Packet Voice Moves to the Cloud

Many businesses and individuals have already switched to VoIP for their telephone service. The original impetus is a cost savings over legacy phone service. Beyond that, enterprise VoIP services offer the opportunity for reduced staff and maintenance coupled with a richer feature set. Just when you thought that VoIP was a settled technology, a new wrinkle comes along. That’s VoIP up in the cloud.

Why move your phone service to a cloud? Let’s take a look at why this might be advantageous to your company and how we got from the old-timey candlestick and desk sets to something as amorphous as a cloud.

A generic technical term for VoIP technology is packet voice. Packets are a computer network protocol most often associated with Ethernet. A packet is a self-contained piece of data that has all the information needed to get it from source to destination. Packets are packets. It doesn’t matter what’s inside. Packets can carry voice, images, video, data and whatever else you can reduce to binary digits.

The major technical leap in packet voice is changing from a switched circuit telephone network to a packet switched network. Switched circuit means that every telephone call has an electrical circuit set up to connect the two (or more) phone sets involved in the conversation. This is unique to the public telephone system and has been that way since its inception. All telephone activity was originally voice calls made between electrically passive telephone sets. Look at one of those old phones. Do you see an AC cord? No way. The electrical power for the call was supplied by batteries at the telephone switching center.

When computer networks became more prevalent than telephone networks, the idea of what a network is changed dramatically. Both telephone and computer networks can run over twisted pair copper wire equally well. What’s different is that computer networks don’t set up and tear down electrical circuits every time that one piece of equipment wants to exchange data with another. The circuits that connect each computer device are continuous. What is switched is the data packets themselves. Ethernet switches or routers ensure that packets get to their intended destinations without having to create new circuit connections on the fly just for a single or group of packets.

Here’s why that’s important. VoIP or packet voice is transported over computer networks rather than switched circuit telephone networks that are only used for telephones. By connecting the phone to the LAN, you can eliminate the separate telephone network. All that wiring and the personnel needed to maintain it and change connections as phones are moved, added or deleted goes away. The cost of running the telephone network also goes away.

Something much larger doesn’t go away. That’s the switching system needed to interconnect telephones, even those using packets, and connect to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) for outside lines. That specialized switching system is most often called a Public Branch Exchange or PBX. Small businesses with few phones and outside lines may use a simpler system called KTS or Key Telephone System. Those are the phones with individual line lights that tell you if a particular phone line is being used or available for your call. Medium and larger companies have the more automated PBX equipment that manages both internal calls and multiple outside lines.

This is where the cloud comes in. An in-house PBX system can be set up to work with legacy analog phones (switched circuit) or the newer IP telephones used for VoIP. You can connect the phones and PBX to your computer network to eliminate the separate telephone wiring, but you still have to make connections to the public phone network if you want to take or make outside calls. PBX systems aren’t cheap, either. They require a major investment, ongoing maintenance efforts and the likelihood that you’ll have to replace the one you have when it goes obsolete or runs out of capacity.

Why not move that PBX to the cloud the same way that you move servers from in-house to the cloud? That’s the idea behind Hosted PBX, also called Hosted VoIP. The hosting is done by a very large packet voice switching system located at a cloud service provider. You don’t have to buy this system, maintain it or worry about upgrades and obsolescence. That’s the job of the cloud service provider. You simply pay a monthly fee for each phone or “seat” that you need.

Ironically, this concept takes us back to the early days of telephony when there was a large central switching system that connected to each telephone. The difference between the old “Ma Bell” approach and Hosted VoIP is that you are no longer tied to the single phone company that owns the phone wires. You can order network connections called SIP trunks to connect to any cloud provider you want. VoIP technology also allows new applications that integrate telephones and computers, important for call centers and contact centers.

Packet network technology has enabled computers to network within companies and all over the world. This technology is now being used to transmit video conferences and telephone calls on the Internet and private network connections. The rise of cloud computing companies takes packet switching equipment to the next level by moving the central hardware to the cloud, where it can be managed by specialized service providers. The advantage to you is lower costs and more features.

Are you wondering whether your business telephone system is optimum for your current requirements? Why not explore other options that include VoIP, SIP Trunking and Hosted PBX services? Get pricing and features for competing enterprise grade VoIP services to compare with your current setup.

EoDS1 Extends Ethernet over Copper Distance

Demand for Ethernet over Copper has outstripped its availability. Some of this is because
EoC termination equipment is not available yet in all central offices. More is caused by simple distance limitations. What can be done to make Carrier Ethernet available to all the businesses that want it?

MegaPath, a major competitive carrier, has an answer. It’s called EoDS1 or Ethernet over DS1. Now, just what is EoDS1 and how does it differ from EoC?

Both EoC and EoDS1 are copper wireline services. Both are provisioned over ordinary twisted pair telco wiring. This is the same copper bundle that brings in multi-line telephone service. Both use multiple bonded pairs to increase bandwidth. However, one has distance limitations and the other doesn’t. Why is that?

It has to do with the technology that sends the digital signals down the line. Ethernet over Copper is seen as a big improvement over T1 lines because bandwidth options go far beyond the 1.5 Mbps that T1 offers. Typical entry level for EoC is 3 Mbps. Many companies are opting for 10 Mbps now. High bandwidth users can get 20, 30, 45, 60 and even 100 Mbps using the copper plant that is already installed to their business. Prior to Ethernet over Copper, companies that needed higher bandwidths had to bring in fiber or do without.

Ethernet over Copper has changed all that for many businesses, especially those in dense metropolitan areas where central offices are plentiful and nearby. The technical issue is that high speed digital signals degrade rapidly with distance. You can only send data so fast on a twisted pair of small diameter copper wires buried in the ground. EoC gets around this to some extent by using multiple pairs to divvy up the datastream so that each pair can run at a slower speed. When added together at the far end, you can get a lot of bandwidth out of 4 or 8 pairs. Even so, the closer you are to the central office that terminates the wiring from your location, the more bandwidth options will be available.

So why does EoDS1 not suffer from these same limitations? Remember the venerable T1 line running along at 1.5 Mbps? DS1 or Digital Signal level 1 is the definition of the way the data is formatted on a T1 line. Sometimes the terms DS1 and T1 are used interchangeably.

You know that T1 lines and their DS1 signals can be connected miles from the central office. In fact, there aren’t very many locations even out in the boonies that don’t qualify for T1 line service. Until recently, it was the preferred backhaul connectivity for cell phone towers. It’s not just the lower line speed that makes this possible. T1 was developed by the telephone companies to interconnect their own switching centers. These can be long distances apart, so a signal regenerator was designed to boost the T1 signal every 6,000 feet or so. Multiple regenerators can be used on one line, greatly extending the transmission distance.

Here’s something else you should know about T1 lines. They can be pair-bonded, just like EoC, to increase the delivered bandwidth. Bond two T1 lines together and you get a 3 Mbps service. Bond 8 T1 lines to get 12 Mbps, pretty much the maximum speed available using multiple T1 lines.

As you might suspect, EoDS1 is nothing more than Ethernet over T1 lines. In many cases, you can order bonded T1 or EoDS1 and get the same bandwidth result. So why not just stick with T1?

The reason is Ethernet services. Your local area networks run the Ethernet protocol. You can interconnect LANs at multiple locations with T1 lines by going through protocol conversions to and from Ethernet. If you keep everything in the Ethernet protocol, the transmission process is more efficient and you have the option to link your LANs at the layer 2 level. This means that ordinary Ethernet switches can be used to route traffic on what is essentially one large Ethernet network.

Are you considering new Carrier Ethernet service or wish to expand your multi-location links to include places where EoC isn’t available yet? If so, take a closer look at the cost and benefit of Ethernet over DS1 bandwidth service.

Take a Bow For The SIP Revolution

There’s a revolution underway in companies large and small. No, it’s not political, social or process related. This is a quiet revolution that few employees are aware of. It’s not really visible. It doesn’t force anyone to change the way they do things. All it does is give you more capability and save you money. Meet the SIP revolution.

What’s SIP and why is it so revolutionary? Here, watch this and get a quick introduction...



SIP is the language of VoIP telephony. If you think that VoIP is all about making home phone calls on your Cable broadband so you can ditch your telephone landline, you are only seeing a small piece of what SIP is all about. The reason that you can piggyback phone calls on a broadband service is that VoIP using SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) for control and signaling transforms voice calls into a protocol that networks can transport.

Consumer VoIP services are all about trying to save money by having Internet broadband do double duty as a computer network and phone line. Once you get off the telephone company owned wiring, you can get your dial tone and local service from anywhere, just like switching long distance service. This same principle works for businesses, although using the Internet for this purpose is fraught with quality issues. It’s the concept of merging voice and data onto a single company network that’s important and where the big cost savings are.

A SIP Trunk is a line that can transport multiple telephone calls simultaneously along with data such as private point to point links or broadband Internet access while protecting voice quality at all times. SIP Trunks work for all size businesses, but they are especially attractive to companies with multiple business locations. This includes any company with branch offices, warehouse and factory sites, remote sales offices and regional headquarters.

What’s special about multi-site operations? Business productivity today depends on office automation. That automation is based on sophisticated software programs and databases running on a complex IT Infrastructure. Nearly every desk has a PC connected to the corporate LAN. The corporate LAN has MAN and WAN connections to include those remote sites as well as headquarters. It’s a sophisticated and expensive network but it is totally necessary. Unfortunately, it’s often duplicated by a separate multi-site network supporting the in-house telephone system.

What SIP Trunking can do is let your multi-site network support voice, data and Internet so that you don’t need a separate telephone network or separate outside telephone lines and broadband connections at every location. A central IP-PBX can handle switching internal calls among locations and connections to a telephone and dedicated Internet service provider. Are the savings that result from doing this significant? Does 20 to 60% cost savings sound significant to you?

Can your company benefit from the SIP revolution? You’ll never know until you get competitive pricing and system features for SIP trunking solutions appropriate to your size operation.

IP T1 Line Service

T1 line service has been available for decades. It originated as a proprietary telephone company technology designed as a trunk for transporting multiple phone calls between switching centers. Later, T1 was made available for businesses to support their PBX phone systems. When the Internet came along, T1 lines were pressed into service as dedicated Internet connections. But now we live in an IP world. Can T1 also act as an IP connection?

Yes, it can. That may seem counterintuitive to those who understand the origins and technology behind T1 service. The T-Carrier specifications, of which T1 is the most popular line service, describe a system organized as multiplexed channels 64 Kbps wide. That channel size was optimized to transport a single independent digitized telephone call using PCM (Pulse Code Modulation). Clearly, T1 is oriented toward the switched circuit based public telephone network.

That’s true, but the important thing to remember about digital network technologies is that a bit is a bit. It’s either true or false, one or zero, regardless of the particular physical layer or higher level protocols involved. That means that a time division multiplexing technology like T1 can be used to transport a packet oriented technology like IP or Ethernet with a little protocol conversion.

That’s essentially what’s being done when T1 lines are used for data transmission. It’s been a long time since anything but Ethernet has been the standard for local area networks. Ethernet is an IP technology, based on packet switching. Those packets can be queued up and loaded into T1 frames for transmission through T1 lines and even multiplexed into T3 and SONET frames for longer haul transmission. At the far end, the packets are offloaded and sent on their way through an IP edge router connected to the T1 CPE (Customer Premises Equipment.)

If you want to connect your Ethernet networks over metropolitan and wide area networks, one technology you’ll be interested in is called Ethernet over T1 or EoT1. This is also called EoDS1 for Ethernet over DS1.

DS1 is simply the data service or protocol that runs on T1 lines. The reason there are two designations is that T1 describes a physical line consisting of two twisted pair copper telco loops running at 1.5 Mbps. The DS1 is all the bits formated for transmission just before loading into the actual T1 line. You can take that same DS1 and feed it into an add/drop multiplexer and transport it along with many others on a T3 circuit or a fiber optic service like OC-3. At the other end, the DS1 can be demultiplexed from the other services on the same line and delivered separately.

In practice T1 and DS1 refer to the same thing to the actual user. What’s important is that Carrier Ethernet service can be delivered on a T1 line, albeit bandwidth limited to 1.5 Mbps. Who would want service that slow? Lots of companies need connectivity between locations, but don’t require high speeds. They may be using the service for retail credit card verification, communication with corporate headquarters, or to upload files to their web server. The big advantage they have with T1 lines is that they are almost universally available. If you can get business phone service, chances are that you can also get a T1 line installed. They are connected over the same telco wiring.

The competing service to Ethernet over T1 is Ethernet over Copper. That may seem like a fine line of distinction, but it is important. Ethernet over Copper (EoC) also uses twisted pair copper but a different modulation scheme that offers higher bandwidths but with distance limitations. If you are within a mile or two of the central office that has Ethernet over Copper equipment, you may be able to get 10 Mbps, 20 Mbps or even higher bandwidths from EoC. Some installations are transporting in excess of 100 Mbps over multiple copper pair.

Ethernet over T1 bandwidth can also be improved by adding more copper pair. The process of combining the bandwidths of several T1 lines into one larger bandwidth is called bonding. EoT1 bonding can deliver up to 10 or 12 Mbps to both metropolitan and rural areas, providing the equipment is available.

Are you interested in an IP connection for your computer or converged voice and data networks? If so, get pricing and availability for Ethernet over T1 or Copper now to see how much bandwidth is available for your business locations.

From LAN to MAN to WAN

We’re in something of a network revolution right now. Computer networking has deployed many different protocols for communication. Some of these have been borrowed from the telephone industry. But there’s a consolidation underway that is moving toward a single IP networking standard. From LAN to MAN to WAN, it’s all headed toward IP.

The standardization really started in the LAN or Local Area Network. Nearly all LANs are now constructed using Ethernet network interfaces? It’s not that other network architectures don’t have merit. It’s simply economy of scale. Perhaps the PC, more than anything else, helped to settle the issue with 10/100 Mbps NICs (Network Interface Cards) being included as standard equipment. Today’s faster machines offer 10/100/1000 interfaces with RJ-45 as the standard connector. If you want anything else, you have to pay extra.

This economy of scale encompasses not only desktop computers, but laptops, network switches, routers, servers, cabling and various appliances. The higher the volume produced, the cheaper each interface circuit becomes. Until something very much better comes along, Ethernet is the low cost solution.

The situation has been quite different beyond the company premises. The telephone industry has about a 100 year lead on the computer industry. If you’ve wanted to connect two business locations together or join the Internet, you had to convert your Ethernet protocol to something the telephone system could understand. Remember dial-up modems? Today’s equivalent is the T1 line. It’s all digital and offers rock solid 1.5 Mbps connectivity, but it’s a telco standard service.

The LAN to MAN or WAN connection is most often made with an interface called a CSU/DSU. This can be a stand alone box or a card that plugs in an edge router. It provides the protocol and signal level conversion between Ethernet on the LAN and T1 line connecting through the central office.

More recently, the T1 connection and faster speed DS3 and OCx services have been challenged by the rise of Metro Ethernet services. With MetroE, you connect directly from your Ethernet LAN to an Ethernet MAN and back again at other locations around town. Since this is a Level 2 switched service, it’s like having a way to expand your LAN over a much larger area to include other offices, a factory, warehouses, and an offsite data center.

Metro Ethernet melds LAN and MAN with one common service protocol. But what about the WAN or wide area needs? WANs often encompass regional areas of the country or even the entire US. Very large WANs include locations around the world. These, too, can now be joined by Ethernet through MPLS networks. While MPLS has an IP core, it uses its own tag switching system instead of IP routing while on the network. But being a multi-protocol system, it can easily transport Ethernet. Some larger providers have national and international service footprints, making it easier than ever to connect from LAN to MAN to WAN.

Are you interested in maximizing the efficiency of your metropolitan and wide area network services while minimizing your costs? You should get a quick quote on MAN & WAN Network Bandwidth to see how much you could be saving.

AboveNet Leads in High Bandwidth Ethernet Connectivity

There's a major transition underway in high bandwidth telecom services. It's a move from traditional SONET / SDH technology to Ethernet IP technology. There are good reasons for this evolutionary, or should I say revolutionary, change. They are rooted in the decades-long transition from analog to digital communications and the near universality of Ethernet as the network protocol of choice. Could we be at a tipping point for Ethernet in fiber optic communications? AboveNet makes a good case for just that.

AboveNet is a high bandwidth provider serving fifteen major U.S. markets plus the United Kingdom. They specialize in fiber optic MAN and WAN connectivity from 100 Mbps to 10 Gbps for companies that need this kind of bandwidth at lower costs than traditional telco solutions.

In their white paper, "Advantages of Ethernet vs Sonet, A Compelling Choice," AboveNet makes the case that cost is a major driver but not the only reason to switch from SONET / SDH to Gigabit Ethernet (Gig E). Ethernet is a better match with today's networks that are increasingly IP based. SONET is a TDM technology based on channels rather than packets. It works as a metro and long haul carrier for packet based networks, but with an inefficiency caused by the protocol conversions back and forth from TDM to IP. This can result in added latency and increased risk for data loss, as well as higher costs.

What may be lost to history is that SONET, the Synchronous Optical NETwork, is a product of telephone company research. At its foundation is the 64 Kbps data channel or DS0. There are thousands of them all multiplexed and synchronized to create SONET fiber optic high bandwidth services. Why such an arrangement? Each of those small channels is just the right size to carry one digitized telephone call. That was the original impetus for SONET. It was to efficiently transport high volumes of telephone calls from one telephone exchange to another.

SONET, of course, has grown from it's switched circuit telephony roots. With appropriate protocol conversions, those DS0 channels can be aggregated to transport IP packets as well as PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) voice. SONET has been the dominant technology for long-haul networks and fiber optic MAN and WAN connections. It's design includes redundant paths with a 50 mSec failover time to make it a highly reliable transport service.

But telephony as well as everything else in electronic communications is going to IP or Internet Protocol. VoIP is replacing analog and TDM telephony for business and residential users. At the enterprise level, there are enormous cost savings possible with converged voice/data/video networks. Why create an all-IP network based on Ethernet within the enterprise, only to have to convert it to TDM-based SONET for transport between locations or to a distant IP service provider?

Carrier Ethernet, the flavor of Ethernet specified for metropolitan and long haul networks, has the advantage of being IP at its core. No conversions are necessary from LAN to MAN to WAN and back to LAN at some remote location. This seamless connectivity reduces latency and improves network efficiency by eliminating conversion steps.

AboveNet operates its own network with over 2 million fiber miles worldwide and a reach of more than 1,800 lit buildings. Their services included MAN and WAN connectivity, plus managed services for WDM Wavelength, Metro Ethernet, WAN Ethernet and IP transit.

If your organization has a need for high bandwidth services and you want to acquire them at the best possible price, then consider getting competitive quotes on fiber optic services from AboveNet and other highly competitive carriers. This telecom brokerage service is free to serious business users, with complementary consulting on your corporate requirements.