shared bandwidth services, but the performance will be rock solid. You’ll also see an improvement on the Internet with dedicated Internet access, but once you’re into the actual Internet, you can still get variability and latency issues.

This means your best connection to your cloud service provider is to bypass the Internet completely and install a dedicated private line from your location to the cloud center. Once you have that with enough bandwidth to support your peak activities, the cloud will seem like it is right next door.

Those T1 lines? Probably not going to cut it anymore, unless you are doing such simple tasks as email, casual web browsing and point of sale credit card verification. You’ll want to upgrade to at least Ethernet over Copper at 10 or 20 Mbps. A even better option is Fiber Optic Ethernet at 10 Mbps up to 10 Gbps and any speed in-between. Fiber bandwidth prices have dropped significantly in the last few years and availability has dramatically increased. You can thank 4G LTE and 5G cell towers for that, as well as competitive fiber optic service providers.

Are you frustrated by slow and highly varying bandwidth? How about VoIP phone service that is good one call and garbled the next? You should really look into dedicated bandwidth solutions including private lines and dedicated Internet access to improve your metropolitan and wide area network performance.

Dedicated vs Shared Internet

By: John Shepler

Business Internet service options can be defined by bandwidth level, but it may be more important to distinguish between dedicated and shared service types.

What is Dedicated?
Dedicated bandwidth means what it sounds like. This bandwidth is dedicated to your use and no one else’s. That may seem obvious, but the rise of shared bandwidth in recent years has muddied the waters. Why would you share bandwidth if you could have it all to yourself?

The reason is cost
Shared bandwidth options are available at just a fraction of the cost you’d pay for similar speed dedicated options. That makes some business users think twice about how much they really need exclusive use of the line. You should make this choice after careful consideration, though, and not just as a knee jerk reaction to the sticker prices. If you make the wrong decision you could suffer with a connection that frustrates employees and kills productivity.

T1 and DS3
Dedicated bandwidth was long the standard for business. Once companies migrated from low speed dial-up or 64Kbps lines to broadband, the popular telecom standard services became T1 at 1.5 Mbps and DS3 at 45 Mbps. These are repurposed telephone trunks and offer both dedicated and symmetrical bandwidth. Both T1 and DS3 have been popular for decades are still available at very reasonable prices for both point to point and Internet access.

Unlimited Usage
A characteristic of dedicated line services is that there are no usage limits. You can load up the line with continuous file transfers, like for remote data center backups, or use it lightly for email and Web access or occasional communications with remote offices. Either way, the maximum amount of data you can transfer in a month is the line rate in Mbps time the number of seconds in the month. Whatever isn’t used just sits idle because no one else can make use of it.

About Symmetry
The symmetry of the bandwidth is also important. Symmetrical means that you get the same amount of bandwidth in both the upload and download directions. This is typical for commercial telecom services. It is essential for PBX telephone trunks, but also valuable if your traffic is heavily bi-directional. Branch office to headquarters connections, video conferencing and cloud access tend to be bi-directional.

Asymmetrical / Shared
The other types of bandwidth are asymmetrical and shared. These tend to go together. Shared bandwidth became popular when residential broadband was established. Home users couldn’t afford commercial telecom lines and rarely needed that level of performance. Most Internet access is skewed in the download direction. This includes Web pages and, especially, streaming and downloaded multimedia. Email tends to be bi-directional, but the files are generally fairly small and infrequent.

Cable & DSL
The Cable and Telephone companies took advantage of the fact that few users are online all day every day to divvy up a large dedicated telecommunications service among dozens or hundreds of individual users. Each user pays a modest fee. All the fees collected go to pay the much larger cost of the dedicated high speed line that feeds all users.

Cost of Bandwidth
It is not uncommon for shared bandwidth services to offer 10 times or more download bandwidth for the same price as a dedicated line service. The upload speed of the shared service is only a tenth to a fifth of the download speed but that doesn’t generally matter if what you need is basic Internet access. The catch is that this shared bandwidth is a maximum figure. At any given time the bandwidth you measure can be all over the place. You may get 10 or 100 Mbps one minute and 1 or 10 Mbps the next. It’s impossible to predict your actual line speed because how much you get is dependent on how many other users are online and how heavily they are accessing the Internet.

Network Issues
There are a few other issues with shared bandwidth. One is network congestion. The Internet itself can become congested with too much traffic from time to time. Most often, though, it’s the access network that clogs up with too many simultaneous users. The other issue is latency and jitter. These are unimportant for file transfers, but will wreak havoc on VoIP telephony and two-way video. Geosynchronous satellite links suffer particularly high latency.

Fair Usage Limits
Also, bandwidth sharing leads to bandwidth rationing. If you look closely at the contract, even “unlimited” services have a “fair usage” limitation. If you hog so much bandwidth that it impacts other users, you may have your bandwidth throttled to a lower speed, get cut off or be charged overage fees. Cellular broadband is famous for overage charges. Satellite services tend to throttle bandwidth. DSL and Cable have much higher usage limits but may cut back or cut off your service above certain levels. None of this is experienced with dedicated line services.

Current Dedicated Services
Today, T1 and DS3 are being replaced by Ethernet over Copper and Ethernet over Fiber. These are both dedicated symmetrical bandwidth services. MPLS networks are multi-tenant wide area networks that offer better pricing for long haul connections with committed information rates and symmetrical bandwidth.

SOHO Needs
How do you choose between dedicated and shared Internet connections? It depends on how sensitive and critical your needs are. Small retail operations that only need Web access, email and credit card verification, and perhaps want to offer their customers a free WiFi hotspot can benefit from the cost savings of shared bandwidth services. So, too, independent professionals in small or home offices who choke at the prices of dedicated lines.

Enterprise Needs
Medium and larger size organizations generally go for dedicated line services. This is especially true if varying network performance affects productivity or if you use enterprise VoIP phone service, HD video conferencing, remote data center connections or cloud hosted services. In fact, for the highest performance, dedicated point to point lines and MPLS networks can ensure bandwidth, latency, jitter, packet loss and quality of service beyond what the Internet can offer.

How to Decide
How do you choose the right bandwidth option for your operation? Consider your requirements and compare a range of competitive services for cost and performance. It’s easy to do that with an automated online bandwidth finder, but be sure to get recommendations from a expert consultant also.

Ethernet vs T1 in Under 3 Minutes

By: John Shepler

Have you been hearing a lot of buzz about Ethernet bandwidth services and wonder what all the fuss is about? Is Ethernet really a better deal than the T1 lines you’ve used for years? What about making the move off copper an on to fiber? How do the economics work? Let’s take a look at this short explainer on Ethernet vs T1 service…


Are you sufficiently intrigued to learn more about which connectivity and hosted services make the most sense for your business situation? Get prices and availability now for Ethernet, T1 and other connectivity options.

Business DSL Alternatives

Business DSL has been popular with small businesses because of its ready availability and low monthly cost. It works just great for some businesses and not so good for others. Some are out of luck completely. The service is just not available to them. Here’s a bit of explanation and some alternative ideas for companies that either can’t get business DSL or don’t like the way it works.

Business DSL is similar to residential DSL. It comes in on ordinary twisted pair telephone wiring. Usually this is just a single pair like a phone line. In fact, it is a phone line. This means that DSL is delivered by your telephone company. They own the copper and are the only ones who can connect to it. Often, though, they will lease out copper pairs to competitive carriers that also offer business DSL service.

One thing that often distinguishes business DSL from residential service is that the home variety is priced at bargain basement prices because it uses the same wires as your landline telephone. Filters are installed so that the low frequency voice signal and the higher frequency digital signal don’t interfere. Business DSL lines are often used only for the digital connection. The telephones have their own separate network.

Some things that business owners don’t like about DSL are the shared rather than dedicated bandwidth, relatively low speeds, outages that don’t get quick repairs and asymmetric bandwidth (for the ADSL variety).

If you’ve been disappointed with what you can get in DSL performance or can’t get DSL at all, consider these alternatives.

For about the same or a little more money, you can get either 3G wireless broadband or Cable broadband. Cable is like DSL on steroids. The much higher bandwidth can make up for shared and asymmetric bandwidth. Like DSL, Cable is distance limited and only available if the cable happens to pass near your business location. Forget DSL or Cable if you happen to be located in the countryside.

Wireless is now an option for businesses in rural and metropolitan areas. WISPs or Wireless Internet Service Providers offer what amounts a giant WiFi hotspot. In order to get a far enough reach, special antennas are needed at each business location. Another flavor of wireless service is fixed microwave wireless. This is business grade service only available mostly in downtown business districts. The provider installs a small antenna on the roof of your building and an Ethernet jack in your office. Bandwidths range from 1 to 45 Mbps for standard service and 50 to 100 Mbps for high speed options. You typically need a line of sight path within 6 miles of the provider’s tower.

There is a type of wireless service that is nationally available and usually doesn’t require outside antennas. This is 3G cellular using the same towers and signals as smartphone cellular. These towers offer strong signals for most businesses, especially if high performance indoor antennas and modems are employed. The 3G service is similar to many DSL service speeds. Now 4G is becoming available, with bandwidth similar to Cable.

One more wireless service that you can get even if there is no cellular service is satellite. All you need is a dish on the roof with a clear view of the southern sky. Prices and bandwidth are competitive with DSL, Cable and 3G. It’s good for many applications, but not VoIP or video conferencing. The latency or time delay is just too long going to and from the satellite.

Consider T1 and Ethernet over Copper if you want high reliability professional wireline connections with low latency. T1 is the classic telecom service. What’s changed is that it is now available nearly everywhere you can get landline phone service and prices are a fraction of what they were a few years ago. Bandwidth is competitive with many DSL services and this is symmetrical dedicated bandwidth. It also comes with a service level agreement that ensures your line will get the highest priority if a rare outage occurs.

Ethernet over Copper (EoC) has emerged recently as a competitor for T1. It is also dedicated rather than shared bandwidth, symmetrical with equal upload and download speeds, and service level agreements. EoC offers higher bandwidths that T1 that often rival the best you can get from Cable. Like T1, prices may be double what you pay for Cable or DSL, but the bandwidth is rock solid and highly reliable.

Are you dissatisfied with your current bandwidth options or simply want to see if you can get a better deal? If so, get complementary competitive business bandwidth options and prices to know the opportunities available for your business location.

VoIP Compatible High Speed Internet

Voice over IP (VoIP) technology is attracting more and more business users all the time. There are big advantages over traditional Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) in features and cost savings. The big issue is what to do with the outside phone lines.

Why is this even a question? It’s because the century old public telephone system has been based on analog transmissions over twisted pair copper wiring. Many smaller companies still have multiple analog business lines connected directly to their phones or to Key Telephone systems or in-house PBX systems. Others who are big enough to need at least a half-dozen outside lines have moved to digital transmission via ISDN PRI, also called T1 PRI.

So, if PRI is digital then what’s the issue with VoIP?

Well, there’s digital and there’s digital. PRI telephone trunks are actually digital replications of the old analog lines. Each PRI consists of 23 channels that each carry one digitized phone conversation. One other channel is used for switching and data, like Caller ID. Those 23 PRI “B” channels are strung together end to end for transmission. Each channel is 8 bits wide and sampled 8,000 times a second. At the far end, the channels are separated and converted back to analog phone signals.

Note that nowhere here is any mention of packets. You know that computer networks all communicate using standardized packets of information. Each packet has both address and data bits. This allows switches and routers to get them from wherever they originate to wherever they are intended.

TDM (Time Division Multiplexed) lines, such as PRI, use channels instead of packets. The switching function is provided by the central office switch. When a phone call is in process, there is a direct electrical connection between the two callers. That connection is set up at the beginning of the call and torn down when the call is over.

If you are thinking that PRI service isn’t really compatible with VoIP, you’d be partially right. It’s really a conversion process between your office phone system that might be VoIP and the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) that is still analog and TDM based. What VoIP really needs is a telephone line that is compatible with packet switched technology.

The first obvious option is to use the Internet to connect you with your VoIP phone service provider. After all, the Internet is readily available, relatively inexpensive to access, and packet based. Remember that Internet Protocol (IP) is the basis of VoIP.

What gets missed is that there is a big difference in the technology that includes Internet Protocol and the actual performance of the public Internet itself. One issue is that the Internet is open to anyone to do pretty much anything they want on it. There is no traffic manager ensuring that each user gets adequate resources for their particular application. There is a pool of resources and it’s first packet come, first served. Your voice packets may be competing with users backing up their files to the cloud, accessing ecommerce websites or downloading HD videos. If there is enough low latency bandwidth for everyone, then no problem. If the pipes get clogged up like rush hour on the Interstate, then you get what you get.

That can be a big problem for sensitive packet streams such as VoIP calls. Network congestion can cause dropped packets that distort the voice, delay some packets so they arrive out of sequence and are discarded, or impose a noticeable delay that makes two-way conversations difficult.

You can improve your chances of getting decent VoIP voice quality by using dedicated instead of shared bandwidth for your connection. That means Ethernet over Copper or T1 lines instead of cable broadband or DSL. You can also impose QoS (Quality of Service) through your own router so that at least your VoIP conversations aren’t competing with computer file transfers in your own office.

A better idea, although a bit pricier, is to use a dedicated private line called a SIP trunk between your network and your service provider. QoS is maintained by the service provider from end to end. As long as you have enough bandwidth to support all the calls you want to make, everything should work beautifully all the time. SIP trunks can be set up to provide you with both telephone service and broadband Internet access. This is done by dividing up the trunk so that phone calls and Internet are kept completely separate.

Are you considering a change to your business phone system because you are dissatisfied with how it works or are looking to add features or reduce costs? Investigate enterprise VoIP and hosted PBX solutions with SIP Trunks as a better approach for your company.

Ethernet Over Copper Companies Expand Services

Ethernet over Copper (EoC) has been the David to the T1 Goliath. That’s changing fast. While T1 lines won’t be knocked out anytime soon, the expansion of EoC by Ethernet over Copper companies is bringing more options to more service areas every day.

An example is the aggressive buildout by Integra Telecom into 120 telephone company central offices (COs) serving more than 400,000 businesses. Why colocate in telco offices instead of just building your own points of presence?

The answer has to do with the copper. Copper is gold in the telecom world. He who has the gold, and to some extent makes the rules, is by law the Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (ILECs), also known as the local telephone companies. All that twisted pair copper in the ground and flying overhead was put there by the ILECs for their own use. Under deregulation, they lease it out to competing carriers, like Integra, who install their own equipment to access that copper within the ILEC COs.

It’s only the last mile that Integra and other carriers lease. The rest of the signal path is through their own proprietary networks. By using that last mile of twisted pair copper wires, EoC providers can provision anywhere from 2 to 45 Mbps of Carrier Ethernet bandwidth and services. That’s faster than even bonded T1 lines can go and competes with low end fiber optic services. That makes connectivity available in the two-thirds of business buildings that aren’t yet lit for fiber.

So, what can you expect from Ethernet over Copper? First of all, it’s Ethernet. This is the same protocol that runs on your network. When adapted to run on telecom services, it’s called Carrier Ethernet. This makes the interface to your network as simple as plugging into a standard RJ-45 Ethernet connector installed by the carrier.

Even more important, your traffic stays on Ethernet as it traverses the path between company locations. The Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF), an industry standards group, has created several Carrier Ethernet services that support business connections. The first is Ethernet Private Line (EPL). This is similar to the point to point T1 service you may have now. It connects two locations with a Ethernet Virtual Circuit (EVC) for the exclusive use of your traffic.

One difference is that you have a wider range of bandwidth choices available. The other very noticeable difference is that Ethernet services tends to be considerably more cost effective than T1. You can typically get 3 Mbps EoC for the same price as 1.5 Mbps T1. As you increase bandwidth, the cost savings get even more attractive.

A related service is Ethernet Virtual Private Line (EVPL). This is a point to multipoint connection. You could use EVPL to establish a star network with your headquarters location in the center, connecting many other business locations.

Another service gaining popularity is E-LAN or Ethernet LAN service. This is an Ethernet based cloud networking service that connects multiple locations in a meshed arrangement. Because it is Ethernet, you can use it as a bridged network connection to join the LANs at all of your diverse business locations so that they operate as one very large company network.

Ethernet over Copper offers you an expanded range of services than what you have now with an expanded bandwidth selection that is easily scalable and less costly than traditional telecom services. The one question is whether you can get EoC yet? With the rapid deployment by many carriers, the answer is probably YES. Want to find out? Get availability and pricing for Ethernet over Copper services suitable for your business locations.

Why T1 Is Available Where Other Line Services Aren’t

If your businesses is located off the beaten path, you may have experienced the frustration of not being able to get the same network services offered to companies downtown. You might even have come to the conclusion that there’s really nothing available to you. Oh, but there one highly reliable and reasonably priced digital telecom service that you can get almost anywhere. What is it? It’s T1.

There are a couple of misconceptions about T1 that go back to when this was something of an exclusive service. They are that T1 lines are very expensive and only available in certain areas. Neither of those is true any longer. T1 lines are available for most every business location. T1 lines are also quite reasonably priced for businesses, although not competitive with or available as residential services.

The fact that you can get T1 and not some of the “bargain” services like DSL and Cable broadband may actually be to your advantage. Those lower cost services have lower prices not because of any special technology, but because they are shared rather than dedicated bandwidth and because they are offered as “information services” with no particular guarantees of availability. Your bandwidth can vary all over the place and if the line goes down, it will get fixed when it gets fixed. T1 lines come with a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that guarantees such things as bandwidth, jitter, latency and mean time to repair.

Why would anyone buy a low budget information service instead of a professional grade telecom service? In some cases, it’s because the person placing the order isn’t all that familiar with the differences between bandwidth services and goes for the lowest price option available. In other cases, it’s because the service is being used to power a free WiFi hotspot as a service to visiting customers or for casual Internet activities that aren’t all that critical to the daily operation of the business.

T1 is so universally available because it is a highly mature technology, originally developed by the phone companies to transport two dozen phone calls at a time between switching offices. As such, it was designed to use two pair of twisted copper wires as part of a multi-pair bundle installed into nearly every business. Some of the wires in the bundle are used for phone service essential to any business. Others can be used to provide T1 line service.

T1 was also engineered with optional regenerator boxes that could be installed every mile or so to clean up and boost the signal to extend its range. This way, T1 lines can be run far out into the countryside with the same performance as those in town. That’s not so for DSL and Cable, which are pretty much constrained within the city limits and not much further.

T1 is a highly versatile line service. You can use it for dedicated Internet access, multiple telephone line trunks or as a point to point dedicated private line. It’s possible to get T1 private lines that span the nation. In this case, the are multiplexed onto long haul fiber optic circuits for most of that distance and only delivered as copper at both ends of the run.

T1 lines give you 1.5 Mbps of rock-solid exclusive bandwidth in both the upload and download directions. You don’t have to contend with any other users when you want access to the line. Prices start at under $300 a month in many locations nationwide. In lesser populated areas, the prices will be higher due to the extra effort install all the needed equipment, including regenerators, to your location.

What if 1.5 Mbps isn’t enough? You have to option to bond multiple T1 lines together to get a single larger bandwidth service. If you double bond, that is use 2 T1 lines, your bandwidth will be 3 Mbps. The number of lines you can bond together varies with location, but 10 to 12 Mbps is a practical limit in most locations. That’s plenty for most business needs.

Now that you know that T1 lines are very likely available to you at reasonable cost, how about getting T1 line service pricing and options for your business location? It sure beats having to move just because you didn’t think you could get connected.

Who Still Needs a T1?

With all the hoopla over copper and fiber Ethernet, plus new options in Cable broadband, that stalwart of business connectivity, the T1 line, is getting little fanfare these days. Does that mean that T1 is on its last legs? Or, is there a future for this proven telecom service?

Far from fading out, T1 is as popular as ever. New installations are being provisioned as you read this. The fact that T1 has been around for decades is one of its strongest features. That and the decline of T1 prices in tandem with competing Ethernet over Copper services are keeping T1 in the game.

So, who really needs T1? You do if you need professional grade dedicated bandwidth, secure point to point connections, or robust telephone trunking. That’s especially true if your business location is a bit off the beaten track. If you can’t get any wireline service other than plain old telephone, you probably can get a T1 line installed.

T1 has almost universal connectivity today. To understand how that can be when DSL and Cable rarely go past the city limits and Ethernet services are mostly found in business districts, we have to look back at why T1 was developed in the first place. We think of T1 lines as wide area network connections today, but in the beginning T1 was a telephone trunking system.

Prior to WWII, telephone companies connected to each other through analog lines on telephone poles or underground cables. Carrier telephony used a frequency division multiplexing scheme to load multiple conversations onto a single pair. In the 1950’s, Bell Labs developed digital multiplexing to replace the analog systems. The basic digital trunk was defined in the T-Carrier specifications. T-Carrier includes T1 and T3 lines.

The genius behind the design of T1 is that it runs on two pair of ordinary twisted pair copper. This is the subscriber loop connection that is installed in every business for telephone service. The wires are the same, but the signals on a T1 line are digital, not analog. While one copper pair can carry one business phone line, two copper pair can carry 24 phone lines or a digital bandwidth connection of 1.5 Mbps.

Another smart thing about the design of T1 is that provisions were made to boost the signal so that it can connect far flung locations. Not every business location is within a few thousand feet of a telco central office. Even analog signals fade out with distance. The much higher digital signal frequencies fade out much quicker. That’s why DSL is hard to come by. Unless you are close to the phone company CO, the DSL signal has little bandwidth capability left by the time it gets to your place.

The T1 support system was designed with a device called a regenerative repeater that can be installed in the line every mile or so to complete regenerate the signal. The noisy and faded input signal is boosted and reshaped so that at the output it looks like what comes out of the central office. Keep adding these repeaters and you can extend T1 service far out into the countryside.

If you have a business on the edge of town or in a remote location, you may still be able to get a T1 line for a reasonable price. The only real competition is two way satellite broadband. It works, but has very long latency times that make telephone service perform poorly, is subject to rain and snow outages, and has download limitations. If you exceed your quota, your speed will be reduced so that you don’t hog the limited resources of the satellite.

T1 has none of those problems. You get a rock solid 1.5 Mbps in both the upload and download direction. Load it full up with data transfers 24/7 or use what you need, the price is the same. Latency is negligible for most applications. In fact, T1 works great as a multi-telephone service or in the ISDN PRI configuration that supports most PBX telephone systems. You don’t have to get an Internet only data connections. T1 lines can be ordered between two business locations for a private line connection.

Is T1 the right service for your needs? Check T1 prices and availability instantly and compare with other options... if there are any that are suitable.

Dedicated Bandwidth vs Cable

There are a couple of good but quite different approaches to business Internet connectivity. One is dedicated bandwidth, as exemplified by T1 lines and Ethernet over Copper. The other is Cable broadband. Let’s take a look at what each has to offer and how you would pick the right service for your business.

Small and medium size businesses that pick dedicated bandwidth services do so either because there is no shared bandwidth service readily available or because they value the consistency and service level agreements provided by the dedicated telecom providers. Companies that choose Cable broadband do so because they get a lot of bandwidth for a relatively small price. Cable BB is an established service that has been proven in years of service to residential and business users. The service availability is generally quite good, especially during business hours, and the low prices may be more important than service guarantees.

It’s important to note the definition of the term “dedicated” in this context. It doesn’t mean working extra hard like, say, a dedicated employee. What dedicated means is that a certain amount of bandwidth is reserved or dedicated to your exclusive use. If you order a T1 line, you can count on having 1.5 Mbps upload and 1.5 Mbps download capability available at all times. There is no such thing as overage charges or fair use policies. You can load that T1 line up to the limit and run it that way all month. You’ll be charged the same as if you lightly used the service during business hours and let it idle overnight.

Cable broadband is sold on a different basis. First of all, the bandwidth is shared not dedicated. You’ll notice that Cable bandwidth is specified as “up to” 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and so on. At any given moment you may experience the full bandwidth or a small fraction of it. Why? It’s the sharing involved. What Cable companies do is lease large dedicated bandwidth circuits and then divvy that bandwidth up among their subscribers. The chunk allocated to your area may be shared by dozens or hundreds of other users. Whether or not that makes a difference depends on what you are doing on the Internet and what others on the same service are doing.

Cable broadband is designed to match the expected activities of the typical Internet user. You know that when you are looking something up online, you first query a search engine. Then you read through the first page or two of listings deciding on what site to visit. Finally, you select a site and it downloads in your browser. You may quickly go to visit another page on that site or you may spend a minute or two reading what’s on the screen.

Notice that what you were doing was sending out commands from your keyboard, waiting for a page download and then not accessing the Internet at all while you perused the material. That’s why shared bandwidth works. Not everyone is going to be typing on their keyboard or in the midst of a file download simultaneously. While you are reading, someone else can be downloading and vice versa.

This is also the reason why asymmetrical bandwidth works so well for Internet access. Asymmetrical means that upload and download speeds are vastly different. You may order 30 Mbps download with 3 Mbps or 6 Mbps upload and be perfectly satisfied. It only takes a small amount of data from the keyboard to trigger much larger data packages in the form of websites or videos to download.

Dedicated bandwidth services like T1, DS3, EoC, EoF and SONET fiber optic tend to be symmetrical. The upload and download speeds are the same. This is particularly valuable if you are communicating between organizations, sending files back and forth, uploading to a remote server or backing up files. In these cases, upload capacity counts.

The other service that works much better over dedicated rather than shared bandwidth is VoIP telephony. In fact, you are much better off connecting directly to your VoIP service provider with a dedicated T1 line or SIP trunk than using the Internet at all. The Internet offers no class of service controls so your sensitive voice packets can easily get pushed around by someone else’s data packets. That situation is even worse on shared bandwidth access services where your bandwidth varies all over the place.

Is your business in need of Internet access, point to point connections or multi-location connectivity? Check prices on dedicated and shared bandwidth options and get complementary expert advice on what services make the most sense for your business requirements.

Multi-Carrier WAN MPLS Solution

Businesses that want to link their many far-flung locations have had several options available. They could set up their own private point to point lines, go with a Frame Relay network or sign up for MPLS network service. Which of these offers the best cost solution? Let’s have a look.

When companies and small and growing, the temptation is to grow the network along with the company. If there are only two locations, the logical move is to order a point to point T1 line or higher bandwidth service. This directly connects the new locations with dedicated private bandwidth. When another location is set up, add another private line back to headquarters. If you want the two remote locations to talk directly, you can add a third private line between them.

You can see how costs grow rather quickly when you try to create a mesh network using dedicated private lines. Pretty soon you have a rats nest of connections and a soaring telecom bill. What happens then is someone in IT decides that it makes more sense to have only one private line to each location and arrange them in a star network with headquarters at the center. The headquarters router will take care of directing traffic among all locations. This is better, but you are still paying more than necessary.

That conundrum is what led to the development of Frame Relay networks. The idea is that a shared WAN network is more cost effective than every company creating its own private WAN. The Frame Relay network is one of the original clouds. You simply connected to the network from each of your locations and long haul traffic was routed through the cloud. If a cloud is running correctly, you have no sense that there is other traffic on the network while you are using it.

MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching takes the concept of Frame Relay and improves upon it. Frame Relay networks reached the height of their popularity in an era where bandwidth demands were generally lower and most traffic was data packets. MPLS is designed around fiber optic core networks with a regional or nationwide footprint. There are class of service tags included in the labels that encapsulate the user packets. These ensure that time sensitive applications like VoIP telephony or video conferencing get the special treatment they need to work successfully. As the name implies, MPLS can transport any protocol. Multiple customers can transport different protocols simultaneously and they won’t interfere.

Since MPLS networks can handle any protocol, have enormous bandwidth at their disposal and have inherent security because of the proprietary nature of the network technology, doesn’t it make perfect sense to connect to an MPLS network to link business locations?

Yes it does. Your best cost solution for a given performance level across more than two locations is likely to be an MPLS network solution. The one fly in the ointment is that any given MPLS network doesn’t necessarily go everywhere you want it to. You may be able to connect some of your locations to the network but not others. There are some massive MPLS networks that can connect nearly everywhere, but they can also command top dollar. Is there a better solution?

The approach that can give you the connectivity you need with at the best pricing is a multi-carrier or meshed MPLS network. It’s a network of networks. In other words, several MPLS networks are joined to cover all of your business locations at the best price point for each.

Where do you find this type of service? Obviously, contacting any particular carrier will only get you access to their MPLS network. If you want to interconnect them, you have the tricky issue of network to network interfacing. That’s a job better left to telecom network specialists. One company, AireSpring, has the expertise to make this happen and the carrier relationships to gain access.

Does your company need to interconnect multiple business locations? Telecom broker Telarus has access to the best rates on MPLS networks, including Meshed MPLS from AireSpring. Get availability and pricing for MPLS solutions. You are probably spending too much right now.

Advantage of Dedicated Cloud Connections

The capital investment and staff cost savings offered by cloud services are encouraging small, medium and large companies alike to move their telephone and IT resources to the cloud. It’s been assumed that a simple broadband Internet connection will suffice for access. That’s turning out to be a disappointment in some cases.

The notion that bandwidth is bandwidth is how we get in trouble specifying metro and wide area network connections. What makes the Internet attractive as a WAN service is that it is almost universally available and the cost is spread over millions, even billions of users. Savvy companies discovered long ago that you could get around the security issues by encrypting your data to create a VPN or Virtual Private Network. The VPN gives you a private tunnel through a public network.

VPNs work great to support remote workers and traveling employees who’s only way to connect with corporate headquarters is through a wired or wireless Internet service. They’re also good for linking multiple business locations, such as branch offices or franchises. With a VPN you can transfer sensitive financial and inventory files among dozens, hundreds or thousands of locations.

Note that we are talking about file transfers. The TCP/IP network protocol was made for this application. All you do is launch the transfer and TCP will ensure that all the packets that make up the file will get from point A to point B intact. If something goes awry and a packet is corrupted, it is automatically resent.

Remember that the Internet was designed for universal access and to be self-healing in the face of equipment failure or line breaks. While TCP/IP is making sure that files are being accurately transfered, the Internet itself is making sure that there is a path available from point A to point B no matter what. While you can expect to transfer data, voice or video files over the Internet, you can’t really expect that this is going to happen without hiccups or in any minimal amount of time. Packets may or may not be lost and require a resend. The path may change from packet to packet. The latency or time delay from source to destination can vary all over the place, or jitter.

The result of this is that real time performance of Internet connections is highly variable. This is no big deal for data file transfers. The time to transfer may vary by milliseconds or seconds for each file. Time sensitive data streams like audio and video need some extra help in the form of buffering. You compensate for unknowable transmission rate variations by filling up a buffer with packets and then clocking them out at a constant rate.

Buffering works great for one-way downloads, but creates havoc for real-time video or audio streams. That includes telephone calls and video conferencing. You can’t have much of a buffer or the latency increases to the point where you can’t talk and listen at the same time. There is a noticeable delay, fractions of a second or longer, that make two-way communication painful at best. Lost packets from iffy Internet connections add distortion that blurs your video and garbles your audio.

The same Internet that seems fast and responsive when searching for information on Google can be maddening when trying to calm down an angry customer on a VoIP phone call that is breaking up. Automated business processes that worked fine over the LAN when the data center was in-house all of a sudden become sluggish in the cloud. It’s not that the cloud isn’t just as good or better than local resources, it’s that you need a better connection.

What you want is a dedicated connection between you and your cloud provider. Level 3 Communications is now offering dedicated connections to Amazon Web Services (AWS) running in Equinix data centers to meet the demand from larger corporations. Dedicated connections include Ethernet Private Line, Ethernet MPLS and Wavelength services. T1 lines are also suitable for smaller companies, although Ethernet over Copper may be a lower cost option and offer more bandwidth for the money.

A dedicated connection ensures that you have steady guaranteed bandwidth plus low latency, jitter and packet loss. Security is also improved because access is limited, not publicly available. A well engineered dedicated connection is just like a very long LAN that includes your locations and your service provider.

Are you disappointed with the performance of your cloud services or concerned that quality will suffer if you move from a local data center to the cloud? All you may need to get things working to your satisfaction is a high quality dedicated cloud connection. Why put up with all that aggravation when dedicated connection prices are lower than they’ve ever been? Check prices and availability of dedicated cloud connection bandwidth you need to support your critical applications.

Cable, T1 and EoC

Today, there are three excellent broadband options for the small to medium size business. They cost roughly the same, but offer different options. Which do you choose? Let’s take a closer look at business-class Cable, T1 lines and Ethernet over Copper.

We’ll start with T1 lines because they are the mainstay of SMB connectivity. T1 lines come in several flavors depending on what you want to do with them. They’re all based on the same technology developed by the telephone industry half a century ago.

T1 is a T-carrier technology based on transmitting digital signals over ordinary twisted pair copper wiring. It takes two copper pair to make one T1 line. One pair is used for upload, the other for download. When used for telephony, one pair is talk and the other is listen. The speed of the digital signal on the line is 1.5 Mbps. This doesn’t vary. The equipment at each end of the line is synchronized to maintain a steady bit rate regardless of whether anything is being transmitted or not.

Originally, the purpose of this arrangement was to transmit telephone calls in channels called DS0s. There are 24 channels on a T1 line. You can use them separately or combine all the channels to make one large broadband pipe. The most common T1 telephone line now is called a T1 PRI or ISDN PRI. It has 23 separate phone lines plus one channel for signaling and Caller ID.

A broadband T1 line delivers a fully symmetrical bandwidth of 1.5 Mbps. The upload and download speeds are the same. This line can connect directly between two business locations as a private line or it can be used to connect to the Internet or another network, such as a MPLS cloud network. When used as an Internet connection, the arrangement is called a dedicated T1 Internet connection. Dedicated means that the full bandwidth is always available for your use only.

The most direct competitor to T1 is now Ethernet over Copper or EoC. Ethernet over Copper uses the same twisted pair telephone wiring that T1 lines use. The main difference is that the equipment on each end uses a more advanced technology to transport higher bandwidth through each copper pair. Often multiple pair in the same binder cable are used to bring in a higher bandwidth EoC service.

Ethernet over Copper is available is bandwidths from 1 Mbps on up to typically 20 Mbps. In some areas, it is now possible to get speeds as high as 90 or 100 Mbps delivered over copper pair. Those are bandwidth levels that have demanded fiber optic connections until recently. EoC is also designed to be highly scalable. You order and EoC port at the speed you ultimately expect to need but only sign up for the speed you need now. In the future, you can have that speed raised by simply calling your service provider and the change will be made in days or even hours.

A comparable service priced the same as a T1 line is 2x2 Mbps Ethernet or 3x3 Mbps Ethernet. Those designations mean that you get the same speed for upload and download, just like with a T1 line. Note that the bandwidth is as much as twice as high, however.

The third option is business class Cable broadband. This service is offered by Cable TV companies, such as Comcast, that also provide consumer broadband. The coaxial cables used for Cable TV have tremendous bandwidth capacity and can easily transport broadband as well as television signals. You connect via a Cable modem. The latest Cable modem standard is DOCSIS 3.0 that can deliver 50 or 100 Mbps to business users.

It may seem amazing that you can get 50 or 100 Mbps for the same price as a 1.5 Mbps T1 line, but there are some differences in the services. Cable bandwidth is shared, not dedicated. You’ll find that your bandwidth varies during the day depending on how heavily other users are uploading and downloading. Also, Cable bandwidth is not symmetrical. You may be getting 100 Mbps in the download direction, but your upload path will be only 10 or 15 Mbps. That may not matter if you are primarily accessing Web pages or watching video clips. It could be a problem if you expect to be transmitting video service or uploading very large files frequently.

Cable does have one extra advantage in that you can get what’s called a “triple play” service. That’s broadband, telephone and television all on the same cable for one bundled price. This is especially attractive to businesses that have waiting rooms for the public, like doctor’s offices or auto service facilities. There are special bundle prices for public businesses like bars and restaurants.

Which bandwidth solution is best for your business? Why not get prices and availability for Cable broadband, T1 lines and Ethernet over Copper for your business location? Then pick the solution that makes the most sense for your applications.



Note: Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Broadband Business Internet Service Options

Nearly every business today is connected to the Internet or soon will be. Even those mom and pop operations that still use the mechanical credit card machines will soon use electronic card verification, email and at least a brochure website. Businesses that are already seasoned users of the Web are looking to upgrade their bandwidth to support a move to cloud services. Let’s compare and contrast the various options you have for a broadband Internet connection.

Business Internet broadband services generally fall into two categories. They are shared and dedicated connections. Shared connections are similar in design to residential broadband services. The fact that the bandwidth is divvied up among many users lowers the cost for all. Dedicated services allocate a certain bandwidth to your connection and it does not vary regardless of what other users are doing. These services also tend to come with SLAs or Service Level Agreements that spell out technical parameters and availability commitments.

Shared bandwidth services include Cable Broadband, DSL, 3G and 4G Wireless, and two-way Satellite Internet. What they all have in common is that the actual bandwidth you’ll see varies with the number of other users and what they are doing. These services are sold as speeds “up to” a certain number of Mbps. That means what it says. You may get the full speed the connection is capable of or you may get a tenth of that at any given time.

These variations may or may not bother you. If you are running enterprise VoIP or bandwidth sensitive business processes, your variable connection may not support the performance you have in mind. On the other hand, if you use the Internet at work the same way you use it at home for email, Web browsing, or accessing pre-recorded audio and video, you may be quite satisfied with the service and delighted with the cost savings. Some services, like 3G wireless and Satellite are often used to support electronic credit card machines in lieu of using a phone line.

Dedicated Internet access connections, such as T1 lines and Ethernet over Copper, have rock solid bandwidth and generally excellent latency, jitter and packet loss characteristics. These are the same lines that you would use to interconnect business connections on a private line service. As Internet connections, they have one termination at your location and the other at your Internet service providers location.

Dedicated Internet access supports Web and email servers. The also support multiple users accessing the Internet and VPNs (Virtual Private Networks). If you are going to stream content to Internet users, you’ll want a DIA (Dedicated Internet Access) connection from the server to the Internet.

Ethernet over Copper (EoC) has become very popular as both a private line and DIA connection. You can often get twice the bandwidth you could with a T1 line costing the same price. Like T1, EoC is provisioned over twisted pair copper telco wiring to keep construction costs down.

Larger companies and those with demanding applications such as video transport move up to fiber optic services, such as OC3 to OC768 SONET and Ethernet over Fiber (EoF) 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, 1 Gbps GigE and 10 Gbps 10GigE bandwidth services. All of these are dedicated services with service level agreements.

How do you decide which broadband service is right for your business? Perhaps the best way is to compare prices, availability and features for the range of Broadband Business Internet Service options available for your location. Most business grade broadband services are available only for business locations and not residences, despite similarities with consumer Internet services.

Ethernet Over Copper Vs T1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Point to Point Lines Connect Dealerships

Car dealerships, real estate companies, medical centers, radio stations and fine restaurants all have something in common. They're often big enough and successful enough to have more than one physical location. What they need is a way to tie two or more locations together as if they are one company. That's what point to point lines and MPLS networks do.

A common scenario is the successful car dealership that has an opportunity to buy out another dealership with similar or competing vehicles. Common ownership has strategic advantages, but consolidation of common functions offers an opportunity for cost savings. Back office operations such as accounting, marketing, IT, and so on are ripe for centralizing and right sizing to a level that can efficiently serve all locations. But this only works if each location can be served as well or better than with an on-site staff.

With so many functions now electronically data driven, there is real opportunity to standardize on computer based systems for everything from sales to accounting to inventory management to maintenance records to Web sites to telecommunications. You can set up similar networks and workstations at each location. But how to you tie everything together?

Chances are that you already use T1 lines for PBX telephone service and/or dedicated Internet access now. There is another type of T1 line, called a point to point T1 line, that is perfect for connecting two locations. As you may have guessed, the point to point T1 line is a direct connection from one location to another. Usually, these locations are in the same town or geographical area. But they don't have to be. You can have one point in New York and another in Los Angeles and it works the same way.

What's important about point to point T1 lines is that they are a dedicated service. In other words, you have exclusive and private use of the connection. It's as if there is a wire stretched between your locations, and in a way there is. Because there is no bandwidth sharing, point to point links are inherently more secure than just connecting two places over the Internet. For really sensitive data, such as your customer or business records, you can choose to encrypt the data during its transit from point to point.

Point to point T1 lines can be used for more than just data exchange. Radio stations use these as program lines between their studio and transmitter. They can also be used to transfer programs and commercials between stations with common ownership.

Can point to point lines be used to connect more than one location? Sure. You can connect a P2P (Point to Point) T1 line from every location to every other location. As you get more locations, this can get rather expensive. You are probably better served to organize your WAN (Wide Area Network) in a hub and spoke arrangement with headquarters acting as the hub to provide connectivity to all the branch offices or other locations.

For mesh connectivity to many locations, another popular service is MPLS or Multi Protocol Label Switching. This is a private shared network that guarantees bandwidth and connectivity. You typically use a T1 line at each location to provide access to the network. The MPLS provider then sets up paths that define which locations can talk to which other locations. There are other users on the network also, but you will not be impacted by them the way you can be on the Internet.

Is Point to Point T1 or MPLS service right for your operation? The best way to find out is to compare service options and prices and then select the connection scheme that gives you the right connectivity, bandwidth, privacy and cost.

Why You Need Dedicated Bandwidth

You might think that broadband is broadband and one high speed connection to the Internet should be as good as another. But that's an illusion. Sadly, business users might not learn the truth without losing sales opportunities and valued clients.

The backbone structure of the Internet is pretty robust. Packet loss, latency, and bandwidth seldom pose a limitation for all the most time critical applications. The biggest difference among Internet access services is experienced in the last mile connection. That's the link between your router and the service provider.

Broadband connections can be divided into two major categories: shared and dedicated. Shared Internet connections include the popular DSL and Cable broadband connections. Dedicated connections are provided by T1, DS3, and Ethernet business services. Notice the term "business". Shared Internet services originated to make broadband affordable for residential and home office users. Medium to larger size businesses have always used dedicated connections for their voice and data circuits. But smaller businesses, including quick service restaurants, professional sales offices, and owner-operated shops may opt for shared connections being sold as business versions of consumer Internet services.

In the bigger picture, the entire Internet is a shared bandwidth resource. So what's the difference if your connection is shared or dedicated? The primary difference is something called "oversubscription." Oversubscription for Internet service providers is similar to overbooking for airlines. The idea is that not everyone is going to show up at the same time, even if they've paid for a ticket, or Internet service. Rather than allow those airline seats to go unfilled or that bandwidth capacity to go unused, service providers will deliberately sell more capacity than they have available. It's not really a problem until every customer really does want service at the same time.

Say your ISP (Internet Service Provider) has an OC3 backbone connection to the Internet. That a dedicated fiber optic link with 155 Mbps of capacity. Now they divvy that out to 100 customers. If they wanted to provided dedicated access, each customer would be limited to 1.5 Mbps. That way if all users were running at their maximum rate, the capacity of the OC3 connection still would not be exceeded. But chances are they'll offer each customer "up to" 10 Mbps. If only 15 customers are running their connections flat out downloading big files or video, there is still plenty of capacity for everyone. But what if all 100 want to download a video simultaneously? There's only 155 Mbps available, so each user get throttled at 1.55 Mbps.

This explains why your broadband connection seems to work faster some times and slower at others. The slow times tend to be when the most users are online and running high bandwidth applications. Even more dramatically, some ISPs might try to spread that OC3 backbone over 1,000 users, not 100. During periods of very high usage, your share of the bandwidth could be as low as 150 Kbps. Remember, the service provider is offering "up to" 10 Mbps, not any particular speed at any particular time.

As your connection speed decreases, download times increase and some applications may start to sputter. VoIP telephone calls and video feeds, including video conferencing, are particularly sensitive to bandwidth congestion. Shared bandwidth services are generally offered on a "best effort" basis, with no guarantee of performance, packet loss, latency or even availability.

With a dedicated connection, your bandwidth is set aside by the service provider and always available for your use. If you are streaming audio or video, this could be critical. Even larger grocery stores or retailers with dozens of credit card terminals need bandwidth always at the ready. In fact, any business that depends upon online access to make client presentations, manage inventory or enter orders needs a solid, dedicated Internet connection.

Dedicated Internet bandwidth and secure, private point to point connections cost less now than ever before. Don't settle for a limited service that only appears inexpensive, until you check prices on dedicated bandwidth for business locations.