Copper First, Then Fiber Bandwidth Solution

What do you do when you really need to get your business connected, but fiber optic service installation just isn’t going to happen soon enough? One option is to adopt a two-stage process that gets you going now and then steps up to the bandwidth you really need when it's available. The key is utilizing two different technologies to take advantage of their strengths.

Fiber optic bandwidth, either SONET or Ethernet, will get you the bandwidth you need for any conceivable application. The low end starts around 50 or 100 Mbps and goes up to at least 1 Gbps, with many locations eligible for 10 Gbps Ethernet (10 GigE) or OC-192 SONET (10 Gbps).

Copper bandwidth, either T-Carrier or Ethernet, will get you the bandwidth you need much faster. That bandwidth, though, is going to be a lot slower than what you can get with fiber. T1 lines are reasonably priced, available almost anywhere, and can be installed in a matter of weeks. The base bandwidth is 1.5 Mbps. Not enough to even consider? Then multiply that bandwidth by bonding additional T1 lines. You can get 12 Mbps over T1 by bonding 8 T1 lines together to act as one big bandwidth pipe.

An alternative is Ethernet over Copper. This service uses the same twisted pair copper telco lines as T1, but has a more efficient modulation scheme. You can easily get 10, 20 or 30 Mbps using 8 copper pair. EoC technology trades off bandwidth and distance, unlike T1 which is 1.5 Mbps no matter how far you are from the central office. If you are within a mile from the CO and the office is properly equipped, you may be able to get 50 to 100 Mbps Ethernet over Copper. Those speeds are starting to get competitive with OC-3 (155 Mbps) and Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps).

If fiber is what you really want, you could be looking at months to complete the installation. That’s especially true if the metro fiber is running down one side of the highway and you are on the other side. Or, if the nearest fiber connection is blocks away in the city. It’s much faster if your building is already “lit” for fiber optic service, even if you are not a subscriber. Adding customers to an already existing fiber installation is relatively easy. It’s also reasonably fast and easy if there is a fiber lit building next door.

You’ve got the idea that fiber installations aren’t a given for any particular business location. Not yet, anyway. Some estimates are that less than 25% of all business buildings are lit for fiber optic service. On the other hand, nearly 100% of all business buildings are already being served with copper telco lines. Most often these are multi-pair bundles installed for multiple line telephone service. Unused pairs can be quickly pressed into service for Ethernet over Copper or T1 line service. After all, they are already hooked up at both ends of the cable run.

With that in mind, here’s a two step solution that I’ve seen work when a business needs both high bandwidth and fast installation. What you do is work with a carrier that has both copper and fiber technologies available. That’s fairly common now. Have them install bonded T1 or Ethernet over Copper at the highest bandwidth they can quickly install. At the same time, place an order for fiber optic service at the bandwidth you really need. The trick is to get an agreement that you can drop the copper service without penalty once your fiber service is turned up.

By working out this type of arrangement, you may get as much as half the bandwidth you need on a fairly quick schedule. By the time you get used to doing business on the copper lines, your fiber will be cut-in and it will seem like someone opened the bandwidth floodgates. You’ll only have to pay for one service at a time, although you might think about it and keep the copper connection as a backup for your fiber if the budget permits.

Do you have a situation that needs special consideration for connectivity? There may be more options than you think. Get consultation and bandwidth option prices and provisioning times now.

SIP over MPLS for Enterprise VoIP

SIP Trunking is widely popular for smaller businesses who can save on their monthly telecom bill by getting both their telephone and Internet broadband services on a single integrated line. SIP Trunking is also a cost saver for large corporate headquarters or call centers that need many outside phone lines and already have converged voice and data LANs. But what about the organization with multiple locations?

The answer may well be SIP over MPLS. You may already have an MPLS network in place for sharing data files between branch offices and headquarters. Cost tradeoffs almost always give the advantage to an MPLS network over a suite of point to point data lines of equivalent bandwidth. With MPLS, you only need a last mile connection to each of your locations. As the name implies, these are point to point pipes measuring just thousands of feet to the nearest central office. The major distance spans are handled by the fiber optic core of the MPLS network.

There are also security advantages with MPLS versus IP networking, such as the Internet. MPLS uses proprietary labels to direct traffic, not the IP header information that is often the target of malicious activity. The network is privately operated and not accessible by the general public. You need to be a contracted customer with defined locations and connections between them that are managed by the network operator.

What you may not realize is that MPLS networks can handle voice traffic as well as data. The name MPLS actually stands for Multi-Protocol Label Switching. The network can handle nearly any protocol and is perfect for packet switched services of all types. For larger organizations, MPLS provides the WAN connections you need to link a few or many converged voice and data networks.

Do you currently have data connections between your sites but stand-alone analog or PRI telephone lines at each? That works, but you are probably paying toll charges to call between offices. There’s no economy of scale if each facility is relatively small and in a different city or state than the others. By consolidating your telephony, data lines and perhaps broadband connectivity with a single provider you can likely realize a considerable cost savings while maintaining call quality and network speed.

The MPLS labels or tags do their magic by not only specifying packet destinations, but also class of service. This keeps data file transfers from damaging the much more fragile real-time demands of voice and video. If you have company wide VoIP now and conversations get distorted or calls drop when the network gets congested, traffic engineering is what you need. MPLS networks are engineered with committed rates for your services, as well as those of other network customers. That ensures that you have the bandwidth you purchase regardless of what anyone else is doing. Contrast that commitment with the best-effort information services, such as the Internet, where performance is all over the map.

With SIP over MPLS, your telephone calls within the company stay on-net and off the public switched telephone network. You don’t pay toll charges for office calls that stay on your network regardless of whether they are from desks twenty feet apart or branch offices thousands of miles apart. It’s even possible to include international locations on the same MPLS network to truly integrate your company communications. When calls go off-net to outside landlines or mobile phones, those terminations are handled by your SIP Trunking service provider. Since the network is converged, there is no need for a separate telephone network and your support needs may also be reduced.

Does your organization have multiple locations that could be more efficiently run by a voice and data MPLS network? Get pricing for MPLS Network Services quickly and easily to compare with your current bills.

Ethernet DS3 Bandwidth Comparison

Business bandwidth requirements have been steadily increasing since T1 lines became standard for dedicated Internet access and private point to point connections. If you are a current user of DS3 bandwidth services or considering an upgrade, you’ll be interested in how your various WAN bandwidth options compare.

The traditional high bandwidth network connection is DS3, a 45 Mbps service. This is also the speed of a T3 line. Today, most DS3 services are provisioned over fiber optic cables with a copper handoff at the demarcation point. In some cases, you can get DS3 brought in over coaxial copper or wireless transport.

DS3 is popular for dedicated Internet access in larger organizations, video transport, links to offsite backup and storage and smaller ISPs. DS3 telephony bundles hundreds of outside phone lines for large companies and call centers.

The competitor to DS3 is Carrier Ethernet, especially Metro Ethernet in larger cities. Ethernet services offer standardized speeds of 10, 100 and 1000 Mbps to match the common LAN speeds. But most Ethernet providers also offer other increments in 1, 5 or 10 Mbps steps. A 50 Mbps Ethernet service provides similar bandwidth to DS3.

So how do you choose one service over another? If you need the channelization of traditional TDM services for telephony or other applications, DS3 already meets this standard. It is easily multiplexed and demultiplexed to interface with T1 lines on the low end to OCx SONET fiber optic services on the high end.

Most networking applications are now packet based and more easily interfaced to Ethernet WAN services than legacy telco standards. But since the interface circuitry is generally an off the shelf router module, it may not matter all that much. If you go with a managed router, the service provider will take care of providing the proper customer premises equipment and monitoring the line and interfaces for proper operation.

To muddy the waters a bit more, fractional DS3 services are available that offer less than 45 Mbps for a lower monthly lease cost. You can often get the bandwidth you need by bonding T1 lines together to create increments of 1.5 Mbps up to around 10 or 12 Mbps bandwidth. Or you can get fractional DS3 bandwidth at the speeds where T1 bonding becomes impractical. On the Ethernet side, you can specify nearly any bandwidth from 1 Mbps up to 10 Gbps and often upgrade to higher levels with just a phone call to your service provider.

The fact is that DS3 and Ethernet bandwidths compare favorably. Which you choose for your particular application will most often be determined by which service offers the best pricing for your particular business location. How can you find that out? The easiest way is to check DS3 and Ethernet prices and availability using the GeoQuote online search tool.