Ethernet Everywhere? We’re Almost There!

By John Shepler

It’s been brewing for a long time, now. The prediction is that all of those networking standards will finally settle on just one. No more T1, DS3, OCx and whatever. It’s all going to be just Ethernet one day. How close are we to that day? Why, we’re almost there!

Network Standards Have Already Embraced Ethernet
Telcos are doing something once thought heresy. They’re abandoning their proprietary standards in favor of Ethernet services.

Why? Because that’s what the market wants. Once upon a time, there were all sorts of Local Area Network standards. Can you remember when Token Ring was the coming thing? How about AppleTalk?

Today, virtually all network equipment has one connector and it is for Ethernet. There are really only two flavors: copper and fiber. Virtually all office equipment is either 10/100 or Gigabit Ethernet over twisted pair copper. Networking equipment may have fiber connections for GigE, 10 GigE or 100 GigE.

This standardization has make connectivity extremely easy. The standardization on switched Ethernet versus the original collision domains makes networking a fairly easy plug-and-play.

The same thing has happened to networking software. The Internet standard, TCP/IP has become the THE standard, further enhancing the ease of setting up and running networks.

Getting LANs to Talk Telco
When you own the network, you get to decide how it works. There’s nobody to tell you otherwise when you come up with a design that’s based on off-the-shelf massed produced switches, routers and cabling. The big problem comes when you try to connect to the outside world.

The Internet may have been based on TCP/IP, but the wide area networks that carried it were not. Telephone company standards evolved from the world of voice only channels for telephone calls. What T1, T3 (DS3) and OCx did was simply bundle the smallest channels, 64 Kbps PCM coded telephone calls.

Digital being digital, the solution was to perform a protocol conversion at each end so that Ethernet LAN would be converted to, say, T1 for transmission over some distance and then back to Ethernet at the other end. That process still works great and many T1 lines remain in use because they are sometimes all that is available in rural areas.

What’s Going Bye-Bye?
The major telecom companies have been quietly converting their networks to Ethernet for years. In many cases, this can be simply running Ethernet over some underlying fiber protocol like SONET. Competitive carriers have built out their facilities using Ethernet in the network core and never going through the TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) evolution.

What’s going on now is that telcos are asking the FCC for permission to sunset some of their older services, especially those that run on copper and don’t have many customers anymore. The standard POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) is an endangered species. Fewer and fewer residential users have the traditional “home phone.” They either get their phone service bundled with TV and Internet or simply depend on cellular for voice communications.

Businesses are following suit. Smaller companies may get voice and data bundles from cable companies or incumbent telcos that are acting like cable companies. Larger companies are moving rapidly to enterprise VoIP and Unified Communications. These don’t need traditional telephone wiring inside or outside the facility. Everything runs on the network. Outside connectivity is by SIP trunking, dedicated private line, MPLS networks or Dedicated Internet Access.

Is Copper a Goner?
Copper is still going, but who knows for how long. The telcos want to rid their plants of those thick copper bundles, especially the individual POTS lines.

T1 lines are still popular, but the 1.5 Mbps bandwidth is becoming more and more of a limitation. A newer standard, Ethernet over Copper, is highly competitive and offers an order of magnitude or more higher bandwidth at lower cost per Mbps.

Even so, fiber optic connections are reaching more and more business buildings as well as cellular towers. 4G and 5G wireless needs bandwidth beyond what is practical with twisted pair copper. It’s likely that all twisted pair copper may be abandoned to corrode in the ground or pulled out of conduits and sold for scrap. That’s not today in most areas, but it’s not that far away.

So, Where Can I Get Ethernet?
You can order Ethernet over Copper or Ethernet over Fiber in most populous areas right now. In rural locations, Ethernet over DS1 uses a T1 line to deliver Ethernet.

Don’t forget that Cable broadband is delivered to you as an Ethernet connection and FTTP (Fiber to the Premises) is also Ethernet at typically 1 Gbps.

Satellite and wireless Internet services are also delivered as Ethernet. That includes 3G and 4G cellular services designed for business use.

If you’ve been living with a legacy Internet or telecom connection and wondering if there is something better to choose from, there probably is now. Find out with a quick check of Ethernet services in your area and complementary consultation to help you choose the best solution for your business.

Middle Mile Bandwidth Solutions

Most businesses are concerned with last mile network connections. That’s the access bandwidth that connects their local network to their service provider. But what does the service provider connect to?

If you are buying your voice and data services from a larger carrier, they may own an entire network that spans the nation or a large regional area. Smaller service providers have what is called a middle mile connection to a wholesale bandwidth supplier that connects them to the Internet or a major carrier’s telephone switching network.

If your business is running a small metropolitan or rural Internet service provider or an independent telephone company, you’ve probably got an interest in middle mile bandwidth solutions. In rural areas, especially, it’s often expensive and sometimes difficult to get the middle mile connectivity you need. Any competitive service offerings are a welcome sight, even if it is only to validate the cost and performance of your current leased services.

What types of middle mile technologies are there? Fiber optic service comes first to mind. Fiber optic cables crisscross the country and are present not far from most locations. The irony is that you may be standing right on top of a fiber conduit and not be able to get service.

Fiber bundles are much like the interstate highway system. They transport massive amounts of traffic, but access points are limited. To get on the network you need the equivalent of a highway on-ramp. That’s the service middle mile connections perform.

There are three middle mile connection technologies to consider. Fiber optics certainly provides the highest bandwidths. Each strand of glass fiber can transport packets at a data rate of at least 10 Gbps. By using wavelength division multiplexing, basically using multiple non-interfering colors of light beams, you might have 128 or even 256 different 10 Gbps data streams in each strand. A fiber bundle might have dozens, even hundreds of glass fiber strands in one ruggedized trunk cable. That’s a LOT of bandwidth capacity.

The problem with fiber optic connections is that there aren’t a lot of places to plug-in for service. Carriers have POPs or Points of Presence in major metropolitan areas. But between these termination points there are miles and sometimes hundreds of miles of installed fiber cable running point to point. Some carriers are pursuing government financing under the rural broadband improvement project to build-out more middle mile fiber lines in rural areas. This will make it easier for ISPs and telcos in sparsely populated areas to get high bandwidth connections at lower prices.

Another connection technology is wireless. Point to point microwave transmission is cheaper and quicker to install than fiber optic cabling. The newest technology is WiMAX, which can be used as a middle mile backhaul service as well as a public access wireless broadband transmission service. WiMAX has a range of up to 30 miles, making it a good solution to feed remotely located transmission towers.

A technology you might not think of for middle mile services is bundled T1 lines. A T1 line has a bandwidth of only 1.5 Mbps, making it more suitable as a last mile connection for business locations. But multiple T1 lines can be connected essentially in parallel to create larger bandwidths up to 10 or 12 Mbps. That may be all a cellular tower or WISP (Wireless Internet Service Provider) needs for middle mile connectivity. The advantage of T1 is that it runs on twisted pair copper and can be easily boosted or regenerated over long distances. That means that bundled T1 service can reach out into rural areas where other services aren’t available.

Newer modulation techniques let multiple copper pair also transport Ethernet in a technology known as EoC or Ethernet over Copper. EoC bandwidths are often similar to bundled T1 lines, but may be as high as 45 Mbps in metropolitan areas.

Are you in need of connectivity for your independent telephone company or Internet service? If so, see what middle mile bandwidth solutions are available for your location.