SIP vs PRI Pros and Cons for Business PBX

Business telephone lines have gone through several transformations. What started out as analog landlines evolved into digital T1 CAS trunks, then ISDN PRI, and finally SIP packet based network connections. Amazingly, all of these technologies are still available. We’ll take a closer look into the two most popular configurations used in multi-line PBX business phone systems.

The Primary Rate Interface
ISDN PRI is short for the mouthful of an expression that is Integrated Services Digital Network Primary Rate Interface. Often the shorthand PRI or ISDN PRI is used for obvious reasons.

ISDN PRI is a standard telecom service that is based on the earlier T1 line specification. T1 got its start as a means of consolidating 24 pairs of twisted wire phone lines into 2 pair to save the expense of long distance cabling and overloading of telephone poles. This was accomplished by digitally multiplexing the 24 separate channels so that they were all transported together on a single 1.5 Mbps digital signal. An additional advantage of going digital was the reduction of noise and crosstalk on long distance phone calls.

A major benefit of the T1 specification is that existing phone company infrastructure can be reused, including wire landlines and microwave relays. High frequency digital signals degrade over distance fairly quickly, so regenerative repeaters were added to the lines to build the signal back up. With this arrangement, T1 could be offered over long distances to serve virtually all of the customers who were using the old analog phone lines.

One issue with T1 was that if each of the 24 channels carried only the audio telephone conversations, other wiring would have to be provided for signaling. A better solution was to multiplex signal bits into the data stream by robbing a bit here and a bit there in each of the channels. This degraded the audio very slightly and allowed the T1 CAS (Channel Associated Signaling) system to be self-contained.

Additional features, such as caller ID, were introduced by the phone companies and desired for business phones and especially call centers. This is where PRI comes in. The same basic T1 line organization was kept, except that only 23 channels were assigned as individual telephone lines. One complete channel was assigned to handle all of the signaling, data and other background services.

Most PBX systems today have interface cards where you directly plug-in a ISDN PRI cable and have 23 phone lines (or as many as you have ordered) at your command. If you need more than 23 lines, you plug in additional PRIs to add more channels.

Is there a Secondary Rate Interface?
No, but there is a related standard called BRI or Basic Rate Interface. The phone companies thought this would catch on as a two phone line system or higher speed dial-up modem service. By the time it was heavily deployed, computer communications had moved on to broadband and BRI never caught on. It has been popular for radio station broadcasts and remote announcing, such as voice over artists, because it can carry high quality audio signals. Recently, this service has been replaced by broadband Internet and is very difficult to find anymore.

What is SIP and How Does It Compare to PRI?
SIP is Session Initiation Protocol. It is a technology competitor to PRI. SIP is really a standard for transmitting VoIP or Voice or Internet Protocol phone calls over networks typically shared with other computing devices.

As you probably suspect, SIP is a packet based protocol versus the channel based protocol used by ISDN and T1. In channelized systems, a complete voice channel is assigned to a phone call for as long as the call is in progress. If no one is talking, the line just sits there idle. There is no sharing of facilities. In VoIP telephony, the conversation is broken up into small packets that are routed on the network to their destination. Many conversations can be on a network at the same time along with file transfers, print jobs and everything else digital. If there is a pause in one conversation, no packets are sent to the network for that channel only.

As you can see, VoIP is more efficient at sharing the network facilities. It comes at a cost though. Sometimes everybody wants to talk or send data at the same time. Unless the network is carefully designed, it can become flooded with too many packets to handle and things back up. This network congestion causes delays in transfer that breaks up phone conversations. Any packets lost will also distort the conversation.

Network Considerations for SIP
Careful network engineering is necessary to ensure that the sensitive voice packets are transferred without delay or corruption. Usually, these data streams are given a priority using Class of Service mechanisms within the network.

A network line dedicated to SIP is called a SIP trunk. This is the equivalent of an ISDN PRI line. Any digital line capable of carrying Ethernet packets can be a dedicated SIP trunk, although T1 lines, DS3 bandwidth and Carrier Ethernet services are often used for SIP. By giving the SIP phone conversations their own line, there is no interference from other data packets. SIP trunks are most often used to connect business and call center PBX systems directly to phone service providers. Like PRI, most PBX systems have network interface cards that plug directly into a SIP trunk.

SIP vs PRI
One protocol isn’t necessarily more appropriate than the other. It depends on the application. Most PBX systems can be set up to connect to SIP trunks or PRI trunks regardless of whether the phone sets themselves are analog handsets or VoIP phones. SIP trunks are particularly useful with newer Unified Communications or Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) systems that integrate computers, desk sets video conferencing and mobile phones into a single interoperable system. In these systems everything is in packet format and running on a single network.

Which is Right For You?
The best choice in telephone trunks is the one that works best with the system you have or the system you desire, and at the lowest cost for the performance you need. Prices of both PRI and SIP have fallen dramatically over the last few years, so you owe it to yourself to see what telephone trunk line options are available for your business needs.

Is It Time To Go Fiber Optic Internet?

By: John Shepler

You’ve outgrown the Internet service that has served you well all these years. Business has changed and yours has expanded to the point that your Internet connection is getting in the way. Everyone would be more productive and less frustrated with a connection that didn’t impose limits. So, what should you do?

More Choices, Less Cost
You might be cringing at the thought of shopping for better Internet access. The last time you did that, pickings were slim. Few providers offering few services, most of which were very expensive. You may have wound up with a T1 line or DSL from your telephone company or a business cable offering from your Cable TV company. Has anything changed?

Oh, yes. Pretty much everything has changed. Actually, the choices have expanded and gotten cheaper across the board. You can still still order T1 lines. Today you’ll find there are more providers vying for your business and the prices may be a fraction of what you paid to sign your service contract years ago. Other than cost, though, T1 is still a 1.5 Mbps service. It may be adequate for the smallest businesses, but most everyone else will find the 1.5 Mbps limit stifling.

A more expansive option may be Ethernet over Copper. This is newer technology running on the same twisted pair telco lines. Bandwidth options vary from 1 Mbps up to typically 15 or 20 Mbps. Pricing is maybe half the cost of T1 per Mbps.

How about business cable? Yes, it’s still here but better. Modems have been upgraded a couple of times and now easily offer 100 Mbps, 300 Mbps and even 1,000 Mbps on the same coaxial cable. You may even get that 1,000 Mbps for the what you are paying for the old T1 line. Just be aware that the bandwidth on the cable line is shared and may vary during the day. Upload speeds are maybe a tenth of the download speeds.

How About Fiber?
Fiber optic Internet service was beyond the reach of all but the largest companies for decades. No more. A technology improvement from the old telco SONET to competitive Ethernet over Fiber has caused prices to plummet and options to multiply. You can pretty much dictate your bandwidth from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps and order what you need without over paying. Later, when your needs expand, you can scale up your line speed, usually without changing hardware.

Ethernet over Fiber has the options of speeds as high as 100 Gbps that are easily scalable, highly reliable, dedicated and symmetrical. More and more, those options include ready availability from one and often several vendors. Most providers are aggressively building out their networks and may be able to minimize or even waive construction costs. It just depends on what’s available near your location and how much competition there is.

I Want Fiber. How Do I Get It?
You’ll probably never regret taking the plunge on fiber optic Internet service. Unlike older copper-based technologies, fiber is pretty much future proof as well as minimizing limitations such as latency, packet loss and jitter. It’s the transparent connection you are longing for.

Now, how to get service. Your best option is to work with a bandwidth broker like Telarus. They have contracts with dozens of providers serving the nation with connections that can go around the world. Your cost will be no higher than if you found a particular carrier yourself and probably less, since there are often multiple providers to choose from. Want to see what’s available right now? Get a quick budgetary quote online now and followup with possible special deals that aren’t advertised.

Lit Buildings Have Near Infinite Bandwidth

By: John Shepler

Among the many opportunities for locating your business, one group of buildings is special. These are the lit buildings, otherwise known as fiber lit buildings. Find one of these and your bandwidth woes will be over.

Lit Building Definition
What is a lit building? In this case, it’s not a building with all the lights turned on. The lit building meaning is that this particular facility is already “lit” for fiber optic Internet and, likely, point to point bandwidth service. The light this is referring to is the laser beam that shines down the glass fibers to transport digital signals at high speeds.

What’s So Great About Fiber Lit Buildings?
Pretty much every business today, from the smallest hamburger stand to the largest multinational corporation has a need to communicate electronically. Do you or any of your employees ever use a computer? Obviously, you have a need for connectivity. Even the smallest retail businesses have to process credit cards and likely need to place Internet orders, send and receive emails. and perhaps run a website. If you are not online, you are probably not in business.

Seems obvious, until you move into a new facility and find out there is no Internet in the place. If it’s a stand alone building or you are the first tenant in a strip center, office building or warehouse, you’ll be the one who has to order service and have it installed. It’s then that you find out that there are construction costs involved in bringing in the cabling and having the termination equipment set up and working with the provider. That’s all before you can plug-in your network.

Lit buildings take most of that grief away because the expensive and time consuming construction work has already been done. All you need to do is contract with the carrier who has lit the building to add an account for your business. Then just plug in your router to the termination point they give you and… Voila! … you are up and running.

What Services Are Available in Lit Buildings?
The advantage that fiber optic connections have over traditional landlines and even cable is that they can support nearly infinite bandwidth. Oh, there are technical limits to how many Gigabits or Terabits per second you can cram through a fiber strand, but they are pretty hard to breach. The modulation and multiplexing techniques are getting more sophisticated every day, leading to new upper limits on bandwidth through even a single fiber strand. A 10 Gbps service is no challenge. Now 100 Gbps is getting easy to come by. If that’s not enough to support an industrial park or office campus, fiber cables can bundle 100 or more individual strands that each operate independently.

The range of services available spans pretty much everything you can ask for. Most popular is Ethernet over Fiber, which is directly compatible in nearly all LANs. Bandwidth is easily scalable from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps and beyond. Many carriers are now giving users portal access so they can adjust service bandwidth at will. Traditional SONET services like OC3 to OC48 may also be available. These can even be demultiplexed to provide traditional T1 line or ISDN PRI phone service. SIP trunking for VoIP and direct cloud connections are generally a standard offering.

Why NOT Go With Fiber?
Fiber is a truly transparent bandwidth transport in the literal sense of the word. It’s future proof and easily scales to meet your needs as your business grows. The only hangup may be that fiber is often not the least expensive solution for very small businesses and tight budgets. For that, the service of choice is business cable broadband. As long as the cable passes your location, you can probably get hooked up with 1000 Mbps of asymmetrical shared bandwidth at a bargain price. Many times there isn’t even a construction fee. Also, availability of cable is completely unrelated to whether the building is already lit for fiber.

Are you considering a move? Before signing a lease, make sure your bandwidth needs will be met now and for as long as you’ll stay there. Check for lit building fiber optic services and cable broadband availability now, to be sure.

Disaster Recovery Is Now a Service

It’s one of those days that’s warm, too warm. The skies are darkening and its eerily quiet. It’s the kind of day when bad things can happen quickly. You don’t have to wait long. The skies quickly darken, the wind picks up and there is a roaring noise that grows louder by the moment. The next sound you hear is the storm sirens going off all over town. You run for cover in the basement storage area where you are protected. Up above, windows shatter and you can hear the wrenching sound of metal being ripped from the roof and sides of the building. Then the chaos dies down and it’s quiet again. You go up the stairs and open the door to see...

What you see is a landscape littered with debris to the horizon. That includes what little is left of your business. File cabinets, computers, server racks, desks and what used to be office walls are strewn in all directions. You spent a decade going into business and a half hour going out of business. Is it even possible to pick up the pieces and keep going?

Every year many long established businesses face this scenario or one of equal consequence. The utter destruction of sudden unexpected disaster knocks them out of business so hard that they just can’t put it back together again. Without some sort of disaster planning, all that critical business information on hard drives, CD-ROM backups, as paper files in thin metal file cabinets and cardboard storage boxes can be annihilated right before your eyes. You have no order records, you have no customers lists, you have no written procedures, you have no tax files, you have no proprietary drawings. Years, even decades of writing, drawing, entering data, making notes and carefully organizing it all vanishes. Megabytes, Gigabytes, Terabytes of digital data representing the sum total of your business knowledge is smashed beyond retrieval. Worse, the cost and time involved in putting it all back in place are too much to bear. It’s time to pack it in.

Does any of that send a shudder up your spine? It should. Unless you’ve put bulletproof disaster recovery processes in place you are vulnerable. At this point it’s just a matter of time before the worst happens. The good fortune that’s smiled upon you up till now might not be there tomorrow... and there’s no way to know when that tomorrow will be. Doesn’t it make a lot of sense to take control now and put measures in place that can ensure the continuity of your business?

The advent of the cloud is creating some opportunities for disaster prevention and recovery that were hard to do previously. For instance, you know that you need copies of everything critical to your business stored in at least two places. Your computer hard drive and the desk drawer with the backup disks isn’t even close to adequate. Smaller companies may choose to have a safe or storage room for backup materials. Larger operations can afford a second data center across town. In the event of a massive tornado, hurricane, earthquake, flood or fire that devastates an entire city, neither business is protected. They are both wiped out because the disaster claims their primary and backup data.

The nice thing about the cloud is that you can pick a cloud that is located far away. It’s unlikely that any man made or natural disaster is going to wipe out geographically separated data centers at the same time. Certainly it makes sense to backup your electronic data to the cloud, but what if you could replicate your entire electronic operation in the cloud?

This is the service that Windstream is offering with their Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS). The idea is to replicate your physical and virtual servers in the Windstream cloud. It’s not just a place to go and get new IT resources to replace what you’ve lost. This is a system that shadows your data center operations on a continuous basis. In effect you have a real business operating in-house and a virtual copy running in the cloud. They operate in parallel until something happens that puts your local operation out of commission. Then you pick-up where you left off using the cloud copy of your business. Once you get re-established locally, you sync your new data center with the cloud and your are back in business as if nothing ever happened.

Would you sleep better knowing that your business is protected by a mirror image in the cloud? If this sound like that type of service that you would find valuable, then check out cost and features of disaster recovery as a service for your particular business. It’s the continuity insurance that no paper insurance policy can provide.




Note: Photo of tornado destruction courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Why International MPLS Connections Make Sense

Companies with multiple business locations have been discovering the advantage of MPLS network services for both domestic and international connections. In some cases, an MPLS network solution makes sense even with only two points to be connected. Let’s take a look at what MPLS have to offer, especially for cross-border connections, and when they make sense even for point to point service.

MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching is a type of network set up to transport traffic for multiple subscribers in a way that preserves security, class of service, and important network characteristics such as bandwidth, latency, jitter, and packet loss. It is the closest thing to a universal network protocol that we have.

True, the Internet offers far wider connectivity than any other network. But the Internet is a public access facility based on network neutrality. There’s no such thing as class of service on the Internet. Indeed, it is a source of pride for Internet managers that all packets receive equal treatment.

That’s fine for a general purpose public resource that is primarily a transporter of non-time sensitive data and one-way media streaming. It’s completely unacceptable as a high performance transparent connectivity medium designed to support enterprise level computing and communications. MPLS networks are designed specifically to offer the class and quality of service you can’t get on a public network but also can’t afford to build yourself.

MPLS is known as an inherently VPN technology. While the service has multiple tenants to amortize the construction and operating costs of the network, the unique routing technology provides a level of security in itself. MPLS is based on label switching, once known as tag switching. It’s a packet switched network, but the packets can represent any protocol. The network doesn’t care what’s in the packet. It just needs to know where that packet needs to go and what class of service it should have. That’s defined upon ingress to the network, where the packet is assigned a label wrapper to encapsulate the original packet. The label stays on the packet until egress from the network when it is removed.

How does this create a virtually private network? First, IP routing is not used on an MPLS network. Anyone trying to snoop on the network will find that their IP-based tools are worthless. Second, access is strictly controlled. Unless you are a subscriber, you probably can’t even find a place to penetrate the network. The network operator sets up the accounts and only provides switched paths that are defined by the subscribers. Unless you are on the “list,” no data comes your way.

Even though other users have traffic on the same physical paths as you do, you are unaware of each other’s presence on an MPLS network. The network operator knows what services have been subscribed and maintains sufficient bandwidth to meet all guarantees without congestion. The switched paths are primarily determinate and don’t change unless there is a need to work around a temporary network outage. That greatly improves latency and jitter characteristics.

The end result is that you gain the performance of dedicated point to point private lines at a much lower cost that creating your own private WAN network. This is especially true when there are many locations to connect or when you need undersea fiber connections to Europe or Asia. With MPLS networks, you only need “last mile” connections for each location. The rest of the network is already in-place to transport your traffic. The cost advantages are such that for distances in the thousands of miles, it can be less expensive to order two local loops, one at each end, to access a MPLS network and then let the network handle the long haul portion of the path.

Who provides these International MPLS networks? Major carriers such as Level 3 Communications, AboveNet, XO Communications and Global Telecom and Technology have the fiber optic infrastructure in place to connect your facilities regardless of where they are located around the world.

Do you have a need to reach long distances for voice, data, or video, especially when multiple locations need to be tied together? If so, get prices and features for international MPLS network services specially tailored to meet your needs.



Note: World Map graphic courtesy of David Monniaux Wikimedia Commons.

Copper Ethernet Line Prices Instantly!

You’re no doubt aware that Ethernet over Copper is making a strong challenge to be the bandwidth service of choice for businesses. How much of a challenge? The bandwidth increases and cost reductions are making it hard to choose anything else if EoC is available. Just how much can you get and for what price reduction? Why not check Ethernet over Copper prices instantly!



Through the magic of the Telarus GeoQuote automated pricing system, it’s now possible to get Ethernet quotes immediately any time you want. Simply use the handy input form you’ll find at CopperEthernet.com and you’ll be automatically set up to get Ethernet over Copper pricing.

How accurate are these prices? They could be considered budgetary pricing, although they are quite accurate. GeoQuote mimics the same procedures that carriers use to make service price quotes. If you go directly to a carrier, however, you’ll probably have to wait a few days or more to get the results back. You’ll also be limited to one provider's offers. Why settle for one quote when you can get several or more to compare?

Telarus is an award winning telecom and network services broker that has agreements with dozens of service providers. You get the same or better pricing through the GeoQuote system as you could by spending hours on the phone calling around for competitive quotes.

It is well worth your while to talk to a Telarus bandwidth consultant, as there are often short term special deals available that don’t show up in the automated results. Your consultant can let you know what’s on “sale” so you can make the best buying decision. At the end of the quote process, you’ll have the option to call Telarus toll free for further discussion or just click a link and a consultant will call you promptly.

You should also know that Ethernet over Copper isn’t the only service that’s available for instant price quotes. If you wish, you can explore options for T1 and bonded T1 lines, business Cable broadband, fixed wireless broadband, Satellite bandwidth, fractional and full DS3 services and Ethernet over Fiber. Yes, quotes are available for fiber optic services from 10 to 1000 Mbps using the same instant pricing process.

Are you anxious to see how much you could be saving over your current telecom services contract? Take just a minute from your busy day and get Copper Ethernet line prices instantly. After you see the results, you’ll probably want to take a few more minutes and call in an order.

Computing In The Cloud

“Cloud computing” is the term you see everywhere lately. But what is computing in the cloud all about and are there really benefits to moving out of your own data center and into the cloud?

Cloud computing originally meant accessing a pool of computers to accomplish a task that was too big for the resources you could afford to own. You may have contributed some unused computing power to the SETI@Home program to help search for ET. It’s still going, by the way, after almost 12 years of combing through the output of radio telescope signals. The genius behind this project is to link thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of idle personal computers through broadband Internet connections. Each PC has a small but significant amount of unused processing power. By divvying up a large computing task into bite (byte?) size pieces and collecting the results, all those computers can be linked to create one enormous virtual supercomputer.

The idea of calling remotely located distributed resources a “cloud” goes back to the public telephone network and later to the Internet. Engineers would draw a picture of a cumulus cloud to represent a network who’s complexity was far more than needed to be diagramed every time you wanted to use it. Somewhere out in the misty core of that cloud were all the resources required. You only needed to understand it abstractly, the way most users don’t need to understand the detailed workings of their PC to be able to use it effectively.

If we had infinite budgets, there wouldn’t be much use for cloud computing. Every company would simply buy all the computers, software, storage, data center facilities and staffing they needed. One problem is that much of the time, especially on second and third shifts, most of capacity you pay for sits idle. Even during business hours, you need enough resources to handle peak loads to maintain employee productivity and customer satisfaction. That means your average usage is well below the maximum capacity of your systems most of the day.

Few companies have infinite budgets and today’s financial environment makes it difficult to get enough capital for all the computing capacity they would like. Even the well-heeled want to hedge their bets by just using what they need as they need it, without long term commitments. The fuzzier the future looks, the more attractive pay-as-you-go looks.

That’s the impetus behind today’s rush to all things in the cloud. Yes, you can buy processing by the minute if all you need is more computing capacity. But the cloud computing definition has expanded to include all sorts of resources including web servers, online disk storage, backup and recovery storage, standard software packages, development platforms, and even PBX telephone systems. The hosted telephone services are known specifically as cloud communications services.

What’s important from a business aspect is that you rent rather than buy these services. They are available on a per minute, per seat or per feature basis. You use what you need without regard to what other customers of the service may be doing. The cloud computing provider has the responsibility to have enough capacity on-hand to meet everyone’s needs and to keep everything up to date and running smoothly.

Does the cloud computing business model sound like an attractive option for your business? If so, or if you would simply like to investigate the options, check out features and pricing for cloud computing services. One or more of these services may well be more cost effective that what you are doing now.

SIP Trunks vs ISDN PRI

Enterprise telephony long ago advanced beyond analog business lines in favor of PBX telephone systems and ISDN PRI trunking. Now there’s another option that may offer cost and performance advantages for companies that want to improve their voice services. It’s called SIP Trunking. Let’s compare and contrast SIP Trunks with ISDN PRI to see how to choose between them.

You should know that we are still talking exclusively about digital telephony. There is no analog transport in either a SIP Trunk or PRI. What differentiates the two is that ISDN PRI is based on a switched circuit model and SIP Trunking is based on packet switching.

For many companies it could be six of one and a half-dozen of the other. That’s because either trunking service can be made to work with your in-house phone system. The idea behind digital trunking is to carry a half-dozen or more outside phone lines on a single digital line. Usually that’s one or more T1 lines, although DS3, OC3 fiber or Ethernet can also be used.

ISDN PRI uses a T1 line configured into 23 separate voice channels plus one data and control channel. Most PBX systems and the newer IP PBX phone systems make it easy to connect to ISDN PRI. They either offer one or more PRI ports built-in or accommodate a plug-in adaptor card.

If you need more than 23 lines, you simply add more ISDN PRI lines incrementally. Each additional line can bring in up to 23 more business phone lines. You’ll have to check what’s available for your phone system, but it is not uncommon to have 2 to 4 PRI lines plugged into a PBX system.

The technology used for ISDN PRI is defined by the Integrated Systems Digital Network specification. PRI is the Primary Rate Interface. There is also a lower performance BRI or Basic Rate Interface that isn’t seen much anymore. This is a legacy telephone technology designed to support the idea of separate digitized telephone lines, one per channel. There’s no chance of interference between calls because the channels are strictly defined and timed using Time Division Multiplexing.

SIP Trunking is more of a network than a telephone based technology. It is a packet switched network line, much like you would use to connect two business locations. What SIP Trunking can do is directly support a converged voice and data network. You can run SIP Trunks between business locations to expand your voice and data network geographically.

The SIP in SIP Trunking stands for Session Initiation Protocol. That’s the switching technology used in VoIP telephone systems. In SIP trunking the control signals for the phone system are transported in packets that travel down the same network pipe as the voice packets.

ISDN PRI isn’t so much about convergence. It’s really about having separate telephone and data lines leave the premises, although you are free to converge your in-house network and let an IP PBX system on the network handle call routing, including outside calls on the ISDN PRI trunk line.

SIP Trunking doesn’t have to be about convergence, either. You can simply use a SIP Trunk to connect your PBX system to a telephone service provider rather than using an ISDN PRI. Depending on which CODEC or coding scheme you use, you may be able to handle more than 23 lines on a SIP Trunk. If you are using an Ethernet connection to your provider, you may be able to support dozens of phone lines depending on the bandwidth available.

For small businesses, SIP Trunks can be configured to transport both voice and data to your service provider. Most often this is used to bring in telephone lines and broadband Internet service on the same SIP Trunk. There’s a cost advantage, even if you are not running a converged voice and data in-house.

Since either ISDN PRI or SIP Trunking might be able to support your needs, how do you choose? That depends on the features you desire and what’s available to serve your particular business location. You may have several options to choose from. To find out, check out SIP Trunks and ISDN PRI availability and pricing now.

100 Mbps Colocation Center Bandwidth

Companies often look to colocation as a way to avoid the capital and operating expense of running their own data centers. There is also another important incentive to go the colocation route. It’s high bandwidth availability at lower costs.

A colocation center, or colo, is a facility that serves the data center needs of many businesses. Each server farm requires the servers themselves, networking switches, routers and appliances, equipment racks, rack wiring, electrical power, cooling air, and connectivity. Plus you’ll need physical security, fire suppression and a staff to monitor operations and take corrective action 24/7. You can provide all of this in-house or get it at a colocation center.

What makes a colo center cost effective is economy of scale. Instead of each customer having to maintain their own backup generators and fire suppression systems that are rarely used, the colocation facility has much larger units that serve all customers. The costs don’t scale linearly. The incremental cost of adding another user to the facility is pretty low and the facility cost spread over all users is less than what you can do on your own.

The somewhat hidden secret of colocation centers is that they have bandwidth available that you may not be able to afford on your own. A common connection is 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet. You know that it’s no great shakes to connect a 100 Mbps Ethernet node to your own LAN. Getting a 100 Mbps connection beyond your property line may be anywhere from expensive to impossible. At 100 Mbps, you are beyond the capability of twisted pair services such as EoC or T1/E1 lines. You’ll need fiber optic cabling brought into your building and lit for SONET/SDH or Metro Ethernet service.

Why is there such a difference in price between 100 Mbps bandwidth provided in a colocation center and the same level of service delivered to your facility? One big reason is construction costs. Downtown in a major metropolitan area there may be many fiber facilities in your office building or nearby. If you order a significant amount of bandwidth you might not even be charged construction costs. But move a bit off the beaten fiber path and those charges go up dramatically. If you are located in a smaller town, industrial park or rural area you can be looking at tens of thousands of dollars or more to trench fiber optic cable from the nearest carrier point of presence.

The other reason for bargain prices at colocation facilities is competition. Once again, depending on population density and popularity of high bandwidth network services, you might find yourself with only one carrier serving your location. Your negotiating ability is pretty limited without competition. Colocation centers, however, are carrier magnets. Service providers know that there are dozens or hundreds of customers in a single building who all need their services. It’s no wonder they all set up points of presence within the colo. Often, there is a “meet me room” where carriers and customers are connected.

The combination of having several or more eager carriers vying for your business combined with the trivial construction costs of running a drop to your equipment racks is what makes it easy and relatively inexpensive to get all the bandwidth you want in a colocation center. Can you say the same for where you are now? There’s an easy way to find out. Simply request bandwidth availability and pricing for both your location and a nearby colocation facility.



Note: Photo of server rack wiring courtesy of Guillaume Paumier on Wikipedia Commons

Free Help On Your Telecom Needs

How would you like to hire some help for free? Not just any help, mind you, but high quality technical expertise to assist you with your telephone and computer networks. No out of pocket cost today or ever. Do you think that offer works well with today’s shrunken personnel budgets?

I’ll bet you do. In fact, you are probably chafing at the bit to find out where you can get some of this help before it’s all gone. Well, relax. There’s plenty to go around.

How can this be true? After all, if you expect to get a service then you also expect to pay for it. You can’t get something for nothing, can you? Yes, you can, if someone else is paying the bill.

Perplexed? Don’t be. What I’m talking about is a telecom brokerage service that has a large group of expert consultants in telephony, computer networking, international network services, wireless business solutions and the like. They stand ready to work with you right now, if only you would let them know what you need. You don’t have to be too specific. Just type a sentence or two to give them the general gist of what you are after. Someone will email or call you shortly to work through the details.

What happens after that? Your friendly consultant may take a few hours or even a couple of days to gather quotes of dozens of competitive service providers and sort out the best price/performance offers to present to you. This is the type of leg work your own staff would otherwise have to do... while you are paying them. No available IT staff to query dozens of potential suppliers in order to find the best match to your needs? Then you really need this service.

Some of these expert consultants routinely spend hours, even dozens of hours working on a single project for their client. How much do they bill per hour? Nothing at all. Oh, they get paid alright. But it’s not by you or any other end user. The brokerage service is paid by the service providers themselves in lieu of having to hire their own staff to do this work. You don’t get dinged with a higher price for service either. You’ll pay exactly the same as if you tracked down each competitive carrier or other service provider and ordered service directly from them without any outside assistance.

One other big advantage of working through a telecom broker is that they have the ability to compare and contrast offers from several to several dozen providers offering a suitable service for your business and location. They can keep a cool head sorting through the offers because they aren’t beholding to a particular vendor. They also know about special limited time offers being run by each providers, information you are unlikely to discover yourself.

So, whether you don’t have a staff or would just rather supplement their effort with free expert consulting service, you owe it to yourself and your bottom line to take advantage of this offer. Simply enter a brief online inquiry to describe your networking need and a friendly Telarus consultant will be touch pronto. You’ll be surprised at how much information you get for almost no effort on your part.

Ciena Takes New Bandwidth Technologies On The Road

If you happen to be near Waltham, MA today, June 29, you have an opportunity to see the latest in carrier bandwidth technology right at your doorstep. Simply step into the Ciena Innovation Lab and check out the demos of their optical, Ethernet and software solutions. Next stop is White Marsh, MD on July 15.

What’s the Ciena Innovation Lab? It’s a semi trailer chock full of the newest telecom and networking developments. Here, take a look:



If you are involved with Gigabit and Terabit bandwidth applications, you are familiar with Ciena... or should be. Certainly, fiber optic service providers keep a keen eye on developments from the Ciena labs. But now major corporations, content providers and large medical organizations need to familiarize themselves with packet-optical transport and switching systems. Today, you may be just broaching the idea of installing Gigabit Ethernet service. Tomorrow, you may well be ordering dark fiber for your own private point to point networks.

Ciena now has platforms that make deploying 40G and 100G fiber optic connections as easy as 10G. They are ready to support carrier Ethernet services, including high speed access, backhaul and aggregation. Their software suites make it easier for you to manage optical networks, Ethernet services and other high bandwidth networks services.

Is your company ready to move up to gigabit and higher levels of service? If so, you’ll benefit from a discussion with our Telarus bandwidth brokerage consultants. No charge for this service, of course. Take just a minute or so and describe your bandwidth needs in an easy online inquiry.

How Telarus GeoScan Finds Better Network Deals

The nation’s premier telecom brokerage service, Telarus, Inc., is introducing an advanced telecom carrier research tool to its family of proprietary software-based services. The new GeoScan enables Telarus consultants to better search and refine carrier service offerings for clients. By making the search and evaluation process more sophisticated, Telarus agents can ferret out the closest matching offers for a particular set of applications.

Why is such a tool needed? After all, the patented GeoQuote process already leads the industry in its ability to find and organize dozens of competing services from a plethora of carriers. What’s happened is an embarrassment of riches for Telarus. As the company’s reputation has grown in the industry, more and more carriers have requested to be included in the Telarus search results. On top of that, the telecom industry itself is undergoing a major transformation from switched circuit services to packet switched networks worldwide.

Within the last few years, the venerable T1 line, DS3 connection, and SONET/SDH fiber optic carriers have been challenged by Metro Ethernet services with scalable bandwidths from 3 Mbps through 10 Gbps. Include SIP trunking, wireless last mile links, and MPLS networks and you have an order of magnitude, at least, multiplication in the variety of service offerings available to businesses and organizations. It’s a deluge of options that can easily overwhelm the time-honored quote methods used by most telecom agents.

Telarus saw this coming when they refined their GeoQuote system to electronically connect with carrier databases and then assemble a list of appropriate quotes instantly. But a database connection can deliver a fire hose stream of data that’s hard to analyze at a glance for the best opportunities. That’s where the value of GeoScan shines. With this additional tool, Telarus agents can specify parameters such as the max MRC per location, the type of product and term for each circuit. That allows them to mine the data to find the particular service deals that are exact matches to a customer’s requirements.

Today’s business environment is more highly focused on productivity than ever before. That’s resulting in more sophisticated computer processes linking an ever increasing number of physical locations including overseas offices and factories. To keep up, telecom service providers have to step up their own processes to quickly analyze a prospective customer's needs and generate accurate quotes. They also need to be able to rapidly modify options to try “what ifs” and deal with a customer’s dynamically changing requirements.

This is where Telarus shines as the next generation of telecom brokers. They have the tools to tackle large and complex situations and the carrier relationships to offer the best-fit solutions available. This process scales from small businesses such as insurance or real estate offices up through major medical centers and Fortune 500 companies. The tools and the consultants can service any serious business opportunity that comes their way.

Could your company benefit from a complementary review of your voice, data and video networking needs? It’s free, of course, and you’ll likely be surprised by the variety of service options that you didn’t even know exist. Why not give it a try? Take just a minute and tell Telarus about your applications. It will be well worth your while.

XO Launches SIP for Multi-Location Businesses

XO Communications, a major competitive carrier, is now offering a solution for businesses with multiple locations to enjoy the benefits of enterprise VoIP throughout their far flung operations.

SIP trunking is fairly well established as a way to connect business locations to a telephone service provider for network efficiency and cost savings. XO expands on this idea with a multi-site SIP trunking solution. Instead of having each location separately connect to a remote service provider, the branch offices, warehouses, and other locations can now use their existing WAN (Wide Area Network) to connect SIP phones back to a home office IP-PBX system. Internal calls stay on the corporate network. Outside calls are transfered on a SIP trunk to XO, where they are terminated to the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network).

What does this mean for you as a business owner or network services manager? It’s an opportunity to reduce costs by reducing the number of PBX systems needed to support all your locations. There is also a cost advantage in eliminating local voice trunks to connect with customers and suppliers. If you are now maintaining separate voice and data networks at each location, you can merge them on to your existing WAN or use the XO MPLS IP-VPN solution as a cost effective voice and data WAN network.

A more subtle advantage to this arrangement is that each location will have access to the total trunk capacity of the organization rather than a local limitation. Locations can burst above their normal call capacity by sharing idle voice trunk capacity from other locations across the enterprise.

Once a multi-location or distributed enterprise SIP trunking strategy is in place, it becomes much easier to add additional locations. The basic infrastructure for handling enterprise wide telephony and connection to the outside world is already available. You simply need to add the telephone services for the new location incrementally.

This enterprise SIP solution is ideal for larger corporations or other organizations with many sites. But it could also work for any chain store, movie theater, gas station, quick serve restaurant or other franchise type business model where the home office manages voice and data for the individual stores. The efficiency of scale can offer considerable cost savings over “reinventing the wheel” at every location.

Do you have a multi-location business or distributed enterprise that might benefit from a cost savings through improving the efficiency of your voice and data networks? If so, it is certainly worth your while to take a closer look at enterprise VoIP solutions, including the new XO enterprise SIP offering.

Dedicated Internet Access Via Ethernet

Broadband Internet access is now almost universal at business locations large and small. But what type of Internet connection are you using? Did you know that your best option might now be Ethernet?

It’s true. Metro Ethernet Networks are not only growing by leaps and bounds, but they offer some valuable advantages for business users that choose this option. Perhaps the least known but most valuable advantage is the cost savings. With an Ethernet access solution, you may wind up paying half or less what it costs you for Internet bandwidth today. That’s a major cost savings without having to give up reliability or dedicated bandwidth levels.

How is dedicated Internet access different from any other kind of broadband service? Dedicated means that you have a certain bandwidth dedicated to your connection. For instance, if you lease a 5 Mbps connection then you can depend on having 5 Mbps available to you at all times. Shared access solutions, typical with consumer grade broadband services, have a pool of bandwidth that is shared among users. Can you afford to have your throughput stifled because someone down the street is downloading HD movies? Perhaps that’s acceptable at home, but in business where time is money? I don’t think so.

Another advantage of Ethernet connections is the wide range of bandwidth options available. Many provider offer everything from T1-level 1.5 Mbps through Gigabit Ethernet. The standard network speeds that run on your LAN are 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and 1000 Mbps. If you want transparency from the LAN through the WAN, you can match your connection speed to your local network speed. But if you want to save money and don’t need massive bandwidth right now, then pick a service level that gives you the throughput needed to support your applications. You can upgrade later. Ethernet services tend to be more scalable than traditional telecom services, so a simple upgrade request may be all it takes to double your bandwidth when you need to.

Dedicated Internet access via Ethernet also gives you a simple connection to your internal network. The handoff from your service provider is a standard Ethernet jack. The provider usually installs a managed router at your location so that they can monitor the link to their network operations center and catch problems before they impact your business.

Are you required to have fiber optic service to your building to take advantage of Ethernet Internet? Only if you need or want the higher service levels of Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps), Gigabit Ethernet (1000 Mbps) or 10 GigE (10,000 Mbps). For bandwidths up to the DS3 level of 45 Mbps and maybe even higher, you may qualify for delivery over already installed twisted pair copper bundles. Ethernet over Copper, or EoC, is a popular way to increase your business bandwidth while perhaps also enjoying a cost savings. You do need to be reasonably close to a carrier office to take advantage of this option, but it is generally available in high density business locations downtown and in suburbia.

Would switching to Metro Ethernet Network service be advantageous to your business? Check availability and pricing for Ethernet Internet access now.

Comprehensive Network Services From Telarus

Building and managing a network for your business can be problematic. For smaller businesses, it’s a distraction from the main focus of the company. For medium and larger operations, it can be a money pit and either a boost or a hinderance to productivity. What can really get painful is integrating your LAN and WAN networks to create one smooth running entity. Is there anything that can help?

You bet there is. There’s a service that can help regardless of whether you are a small office with no tech support to a major corporation with international operations. Imagine getting the hardware, software, installation, maintenance, operation, upgrades, plus connectivity from switched circuit analog telephone right on up to gigabit Ethernet, all from one source. Now, THAT’s comprehensive service!

The service I’m referring to is actually a family of services under one umbrella called Telarus. I first became associated with this company when they launched their groundbreaking “Shop for T1” service over 6 years ago. The revolutionary idea was that you could get T1 line pricing for your business location in under a minute on your Web browser. You still can. Just use the Shop for T1 real-time quote engine on our T1 Rex site.

Competitive T1 line pricing soon expanded to a wide variety of telecom bandwidth services that now encompass DS3, SONET fiber optic connections, Metro Ethernet, MPLS networks, wireless point to point and Dedicated Internet service, colocation servers, ISDN PRI, SIP trunking, and managed routers for everything.

When it comes to WAN services, Telarus offers one-stop shopping for nearly every business bandwidth service you can get. What’s more, being a telecom brokerage service means they can often offer you multiple competitive quotes for the service you need. The Telarus bandwidth consultants can help you weigh the tradeoffs among an often staggering amount of options so you can get the service that meets your business needs at the best price. The cost of all this to you? Zip. It’s free to any organization with serious professional requirements.

But you know that bandwidth is only one piece of the puzzle. How about all that internal infrastructure that keep the packets flowing?

This is where the complementary Telarus VAR Network service comes into play. What’s a VAR? That means Value Added Reseller. It’s an industry term for independent business telephone and computer network companies that specialize in sales and service. VARs will take your business requirements and offer you a package deal for PBX phone systems, routers, network switches, fiber optic cabling, copper wiring, connections and whatever else it takes to build your telephone, data or converged network.

VARs often offer turnkey solutions that include both the equipment and installation. Since the VAR Network is part of the Telarus family, participating VARs also have access to the complete range of bandwidth solutions that Telarus offers. This gives you the advantage of one-stop shopping and a single point of contact for any issues that arise. Accessing the VAR Network is as simple as entering a quick summary of your business needs using the VAR Network online request. That triggers the automated database to alert qualified VARs in your area to contact you for complete details.

Can you do any better than this? I doubt it. If you are not familiar with these Telarus services, go ahead and give them a try. The cost to you is zero, the time required is minimal, and the cost savings can be way more than you might think.

Expand Your Telecom Services Line Card

This type of line card is not the one you plug into your channel bank or PBX system. It's the list of products and services you offer your clients as a telephone or computer networking sales company. Expanding your line card offers more sales opportunities with prospective and existing customers. But there's usually a price to pay. You wind up increasing equipment inventory, paying a franchise fee or committing to minimum monthly sales volumes. If only there was a way to expand your line card with offerings that your customers would really use, without incurring any costs or volume commitments on your part.

There is such a way to generate extra business without extra expense, but it is a narrowly targeted opportunity. You'll need to have an already established operation in the professional telephone or enterprise network field. This could be a bricks and mortar business communications company. It also applies to independent professionals who act as technical consultants to business clients. If that describes your situation, there's a win-win situation you need to know about.

The opportunity is in wireline telecom services that your clients are already using but not paying you for. They may contract with you to buy handsets,IP PBX systems, network switches and routers. You might also be asked to install and expand the facilities cabling and train the staff. But when it comes to telecom services, that's for somebody else. Many businesses just automatically call the local telephone company and wind up paying much more than they have to. Others seek out local companies that sell competitive services, but find that they are limited in what they can get and the prices are still high. Why don't they buy from you and get the best deal?

The quick answer is that you don't sell telecom line services. You don't have the expertise or the contacts and probably wince at getting involved with the contractual paperwork that you expect to be extensive. But what if somebody made it quick and easy to derive monthly commission checks from voice and data services that would also save your customers money? What if somebody else had the expertise, had the contacts, and specialized in sheparding the sale from requirements through activation and follow-up service? Would that work for you?

That organization is Telarus, Inc. They're a major master agency representing over a dozen national and regional telecommunications service providers. They have the tools and relationships to find the best deal for your customers and they know how to close a sale. They need you to bring them new customers and they're willing to share the profits.

You are invited to register your company as a VAR Partner. VAR meaning Value Added Reseller. The VAR Network gives you a way to easily enter requirements for your client in a matter of minutes. The suite of services offered includes T1 and bonded T1 lines, ISDN PRI telephone trunks, VoIP SIP Trunking, Integrated voice and data lines, point to point connectivity, Satellite bandwidth, and Metro Ethernet with up to Gigabit per second line rates. As a master agency, they can get the best rates and compare and contrast service providers to come up with the best solution.

What's it take to be part of the VAR Network? Just a few minutes of your time to register your company and participate in an interview to complete your profile. Once activated, you'll have a back office tool that will allow you to enter leads for line services that your customers require. For each one that closes, you'll get a monthly residual commission that lasts as long as the line contract and may be renewed. Many customers means many commissions that can add up to a sizable monthly check.

Another bonus feature is that you'll also get leads from the VAR Network based on your business profile. These will be warm leads from current and prospective Telarus customers who need equipment and services beyond telecom lines. It's one stop shopping for the client and potentially more business for you.

Why not take a few minutes right now and see what the VAR Network has to offer?

Telarus, the New Face of Telecom Sales

Disruptive technology is reforming the telecommunications field. Wireless is disrupting the 100 year old wireline business. VoIP is disrupting the 50 year old digital voice trunking business. Competitive fiber optic carriers are disrupting the stranglehold of incumbent phone companies on metro and long haul data circuits. Ethernet and IP network cores are blurring the distinction between local and wide area networks.

Despite this revolution in technology, what hasn't changed much is the sales and marketing process for business telecommunications services. It's largely parochial, consisting of isolated channels with sluggish inquiry and price quote systems. To call it Web 1.0 would be generous. But what's wrong with that? After all, augmenting telephone, paper and fax based systems with online inquiry request forms, email communications, and brochure Web sites seems like just the enhancement needed to keep up with changing times.

It did seem that way, until someone came along and completely blew the equipment rack doors off the staid old telecom sales and marketing process. In the last five years, Telarus, Inc., has totally obliterated a century of incremental improvement in the industry. Rather than cut the inquiry-to-price-quote time on a T1 line from a few days to a few hours, they reduced it to a few seconds. Instead of bolstering the carrier-by-carrier response to a customer inquiry, they merged all the responses into a single report that compares similar services, say ISDN PRI trunks, by price for the same service from all participating carriers.

An overworked IT manager can get an automatic price quote for a triple-bonded T1 data line at 3 AM in under a minute, including the time needed to enter the business location and number. That same manager can call a toll free number anytime 24/7 to discuss WAN expansion needs or compare telephone trunking options with a technical and sales consultant.

What has Telarus done that others didn't? A lot of the answer is in rethinking the business process with an eye to automating as much as possible and providing rapidly responding human links for everything else. The core of their pricing system is a patented software system called GeoQuote. It connects directly to carrier databases to perform the engineering and cost calculations needed for the most popular T1 voice and data line services. They also broke up the marketing team into dedicated sales people who work directly with carriers and customers on a real-time basis, and dedicated marketing agents who focus on bringing in qualified business leads.

Re-engineering the traditional wireline sales and marketing process would have been innovation enough, but Telarus has gone on to expand the GeoQuote system to support Ethernet WAN services that don't touch the incumbent telcos. Prospective customers can enter their building address and get a map of the nearest fiber lit buildings and carrier POPs with distance listings. Once again, this automated system is available for both business hours and second or third shift inquiries. Response time is easily under a minute and phone support is always available for consultations, if desired.

Not satisfied with revolutionizing carrier services, Telarus has gone on to re-invent the equipment sales and services marketplace with a social networking approach called the VAR Network. Also totally automated, this system allows customers to enter form-based inquiries which are routed to member VARs (Value Added Resellers) within the appropriate geographical footprint nationwide. Once isolated business telephone and network equipment vendors can now tie into a system that feeds them warm leads via email from businesses in their service footprint that need the products and services they offer. Dealers also have the entire Telarus wireline marketing system at their disposal so that they can add T1, Ethernet and other bandwidth services to their line cards without having to develop in-house expertise in this field.

Little wonder, then, that Telarus has won numerous awards from carriers impressed with the sales volumes they bring in. Now Telarus has been just been announced as a Phone+ Top 50 Channel Program winner. All of this makes us beam with pride to be part of the Shop For T1, Shop For Ethernet and VAR Partner Network programs that are the Telarus marketing juggernaut.