Why Choose Dedicated Internet Access

By: John Shepler

The Internet has evolved from a curiosity to a utility. You would no sooner give up your Internet connection than you would turn off your electricity or heating. Yet, the Internet remains a frustration. The business advantages in using it are immense. If only that link was more stable and reliable. Well, it can be. Let’s see how.

Internet vs Internet
The Internet isn’t the same for everyone. Is that shocking, considering all the recent debate over net neutrality? We keep hearing that every Internet connection is just like every other one. So, how can it be that some users get better performance than others?

The highest performance of the Internet, which really is neutral, occurs on the network backbones. This is the extensive web of fiber optic cables that span the globe. These links feature high bandwidth with low latency.

Your connection up and down to the Internet backbone is another matter. One company’s traffic may not get prioritized over another’s, but there’s no law that says everybody has to get as much as they need whenever they need it. There are Internet connections and then there are Internet connections. They are definitely not all the same.

Cost vs Performance In The Last Mile
“The Last Mile” is the name of your connection to your Internet Service Provider. Note that you are connecting to a provider and not the Internet directly. Only the highest level of network operators, called Tier 1 networks, actually have direct connections with the Internet backbone. They also have arrangements called “peering” that mean they share traffic with each other on a no cost basis. Everybody else pays to get to the Internet.

What you are paying for is the cost of the actual fiber, copper wireline or wireless link from the ISP to your location plus another fee for access to the Internet. There is a huge variation in both price and performance in those last mile connections. As you might suspect, the least expensive options have compromises that might affect your operations.

What Affects Connection Performance?
There are various factors that come into play in the last mile. First is the nature of the link itself. It can be traditional twisted pair copper used for DSL or T1 lines, coaxial copper used by Cable companies, fiber optic strands, two-way satellite, point to point microwave, or 3G or 4G cellular.

Bandwidth is limited on copper infrastructure because the lines can only handle so much speed over distance. Cable has more available on coax. Any wireless technology is bandwidth limited, although the point to point microwave links can rival fiber if you have a direct line of sight between the provider and your building. Satellite and cellular are quite limited and generally have a monthly usage limit that you don’t see on wireline and fiber.

Satellite has a special issue regarding latency. The “bird” is parked in geosynchronous orbit and radio waves can only get up there and back down so fast. That results in hundreds of milliseconds of delay or latency that you can’t do anything to improve.

Another major effect comes from the way the line is used. It can either be for exclusive use, called dedicated, or it can be multiplexed among many users, called shared.

The Most Important Key to Better Internet Performance
You might think that dedicated vs shared is almost a moot point because the backbone of the Internet is inherently shared. That’s true and the reason why the highest performance option is to get off the Internet completely and use a dedicated point to point link between two locations. A direct connection to your cloud provider is an example. Another is a dedicated line between your own data centers.

What about connecting to other companies or the general public? That’s where the Internet is a must. In practice, you can make this work quite well with a judicious tradeoff of cost vs performance.

As long as you have enough bandwidth, you’ll see the most benefit by choosing dedicated over shared connections. The lower priced services are that way because they are shared. What the ISP does is buy a dedicated Internet connection and then use a multiplexer to allow dozens or hundreds of customers to access that connection at will. The cost of the ISP's dedicated connection is spread out among many users to offer a lower price.

Consumers aren’t going to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars a month on their own dedicated connections no matter what the performance improvement. Businesses have a choice. If you mostly use the Internet for email, browsing websites, and maybe backing up your PC to a cloud service, and low cost is critical to your budget, then something like business cable broadband can be your best compromise. This is especially true if what you are doing isn’t all that time critical.

Should You Go Dedicated?
Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) is generally the best tradeoff for most businesses between the high cost of a private line and the performance limitations of the Internet. You treat it like any other business expense. There is a value to be gained as well as a price to be paid. DIA minimizes the limitations of the last mile connection. DIA is even better if you can connect with a Tier 1 or Tier 2 Internet Service Provider. T1 lines work well in rural areas, Ethernet over Copper gives you more bandwidth in-town, and fiber is best of all.

Which type of Private Line or Internet Access is best for your business? Compare prices and performance from a number of service providers and get expert consultation now.

Next Stop 100 Gbps WAN Bandwidth

Big data, cloud computing and HD video are pushing the limits of what we once considered high bandwidth private line and MPLS network connections. Gigabit Ethernet is now popular with companies that have high bandwidth demands. Some firms are moving to 10 GigE, as 1000 Mbps is no longer adequate. If 10 Gigabits per second is also a limiting factor for your business, the time has come to consider 100 Gbps bandwidth.

Most of the larger fiber optic carriers have been busy upgrading their core networks to 100 Gbps. They need this kind of backbone bandwidth to avoid having to install new fiber to meet demand. Few, however, have offered this capacity to their customers.

Zayo is changing the game. They are now offering 100 Gbps as a wavelength service between major cities. The 100 Gbps connections are located in key traffic aggregation points and IP nodes throughout the U.S. This makes the service especially attractive to content producers and large ISPs (Internet Service Providers) who have inherently high bandwidth demands.

Why choose wavelength service versus SONET or Ethernet transport? High bandwidth options is one reason. Another is the ability to specify protocols and security measures. Leasing a wavelength is the next best thing to leasing an entire fiber strand or deploying your own fiber optic cabling. Unless you are in the business of operating a regional or national fiber optic network, the cost of creating all this infrastructure is prohibitive. However, leasing a wavelength may well be within reason.

Wavelength services are created by a process called WDM or Wavelength Division Multiplexing. The idea is that each fiber strand can support much higher bandwidths if fed by multiple lasers instead of just one. Each laser is tuned to operate on a particular frequency or wavelength according to a standard international grid plan. The wavelengths all shine through the fiber simultaneously, but they do not interact. You can think of each wavelength as a separate fiber for most purposes.

How much bandwidth can a wavelength carry? By using simple on-off keying of the beam, a wavelength can transport up to 10 Gbps. For 100 Gbps you would have to combine or aggregate multiple beams or use a more advanced modulation scheme such as CP-DQPSK (Coherent Polarization-Multiplex Differential Quadrature Phase Shift Key) to transmit multiple bits per symbol. With a plug-in card such as the CIsco CRS 1-Port 100 Gigabit Ethernet Coherent DWDM Interface Module, a single wavelength can now transport 100 Gbps. There is standards work underway to extend that to 400 Gbps and eventually 1 Tbps.

Zayo offers wavelength services at 1 Gbps, 2.5 Gbps, 40 Gbps or 100 Gbps. Diversity and sub-50 msec protection switching is available to improve reliability to carrier standards.you can order single or multiple waves as needed to support your applications. Zayo has the ability to scale bandwidth capacity along their routes to 8 Tbps when such a need arises.

Companies interested in high bandwidth wavelength services are also often interested in low latency. Zayo offers low latency routs with up to 100 Gbps of bandwidth between Seattle, Chicago, New York City, and Philadelphia to key data centers and financial and enterprise locations. Their low latency routes also include a hop to London as well.

Zayo will continue to deploy their 100G wavelength service across major markets for through the first half of 2013. Their entire network includes 67,000 route miles serving 45 states and Washington D.C. with 10,530 on-net buildings that include 535 data centers, 515 carrier PoPs (points of presence) and 2,743 cell towers. They also offer colocation facilities with over 141,000 square feet under management.

Does your company need higher levels of bandwidth to maintain or improve productivity or support demanding applications? If so, there are fiber optic service options available for 100 Mbps up to 100 Gbps at attractive prices. Competitive quotes are available at no charge.