OC3 Bandwidth Costs Just A Fraction Of What It Did

If you are a use of high bandwidth fiber optic connections, you know that these line services don’t come cheap. Well, actually, they do come cheaper these days. But you have to know what to look for and where to look.

Take OC3 bandwidth, for instance. Optical Carrier level 3 is one of a family of fiber optic carrier services using the SONET (Synchronous Optic NETwork) protocol developed for the major telephone carriers and later offered to large business organizations. OC-3 is actually the lowest commonly available SONET service and runs a at a transmission speed of 155.52 Mbps. Of that, 148.608 Mbps is dedicated to payload, with 6.912 Mbps needed to support the overhead of transmission.

Time was, just a few years ago, that OC3 was considered an enormous amount of bandwidth. It was only ordered by major Internet service providers, colocation hosting facilities, television distribution companies and other large corporations. Medium size companies got by with DS3 at 45 Mbps, roughly 1/3 the capacity of OC3. Smaller companies had their needs met by T1 lines running 1.5 Mbps.

Today, OC3 bandwidth is no longer consider as the ultimate business telecom service. Leading edge companies have moved on to Gigabit bandwidth levels and even 10 Gbps is not out of the question. Two factors have been driving that change. One is expansion of the carrier market with many new competitive carriers running their own fiber optic networks. The other is the demand for higher bandwidths by such needs as cloud computing services, HDTV video, CAD/CAM design and manufacturing, scientific supercomputer simulations, and electronic medical records transmission.

While OC3 offers about 155 Mbps, the next level, OC12, offers 622 Mbps, OC48 steps that up to 2.5 Gbps and OC192 provides 10 Gbps performance. These are all SONET switched circuit TDM technologies. Their competitors are IP packet switched networks offering 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, 1000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet and 10,000 Mbps 10GigE.

With so much competition in the fiber optic arena, prices have come down dramatically over the last decade. In fact, if you haven’t checked competitive pricing in a few years, you may be shocked at how many options you have and at the low lease prices available. But... you may not find these low prices at all unless you check with a bandwidth broker who has access to dozens of competitive service providers. We work with Telarus, Inc., arguably the most innovative and fastest growing telecom services broker today. Their dedication to customer service and extensive automation tools make it easy for you to inquire as to services and pricing and get an answer quickly. Go ahead and simply state your business bandwidth needs now and see how glad you are that you invested the 30 seconds or so that it took to submit that online inquiry.

Ethernet VPLS Extends Your LAN Network

Typical methodologies for connecting multiple business locations have included Frame Relay, VSAT satellite terminals, Internet-based VPNs and proprietary wireline networks constructed from point to point T1 lines. Now there’s a new technology that has performance and cost advantages that make it extremely attractive for branch offices, retail franchise, medical clinics and other businesses that need connectivity among many locations. It’s called Ethernet VPLS and it’s available now.

What is Ethernet VPLS and why is it better? The VPLS acronym stands for Virtual Private LAN service. That sounds a lot like a local area network, but run by a carrier and spread over a city, state or the entire country. That’s exactly what it is. Ethernet VPLS combines the advantages of Ethernet connectivity with the geographic service footprint and security of a MPLS IP-VPN network. The result is a layer 2 WAN service that safely extends your corporate LAN wherever you want it to go.

XO Communications, one of the country’s leading competitive carriers, is offering an Ethernet VPLS service that can transport both your IP and non-IP traffic. XO has an extensive nationwide fiber optic network and is a provider of Ethernet connectivity using both copper and fiber optic options. That gives them a lot of flexibility in hooking your diverse sites together.

For instance, XO can connect each of your business locations with Ethernet over Copper with speeds from 3 to 20 Mbps, Ethernet over Fiber for speeds from 10 Mbps to 1 Gbps, and Broadband Wireless access in major metro areas with speeds from 10 Mbps to 1 Gbps. All of these access options are scalable, so you can start with the bandwidth you need today and easily expand, location by location, as business activity dictates.

The beauty of Ethernet VPLS is that you maintain control of your network just as if you owned the wiring that interconnects all of your bridged LANs. You can maintain separate networking domains as if they were on the same LAN regardless of how far they are separated.

This is a switched layer-2 network service that can be configured as point to point, point to multipoint, or multipoint to multipoint fully meshed for any to any connectivity. If you’ve put a lot of time and effort into converging your voice, video and data networks, your investment is protected by four robust classes of service. These include real time, critical, priority and standard CoS. Enterprise VoIP and video multicasting have the resources they need to deliver high quality performance.

The WAN capability is there to support anything you want to do on your network. But the cost per Mbps beats competing technologies hands down. That’s a winning combination that will likely see Ethernet VPLS become a dominant WAN networking service in the near future. Why not put it to work for you right now, before your competitors catch on? Get more information and customized Ethernet VPLS pricing quotes to support your locations and applications. It’s a complementary service, with results fast.

DS3 Internet Service Options

Medium size businesses and large corporations that have long exceeded the bandwidth available from T1 lines have migrated to DS3 Internet Service as the next logical step in telecom line services. Now there are more options than ever before for smaller businesses that have large bandwidth requirements and larger operations that need and want this level of service.

DS3, or Digital Signal level 3, is a longstanding telecommunications standard for digital transmission. It offers highly reliable 45 Mbps bandwidth for dedicated point to point, PBX telephone, or Internet connections. Smaller Internet Service Providers find DS3 service to be the right size and price to serve their customers. Other key applications are medical image transmission, video transport, and call center operations.

When DS3 was first deployed by the telephone companies, it may have been delivered by coaxial cable, microwave relay tower, or even rigid waveguide pipes. As soon as fiber optic trunk cables were available, DS3 logically moved to fiber based delivery. This is still the standard transmission medium for DS3, especially over long distances. Multiple DS3 signals are often multiplexed onto an OC3 or higher level SONET fiber optic carrier and demultiplexed to be dropped off where needed.

Recent developments by new network service providers with their own regional and nationwide fiber optic networks have dramatically lowered the price of DS3 services to where they are affordable by businesses and organizations that couldn’t previously afford the lease rates. They’ve also deployed additional deliver platforms so that there are multiple ways to get DS3 Internet.

If your building is already lit for fiber optic service, that’s likely the best option for DS3 Internet. If not, you might consider moving your high bandwidth Internet servers to a colocation center. Colo centers generally have the best prices on WAN bandwidth and the availability of multiple carriers to choose from. Construction costs are minimal due to everything being in the same building.

For business locations in a metropolitan areas, including nearby suburbs, there are a couple of other options for DS3 Internet. One is wireless transmission. This is line-of-sight microwave transmission on licensed bands from a carrier’s point of presence to an antenna on your building. It only works fairly close to the carrier and if there are no obstructions in the way.

DS3 over Copper isn’t affected by terrain or building density. This service uses multiple pair of standard twisted pair cabling to transport a DS3 level signal. Special modulation equipment is needed at each end of the path, which is provided by the carrier. DS3 over Copper (DS3oC) is also a relatively short range transmission scheme and is generally available only near carrier facilities.

Would your business benefit from a dedicated DS3 Internet connection, or do you already have one? If so, you owe it to yourself to check prices and availability of DS3 Internet for your business location. You may be surprised to find lower prices and more options that you expect.

The Many Flavors of Ethernet Transport

The availability of Ethernet for MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) and WAN (Wide Area Network) transport is popping up all over. Why? Simply because Ethernet is in demand by IT and telecommunications managers looking to get the most Megabits per second at the lowest price for their companies. Ethernet also offers easier management. Multiple locations can be tied together as a large single network.

The very best situation is a direct fiber optic connection from a competitive carrier's point of presence (POP) to your premises. A large national carrier, such as XO communications, can provide first mile connectivity, transport throughout your metro area, and long haul service across the country. Ethernet over Fiber, or EoF, on a carrier designed for IP transport is highly efficient and results in cost savings far beyond what you may be expecting.

But what if you aren't lucky enough to be in a major office complex located in a metropolitan downtown area, just blocks from carrier facilities and already provisioned or "lit" for fiber optic service? Ah, that's were the creative solutions come in.

Ethernet has been widely implemented as a baseband technology for LAN networks. This means that rather than multiplexing the Ethernet signal on a carrier of any sort, it occupies the entire bandwidth of the cabling that carries it. This is still reflected in terms like 10 Base T or 100 Base T. the word "base" refers to baseband. The Ethernet signal is actually packets of information, each carrying up to 1500 bytes of user data.

Once you want to transport your LAN traffic over longer distances than local area network connections, it needs to be carried by a signal or "carrier" that can travel long distances. Actually, just about any digital communications system can carry the individual Ethernet packets as long as it has enough speed or bandwidth to be worthwhile. That includes the T-Carrier system developed by the phone companies to transport digitized phone calls, SONET (Synchronous Optical NETwork) fiber optic carriers, microwave relay and WiFi radios, and point to point optical lasers.

The T-Carriers are especially useful because they've been deployed all over the country and are a mature technology of the phone companies. T1 is the most familiar of the T-Carriers. It is the defacto standard for PBX telephone, dedicated Internet and point to point data transfers for small and medium sized companies. T1 lines are provisioned on twisted pair copper wire. In other words, phone lines. So, T1 lines go everywhere. Using protocol conversion to get packets to and from T1 frames, T1 lines can carry Ethernet. This is often referred to as Ethernet over T1( EoT1) or Ethernet over DS1 (EoDS1). DS1 is the definition of the Data Signal or framing specification for T1 lines.

A related service is Ethernet over DS3, EoDS3. DS3 is the Data Signal level for T3 lines that is also used for SONET fiber optic service. DS1 offers 1.5 Mbps of bandwidth, just a fraction of standard 10 Mbps Ethernet. DS3, however, offers 45 Mbps of bandwidth, almost half of a 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet signal.

When Ethernet is provisioned on T1 twisted pair or T3 coaxial cable, it may be referred to as EoC or Ethernet over Copper. There are other short distance modulation schemes that offer higher bandwidths using in-place copper wiring for that last mile or few hundred feet of connectivity. The big advantage of copper is that it is likely already in place for phone service. Fiber optic carriers offer higher bandwidths to easily support 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and 1,000 Mbps Ethernet transport, but the cost of construction may be prohibitive unless you are near a carrier POP or are willing to commit to large bandwidth usage.

Which business bandwidth services make the most sense for your organization? Find out which nearby locations are already provisioned for Ethernet service and let our expert consultants help you find the most cost effective services for your needs.