How Managed SD-WAN Can Help Your Business

By: John Shepler

Digital transformation is a wonderful thing for business… until you run into snags trying to implement it. One of those unanticipated snags is the need for WAN bandwidth connections far beyond what you ever thought you’d need. You can slug it out trying to make everything work and not break the bank. Or, you can enlist the help of managed SD-WAN to make your connectivity something you don’t even think about anymore.

How Did Connectivity Get to Be Such a Big Deal?
Chances are that when your business was primarily bricks and mortar, you installed a broadband connection for when you needed to access the Internet and that was plenty good enough. It works for point of sale. It works for online ordering. It’s even good enough for a brochure-style web site so that potential customers can easily find you.

Then the transformation began. First it was VoIP phone to replace the old analog landlines. Then came online ordering for both you and your customers, followed by automatic restocking, customer relationship management, financial and tax accounting in the cloud, lead generation, online advertising management, factory planning and on, and on and on. Under the weight of too many software packages to keep track of, eventually some these processes relocated to cloud servers, with some still in your local data center.

That good old broadband service that got you started with the Internet is no longer satisfactory. Even upping the speed as much as you can still doesn’t make it work right. Phone calls get garbled, but not all the time. Workflow slows to a crawl, but not all the time. This inconsistency is driving everybody crazy. You never know when things will zip along seamlessly or when it will all slow to a crawl for a few seconds or a few minutes or the entire afternoon. You need better and you can get it.

The Expensive Solution: Build Your Own WAN Network
You can avoid many of the vagaries of the Internet, especially on shared broadband connections, by building a private network for your operations. This means getting everything off the Internet that you can. All connections to branch offices, warehouses, factories, and any cloud providers can be made with dedicated private lines. As you might expect, each line costs plenty and you’ll need lots of them.

MPLS networks with guaranteed performance levels can reduce the cost when operations are spread over long distances. MPLS is a privately run Wide Area Network with a special protocol that makes it more secure than the Internet. The general public also has no access. It’s business subscribers only and they are only admitted if the network can handle the traffic. For multiple locations, MPLS is less expensive than private lines, but still pricey.

Managed SD-WAN Is More Cost Efficient
SD-WAN stands for Software Defined Wide Area Networking. The software defined aspect is where the savings come from. The managed aspect takes the burden of running all of it off your back. If done correctly, Managed SD-WAN makes your connectivity invisible. You don’t have to worry about it. It just works.

Here’s briefly how SD-WAN does its magic. The trick is to use the least cost connections that will get the job done, but make sure that quality doesn’t suffer. Take the Internet. The least costly connections are shared bandwidth, like cable broadband and wireless, but these are also the most likely to get congested and vary in performance. The most costly are dedicated private lines, but these may be wasted on low priority traffic that doesn’t need low latency and jitter and isn’t bothered by a bit of congestion. If you aren’t using a private line, it’s just idling and you are paying for it anyway.

SD-WAN needs at least two connections in order to make traffic decisions. These can be a mix of cable broadband, Ethernet fiber optic WAN, fixed wireless access, satellite broadband, LTE or 5G cellular, MPLS network and even older wireline services such as T1, PRI or DS3.

What SD-WAN does is continuously monitor each connection’s performance so that it knows the available bandwidth, latency, jitter, and packet loss on a moment by moment basis. When you have traffic in the form of packets, it notes the quality of service you require and then picks the best connection for those packets. Phone conversations and video conferences need very stable connections to work well, so they get a higher priority and QOS requirement. Backups to off-side storage aren’t so demanding and can live with a lower quality link. Other processes are assigned to the right connections for their needs.

Better Performance, Less Cost, Fewer Headaches
Managed SD-WAN is handled by your provider so that you don’t have to worry about day to day connectivity issues. You add locations or policies as you need to. The supplier figures out how to program the system to make everything work. It’s all transparent to you and the cost is considerably lower than trying to optimize a morass of connections yourself.

Are you frustrated with your current connections enough to want an easier and more reliable solution? If so, get a competitive quote for your needs by one or more SD-WAN providers and see if they can save you money and improve performance at the same time.

Ethernet Better Than a T3 Line

By: John Shepler

Not long ago, T3 voice and data lines were a mainstay of medium and larger size businesses. Today, that once impressive 45 Mbps doesn’t seem all that fast. Our business applications demand more like 100 Mbps or 1,000 Mbps. Medical campuses, design firms and video production houses are more interested in 10 Gbps and looking beyond even that. If you still have a T3 line contract, you may well find that you can get more bandwidth for the same or less cost right now.

What is a T3 Line?
The T3 designation is part of the T-Carrier system developed by Bell Labs in the post-war tech boom. It was originally designed to transport large numbers of simultaneous telephone conversations and still fills that role for some larger businesses and call centers. Prior to T-Carrier, telecom was based on analog technology. T1 and T3 changed that to digital and started us down the path to the Internet we have today.

T3 is specified at 45 Mbps, enough to transport 672 digitized phone calls. That makes it a lot more efficient than creating a bundle of 672 separate twisted pair copper wires as telephone lines. T3 was once transported through large coaxial cables or microwave relay stations. More recently, it has been bundled on SONET fiber optic cables and called DS3. DS3 is the data format that runs on the physical T3 line, so DS3 and T3 pretty much mean the same thing.

The channelized version of T3 is used to carry those 672 phone calls, each in a separate channel or time slot in the data stream. For data transmission, the unchannelized version of T3 carries 45 Mbps worth of data, including the familiar packet switched networks.

Ethernet Replaces T3
Most all communications these days done over digital networks and originates in the most popular protocol, Ethernet. Even telephones have switched to an Ethernet interface so they can hook to the same network as computers instead of having separate wiring. This is called VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol. With computers and phones on the same network, it makes sense to transport everything over Ethernet on both the local and wide area networks.

This is exactly what is happening. Carrier Ethernet, the long haul version, is replacing other telecom protocols such as T-Carrier for copper line and SONET for fiber optic. It’s pretty much going all Fiber optic Ethernet now. This is often referred to as Ethernet WAN for Wide Area Network.

Cost and Performance Advantages of Ethernet
The first advantage of long haul Ethernet transmission is that it is directly compatible with most all company networks. You simply plug the Carrier’s Ethernet into your router. There is no need for separate protocol conversion boxes or modules as required to support T1 and T3 lines.

A second advantage is that Ethernet is easily scalable. You can run at any speed up to the limit of the physical port from the Carrier. T-Carrier and SONET protocols were designed for specific speeds and needed to have hardware replaced to upgrade. The bandwidth of your line is set by the Carrier based on your contract. You can easily increase or decrease that as your needs change and it will be reflected in your billing.

Perhaps the biggest incentive to switch to Ethernet WAN service is pricing. You may be shocked at how much your can save by switching from an older telecom service to Ethernet WAN. Ethernet is almost always lower in cost on a per-Mbps basis. Sometimes the difference can be a factor of two or more.

Much of the cost savings comes from a more competitive environment for fiber optic Ethernet versus the old telco services with one provider. There may be several companies offering Ethernet bandwidth for your business at competitive rates.

Fiber is also more available than ever before. The upgrade of cellphone towers to 4G LTE and 5G has demanded a rapid expansion of fiber optic networks. Copper is yesterday’s news and, more and more, it is being left to rust in the ground. Fiber and wireless are the future for networking.

Do you have legacy T3 or DS3 service and want to see if you can get a better deal? That’s easy. Just check prices and availability of Ethernet WAN service for your business address. Chances are good that you can get more bandwidth for the same or less cost than what you pay now.

Ethernet WAN is the New SONET

By: John Shepler

High speed communications lines progressed from copper analog to copper digital to fiber optic digital over most of the last century. The technology that drives fiber has also evolved from time sliced synchronous multiplexing to packet based protocols, mirroring the transition to networked computing for nearly every business. While older SONET telco lines still provide effective connections, there are real advantages to be gained by upgrading to Ethernet WAN, the newer technology for fiber optic service.

It Started With Really Fast Phone Lines
SONET, which stands for Synchronous Optical NETwork, is a phone company invention that was developed to bundle or multiplex thousands of individual phone calls onto an optical fiber for long distance transmission. To make operations easier, SONET was made backwards compatible with legacy T1 service that does exactly the same thing with 24 calls over two twisted copper pair… in other words, ordinary telephone line.

SONET allowed the phone companies to bundle T1 line into DS3 lines into OC3 fiber lines and demultiplex or unbundle them anywhere along the way. Everything was compatible down to the single telephone channel.

SONET to Link Computers
So, how did SONET come to support computer networking? The protocol had to be converted between SONET’s time division multiplexing and Ethernet’s packet switching. That was accomplished using protocol conversion on a plug-in module. To the user, It made no difference what was going on under the hood. Packets would go in one router and come out another miles or thousands of miles away.

SONET was developed for fiber and all of the early fiber optic links for computer networks were connected using one of the SONET levels. OC3 was the lowest speed at 155 Mbps. This was the first fiber service that most corporations ordered when they outgrew their T1 and T3 lines. Each increase in speed required swapping out an adaptor module for the particular SONET level.

In fact, the Internet was built on SONET. SONET rings, which offer redundant paths, formed the core of the Internet as it grew. Internet service providers would connect via SONET and then divvy up the bandwidth for multiple 64Kbps dial-up modems or, later, DSL or Cable broadband modems.

The Ethernet Revolution
Ethernet, developed by the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the mid to late 1970’s, grew to become the dominant networking protocol, thanks in no small part to the proliferation of the personal computer at the same time. Most small and large users adopted Ethernet, as adaptor cards, cabling, hubs and routers became more and more affordable. Every PC soon came with an RJ-45 Ethernet jack as standard equipment and peripherals, such as printers, did the same for compatibility.

Once Ethernet became the de-facto networking standard and computer data traffic greatly exceeded voice traffic, it started to make sense to just adopt Ethernet for Wide Area Networks as well as Local Area Networks. When business phones became digitized and used VoIP to connect on the same network as the computers, the need for a separate voice network faded away.

Another factor that has moved WAN services from SONET to Ethernet is the rise of competitive network service providers independent of the telephone companies. Since these companies had no legacy analog phone service to support, they could simply focus on offering Ethernet connections to their customers in competition to the telcos.

By this time the original Ethernet protocol has been expanded to provide technical specifications for Carrier Ethernet, which is the same as LAN Ethernet but extended to support the MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) and WAN (Wide Area Network).

What Ethernet WAN Has to Offer
You remember that SONET has distinct service levels, each with it’s own bandwidth and specific adaptor requirements. Ethernet doesn’t have this limitation. Instead, you have an Ethernet port with a maximum bandwidth, say 1 Gbps. It will support any bandwidth up to the max limit of 1 Gbps. You can order 100 Mbps service today and easily upgrade to 500 Mbps or 1 Gbps later. Only if you want a service level above 1 Gbps, will you need to have a higher capacity port installed. This process is so seamless that many providers will let you change service levels at will by logging into your online account.

Ethernet services tend to be less expensive than SONET. Usually, much less expensive. You pay for the service level you want, be it 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps, 10 Gbps, and so on. Remember you can change this easily after you have service installed and your bill will be adjusted to the new level you select.

Since there are many, many competing Ethernet MAN and WAN service providers, pricing per Mbps has dropped rapidly over the years and continues to do so. Some of the service providers are the traditional telephone companies, but with much improved pricing. Others are independent carriers serving regional, national, or international areas. They can also provide excellent customer service, high reliability, and very good deals on bandwidth.

There are usually two types of service you’ll be interested in. One is a dedicated connection to the Internet at a bandwidth you select. The other is a point to point dedicated private line that is just like having a very long Ethernet cable connecting two LANs separated by many miles. These are useful for interconnecting main offices and branch offices, warehouse, manufacturing centers and so on with maximum performance and privacy. Another popular application is a direct connection between your offices and your cloud service provider. This avoids the vagaries of Internet performance and makes the cloud seem like it is right down the hall.

Perhaps you still have legacy SONET service that was installed years ago. It’s been working fine so no one has paid much attention. This would be a good time to see if competing Ethernet WAN services can give you more bandwidth for the same budget or offer a considerable cost savings if you are happy with the bandwidth level you have now. It doesn’t cost anything to look, so why not see what’s available?

Are T1 Lines Still Used?

By: John Shepler

In these days of gigabit fiber optic connections and cable broadband, it may seem quaint to talk about twisted copper pair lines for WAN networking service or Internet access. Yet, the venerable T1 line is still in use today. OK, but why would anyone choose this legacy technology option?

Who Needs a T1 Line?
In an ideal world, we’d be swimming in choices when it comes to networking offerings. Some people actually are, but you’ll find them in the commercial districts of major U.S. cities. Every networking provider wants to serve New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles. How about out where the cows moo, well beyond the incorporated limits of podunk towns that dot the countryside? Any takers?

No, not so much. The problem is that we, as a country, haven’t accepted Internet access as a basic utility yet. Time was when electricity was in the same category. It was considered a luxury item. By 1936 it was obvious that standard AC electrical power was of strategic importance to the country and should be distributed everywhere. Thus, the Rural Electrification Act brought power lines into every farm, ranch and rural homestead. Everybody got the same quality of electrical service regardless of where they were located.

Fast forward to today. Broadband Internet access is still widely considered to be an optional service for businesses and home use despite the fact that you can hardly access a government service, take a school course or run any sort of business without getting online. So, you either pony up for whatever service is available in your area, do everything on your phone, or settle for shared options like the public library or free WiFi hotspots.

How T1 Fits In
T1 lines are no screaming broadband service by any stretch of the imagination. But they work and work well, often in places where even wireless service is unavailable.

How’s that possible? it’s by design. The original purpose of the T1 Carrier System was to transport multiple telephone conversations on a single digital line. That’s right. It’s a phone company invention that was intended for phone company office use. What T1 did was replace up to 24 telephone wires strung on poles between offices with a pair of lines that carried all 24 calls at once without them interfering with each other.

As a telephone company standard, T1 was designed to use ordinary twisted pair wiring just like plain old telephone service. it was also designed with repeaters spaced every mile or so to boost the signal so it could reach as far as needed.

When the Internet came along decades later, T1 was already heavily in use for phone service. The local phone companies began to offer it to businesses as an upgrade to the dial-up Internet access of the time. T1 was considered broadband in the ’90’s. Instead of carrying multiple phone calls, a T1 line provides 1.5 Mbps of always-on and dedicated bandwidth. There’s no competition with other users and no busy signals.

T1 Lines Today
Just as you can still get landline telephone, you can still get a T1 line installed for your business in many locations. Some businesses have multiple phone lines coming into a local PBX phone system on a T1 line set up as ISDN PRI. At the same time, they may have another T1 line for Internet access or a T1 private point to point connection between two locations.

A few things have changed over the years. T1 is no longer the broadband of choice for most business users with other options simply because the bandwidth is so limited. Prices have come down dramatically from eye popping levels to something much more reasonable, although that is starting to reverse in areas that are phasing out T1. Indeed, this legacy service still works great but is slowly being replaced by fiber optic lines and microwave fixed wireless.

What you do get for your monthly T1 lease is a rock solid line at 1.5 Mbps in both the up and down directions. These lines are highly reliable and quickly repaired if something goes wrong. That may not sound like much bandwidth, but it can easily work for modest retail or office operations that need credit card verification, email, updates to simple websites, inventory updates, ordering, and casual web browsing.

Note that Point to Point T1 lines offer an interconnection that avoids the public Internet and the congestion and security issues that come with that giant network. You get a private, dedicated, symmetrical link between your locations that's like extending your own network over long distances.

Where can you get a T1 line installed? Do you have a landline phone? Can you get one? Chances are the same location can still have T1 line service installed.

Alternatives to T1 Lines
These days, cable broadband is pushing farther and farther out of town to serve industrial parks and residential subdivisions. Fiber optic providers are also expanding their service areas as they extend their cable to more remote cell towers. Fiber prices have come down dramatically, as service areas have increased.

Speaking of cellular towers, most areas have at least some cell service and 4G LTE broadband, if not 5G. You can get a specialized cellular modem designed to connect to your computers or WiFI router at a reasonable price. The companies that offer this service have plans with generous usage limits available.

Some rural areas have what are called WISPs or Wireless Internet Service Providers that serve the underserved locations that are too few and far apart to attract wired connections. A WISP is like a very large WIFI hotspot and some use the same frequencies. Most often, you’ll need to install an outside antenna and point it at the WISP tower to get connected. When you do, you’ll get fairly high speed broadband.

In business districts, fixed microwave wireless offers bandwidths and latency similar to fiber but without the fiber. Instead, a small dish on your roof points at the service provier's tower to deliver a highly reliable high speed connection. This is similar to WISPs but can deliver dedicated rather than shared bandwidth.

Satellite broadband is also widely available just about anywhere with a clear view of the southern sky and some electrical power. This is true broadband service, with plans that can accommodate most business users. It’s a shared service, so your bandwidth will depend on how many others are accessing the same “bird”. There’s also the matter of a half-second delay or latency because the satellite is in geostationary orbit far above the Earth. Many business users think satellite broadband works just fine for their needs, especially with the newer higher power and higher throughput satellites that have become available recently.

So, is a T1 line still the right solution for your network access needs? Or is one of the fiber or wireless solutions a better choice? Before you decide, find out just what bandwidth service options and pricing are available for your particular business location.

Will SD-WAN Eat MPLS?

By John Shepler

SD-WAN has become a hot service recently. It is often touted as an alternative or replacement for MPLS networks. Just comparing costs makes a compelling argument that SD-WAN may do to MPLS what MPLS did to Frame Relay. Is this really the case? Let’s take a look.

What Problem Are We Trying to Solve?
The issue is networking, specifically computer networking. Most of us have some need for computers as part of our job. That could be a traditional desktop computer, a laptop in a hotel room or conference center, or perhaps a tablet or or cellphone while we move around. It could also be a point of sale terminal, an industrial process controller, a 3D printer or just a laser printer in the office. All of these things need to be hooked together, or networked, or they just plain won’t work.

It’s actually worse than that. Remember when you bought software in a box? Not much software is sold that way anymore. Now everything is apps and they are delivered and updated virtually. The really heavy lifting software doesn’t even reside on your device. It’s at a remote data site or vendor’s platform. Without a connection, you can’t even run the application.

Private Lines: The Old Gold Standard
If you want to stay in complete control of every aspect of your network, you build your own for your exclusive use. Most companies do that internally. It’s when you leave the building that you have a problem. You need to hand off your packets to a service provider, or carrier, to transport them to another location.

The closest thing to stringing the wires yourself is to order private point-to-point circuits. T1, DS3 & OCx SONET are the traditional PTP circuits. More modern replacements are Ethernet over Copper and Ethernet over Fiber. All of these are still extremely popular with high performance, high security and high reliability. Cost and provisioning time are really the only issues.

MPLS Networks Save Money and Go Worldwide
You can approach the quality and security of private point to point lines using MPLS networks. MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching is a replacement for the old-timey Frame Relay networks that were popular when high speed was 64 Kbps. It’s a privately run wide area network that handles multiple customers at the same time without them being aware of each other. Since the core network is shared, the cost is lower than running private lines to every satellite office you want to connect. Plus they’re already built-out, so you only need to provision an access line for each location.

MPLS networks are very popular for connecting companies with multiple business locations in the US or worldwide. Once again, they offer high performance, high security and high reliability. Also once again, cost can be an issue.

Why Not The Internet?
The lure of the Internet is strong. It’s the lowest cost of any method to reach anyone, anywhere in the world. However, there are issues.

Security is an obvious one. Just read the headlines any day and you’ll feel insecure about being online. Encryption, especially IPsec and SSL, make the risk acceptable for e-commerce and banking. However, performance is variable and out of your control. Latency, Jitter and packet loss are not only variable, they’re unpredictable. Companies running high performance business-critical applications wince at the thought of trusting their livelihood to the public Internet. Even so, the cost is really, really attractive compared with other solutions.

The Hybrid Network Compromise
Fact is, most companies need a broadband Internet connection for communications with suppliers and customers and access to the nearly unlimited news and information available online. A popular compromise is to use the MPLS network for internal communications and the Internet to go outside in a hybrid network arrangement.

Another use of the Internet is as a backup in case your private network fails. That happens enough with line cuts that it has a name: backhoe fade. If the broadband connection is just there on standby, all that bandwidth goes to waste most of the time.

SD-WAN Makes the Internet Suitable
The Software Defined Network (SDN) was invented to reduce the time and labor required to run complex networks. It “virtualizes” the network so you don’t have to deal with all the complexity of so many diverse routers, switches and appliances spread throughout the physical network.

SD-WAN or Software Defined Wide Area Network does the same thing for outside networks to connect far flung locations. SD-WAN manages multiple connections according to rules that you set up through a control panel. Once running it automatically directs traffic and works around problems without you having to get involved.

For instance, the SD-WAN can make use of Cable broadband, DSL, T1 lines, MPLS networks, LTE wireless, Satellite links and whatever else you have. It will monitor the characteristics of each path, in both the upload and download directions, for bandwidth congestion, packet loss, jitter and latency. It decides what path to use for each packet based on the instantaneous characteristics of the paths available. These can vary all over the place and change in milliseconds. You couldn’t possible keep up with all of this manually, but the SD-WAN system can stay on top of it.

With SD-WAN, you don’t need to waste the perfectly good bandwidth of your backup connection when the main link is running. SD-WAN will combine the bandwidths and make sure that the more critical apps, like VoIP and UC voice and video run on the best paths available and less critical file transfers use the lower performance paths.

Companies are finding that even having two diverse Internet broadband connections can give excellent performance compared with a single broadband service as long as they are being managed by SD-WAN. Two broadband services can easily cost only a fraction of even one private line for the same or less bandwidth. The core of the Internet usually runs pretty well. It’s the access connections, like WiFi and cable or DSL, that generally get flakey. Using SD-WAN to watch and select the best path at any given instant can dramatically improve the performance of the “virtualized” WAN network.

Is SD-WAN right for your business? You’d be remiss if you didn’t at least take a closer look at what connections are available and at what price for your particular business locations. Remember that you don’t have to go 100% on the Internet. SD-WAN will manage private lines, MPLS networks, satellite and wireless connections as well.

Telecom Providers Build Their Own Clouds

Just as cloud companies are beginning to mature as businesses, Internet service providers and other carriers have decided to build out their own cloud offerings. Now, how does a harried IT manager or small business owner sort through all the various opportunities?

It’s important to remember that we are in the early days of the cloud. Like all new technologies, this one has a maturity or learning curve. We are on the early part of the upward slope. What that means is a lot of activity from a lot of players. You can expect new companies with new services to be popping up all the time. It also makes sense that current players in the computer and networking space will want to corral as much of this business for themselves as possible. If not, they may be justifiably concerned that they could be relegated to sidelines.

Windstream, a major competitive carrier for T1 lines, MPLS networks, dedicated Ethernet Internet and enterprise VoIP, saw the handwriting on the wall when they acquired Hosted Solutions last year. Adding the assets of Hosted Solutions to Windstream’s existing data centers, has given them the critical mass to get into cloud services for existing customers. Such services include such things as cloud storage, Infrastructure as a Service and private, public, and hybrid clouds. Other carriers, such as Level 3 Communications, also have cloud services available.

Most carriers have large data centers for their own use. They often leverage these assets by offering colocation services within their secure and highly reliable facilities. Colocation is something of a forerunner of the cloud. The provider offers racks and cages where you can move your servers and network appliances. They provide the electricity with backup, environmental control and security. Another big draw of colocation is the proximity to large amounts of bandwidth. Many companies either can’t get or can’t afford the cost of constructing fiber optic connections to their own facilities. At a colocation center, the carrier is right down the hall and a mere cross-connect away. It’s the best deal on bandwidth you can get.

More recently, colocation centers have begun to offer contracted technical support and even leased servers for those who don’t want to buy their own. In essence, the colo becomes your data center and you don’t need the capital expense, operational expense or staffing to run your own. That being the case, what’s different about cloud services?

The primary difference between colocation and the cloud likes in both outsourcing and virtualization. The cloud infrastructure consists of massive computing power and storage, all virtualized so that it can be sliced and diced as users require. While in the cloud, you are unaware that you are not the only one using the facilities. The same bank of servers that run your applications can be running dozens or hundreds of others simultaneously. The magic of virtualization creates the illusion that you have one or more physical servers all to yourself.

A good cloud is much more than that. Not only do you rent rather than buy, but you rent by the minute or hour times the number of servers you are using. You can add or subtract virtual servers at will and only pay for the ones you are reserving. The same is true for storage. You don’t worry about buying a new disk when you fill up the one you have. You simply increase or decrease storage as needed and pay by the byte.

The ability to increase and decrease resources almost instantly is a feature unique to the cloud. This scalability is highly desirable for companies with varying loads or ones that are rapidly growing. There is no need to be constantly buying and upgrading equipment when you can simply log into your cloud account and add resources at will.

What carriers bring to the table is one stop shopping. They already provide last mile access, multi-site connectivity, and converged voice, video and data networks. By adding cloud services, you have one bill to pay and a single point of contact for resolving issues such as latency or availability. Independent cloud service providers will need to be on their toes to stay ahead of the carriers, by offering more advanced services and lower pricing to stay in the game long term.

Are you ready for the cloud? The range of services and competitive pricing makes cloud computing and storage, colocation and managed services more cost effective than they’ve ever been. Inquire about availability and pricing for the networking and computing services you need for your particular applications.

Cheaper Business Broadband Abounds

With finances tight, most companies are looking for ways to save money without compromising the operations of the business. Telecom and networking costs are often eyed because they tend to be substantial monthly expenses. Well, go ahead and look closer. There’s money to be saved on your business broadband services.

What has given some managers the idea that their costs are fixed and non-negotiable is that they signed their original contract years ago with the one vendor in town who could provide the service - the local telephone company. That’s rarely the situation any more. Deregulation and technology developments have spawned a plethora of competitors who each have something to offer.

Let’s take that dedicated T1 line for instance. T1 is still an excellent choice for business broadband. You get bandwidth that you don’t share with anyone else, high availability, the option to bond lines to increase bandwidth, and the security of a private line that runs directly to your location. But, oh, the cost. Aren’t T1 lines the expensive way to go?

Not so much anymore. The price of T1 lines has come down dramatically in recent years. If you are still on an old contract or just paying month to month since your contract expired, you are probably missing out on a big cost reduction. What you want to do is get a new set of competitive T1 line quotes for your location and see what you’ll pay for the next three years, not the last ten.

For about the same price as T1, you can now get Ethernet over Copper in many business districts. EoC gives you a simpler interface since it runs the same Ethernet you have on your network, only standardized for long distances over telco copper cable. For the price of a 1.5 Mbps T1 line, you can probably get 2 Mbps or even 3 Mbps Ethernet over Copper. The one hitch is that this new technology isn’t available everywhere. It is distance limited to several miles or less from the nearest telephone company central office.

How about business class Cable broadband? If the local cable operator (MSO) has lines running by your location, you may be able to get 25, 50 or even 100 Mbps cable broadband for the same price as that T1 line. Cable offers a lot of bandwidth for the money, but it is a shared service so bandwidth fluctuates. That may or may not matter to you. Also, upload bandwidth is only a fraction of download bandwidth. That doesn’t matter for Web browsing, watching video, downloading software updates or email. It could be a limiting factor if you are use to constantly uploading large files to remote data centers or other business locations.

Want to pay even less and still get reliable broadband capability? Consider fixed wireless broadband running on 3G. This is similar to what you use for a laptop computer or smartphone, but designed as a box to install in your retail store, construction site or other business location. Bandwidth is typical for 3G, up to 1 Mbps or so for downloads and much less for uploads. But if all you need is point of sale connectivity and perhaps email and other occasional Web use, you could pay a third the cost of a T1 line and have installation within the week.

Are you concerned that you are paying too much for your business broadband and other network or telephone services? Chances are, your concerns are justified. Why wonder when you can find out quickly where you stand? Get current prices and availability for business broadband and telephone services suitable for your company location and requirements and see how much savings can be gained.

The Siren Song of Cloud Computing

You may have a sense that you are hearing the call of the cloud wherever you go. Cloud computing, cloud services and cloud networks are, indeed, the hot topic of technology. But that song you can’t get out of your head? Perhaps what you are hearing is “It’s Cloud Computing.” Let’s listen now:



Loose Bruce Kerr pretty much says it all, with some apology to Joni Mitchell. No apologies needed to the juggernaut that is cloud services. This is a true revolution in technology, much the same as the move from mainframes to networked PCs and now back to something of a mainframe in the cloud. True, there are security and connectivity issues to be addressed. But once cloud services become established as mainstream, the idea of actually buying and upgrading software will seem as quaint as address and data switches on the front of a computer.

Are you missing out by pooh-poohing the availability of cloud computing, storage and networking? You could be saving a considerable amount of money with MPLS cloud networking to link multiple sites. If you are not ready to buy your computing from the cloud, perhaps the intermediate step of managed colocation could be a big and staff saver. It’s good to at least look at both sides, now... and in the future.

Poken Enhances Face to Face Social Networking

When you meet new people and want to get contact information, what do you do? Grab a napkin and scribble down their name and phone number? Write something on your hand and hope you don’t sweat it off before you get home? Present your little cardboard business card?

Lame!

Just as FaceBook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter have enabled online social networking, Poken is bringing face to face contacts into the 2.0 era. They do it with a little device called a Poken. A Poken is something like a token. Actually, it’s more like an amulet. It’s magic power comes from the electronics inside.

For most people under the age of geezer, one of the many standard Pokens with the big hand will work just fine. But if you are concerned that less progressive CEOs at the Country Club will point and laugh at that panda hanging around your neck, there are business grade Pokens available. The PokenPulse looks like any other USB flash drive. If anyone observes you touching flash drives, they’ll just think you’re in a secret society and become insanely jealous. You can decide if you want to let them in on the secret or just watch ‘em suffer.

Could Poken be the next craze in business and social networking? I can see this taking off at trade shows, business networking events, job fairs, speed dating and anywhere else lots of people want to share info with lots of other people. Has it piqued your curiosity? If so, learn more and get your own Poken right now.

Goose Your Technical Service Business

Have you noticed that business has been slowing down lately? Perhaps you have as many inquiries as ever, but customers are hesitant to commit. It's probably nothing that you're doing wrong or differently. It's likely just the current state of the economy. Even so, is there any way you can goose your business to maintain or even raise your income? Sure there is.

These comments may apply to many different types of businesses, but the specifics are related directly to business telephone or computer networking technical service businesses. If that describes you, then you're in luck. Here are a couple of ideas that could give your business that extra boost when you most need it.

The idea is an opportunity that comes free of charge. It's membership in the VAR Network. VAR is Value Added Reseller and most often applies to companies that are authorized resellers of equipment such as routers, switches, IP PBX systems, handsets, security appliance, WAN optimizers, and the like. But it can also apply to technical consultants who help companies design their networks, select system components or install and maintain phone systems or networks.

What the VAR Network offers you is a registry of your business with details on the particular products and services you support and the footprint where you operate. There's no charge to be included in this online registry. Once your details are entered into the database and approved, you'll be qualified to receive inquiries from companies actively seeking your products and services. Think of it as a match making service between sellers and potential buyers of business technology. Whatever warm leads that come your way will probably be in addition to the business you currently have. That sounds like a net increase, doesn't it?

Another advantage of membership in the VAR Network is that you gain access to an organization with vast resources to provide competitive line services such as T1 voice and data, DS3, Ethernet, SONET fiber optic and even wireless point of sale. Chances are that you are not currently as well connected and maybe don't even deal in the specialized field of telecom line services. But with a couple dozen providers and experienced consultants at your beck and call, you can easily offer your clients the line services they need in addition to the physical hardware. For them it's one stop shopping. For you, it's extra monthly income.

The other idea isn't free, but it's pretty low cost. It's an add-on to your current business phone system that adds valuable features and opportunities to promote your business. For a few dollars a month, you obtain a toll free number that forwards to any or all of the phones you are now using. It includes such niceties as FAX on demand and an informational mailbox. You pitch your services and potential customers can impulsively connect you to in an instant no matter where you happen to be. Learn more about this by reading "Sales Lead Generation in a Recession" to see what it can do for you.

MPLS Just Got Easier

MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching is fast becoming the core transport technology of choice for point to point and point to multipoint networks. If MPLS is gaining acceptance, what is on the wane? It's Frame Relay networks for sure, and perhaps legacy TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) networking in general. If you're still on one of those legacy networking technologies but wondering if a move to MPLS would be advantageous, you're in luck. A new service is here to make your life easy.

The newest service of Telarus, Inc., the creator of the GeoQuote (tm) instant online pricing service for T1 and DS3 line services, is called Shop For MPLS. It's exactly what it sounds like and then some. This is an online tool that lets you enter information about your business locations and how you are going to use the network. That gives the automated search system and the Telarus consultants the data needed to calculate the best options for your situation.

You'll notice that the Shop For MPLS query form is more detailed than the simple GeoQuote quote request form found on Shop For T1. The reason for this lies in the inherent nature of MPLS networking.

If MPLS were a wireless technology, it might be called 4G. The impetus for a new core network technology comes from the need to transport a variety of protocols from point to point or as a mesh network. Plus today's need to provide a QoS or quality of service control to ensure that real time services, such as VoIP or live video, are protected from degradation by network congestion.

Without MPLS, you have a potpourri of network technologies and pick the one that most closely matches your application requirements. Frame Relay has been a popular service for connecting multiple locations. It uses a private network with virtual circuits that are set-up between locations. Multiple users share the network and the cost, but your data has a committed information rate that is protected.

MPLS does something similar by employing an extensive private network to connect among multiple locations. Instead of virtual circuits, MPLS routers employ labels or tags that define source, destination, and quality of service. The quality of service part of the tag is what makes MPLS able to reliably transport voice and video and well as data.

MPLS networks are based on IP rather than legacy TDM protocol, although they can transport TDM services such as T-carrier or SONET. Many large scale carriers are building new MPLS networks or converting their TDM networks to MPLS. This make the MPLS marketplace very competitive and offers considerable cost savings for network service users.

The new Shop For MPLS online service recognizes that many ideal candidates for MPLS networking are companies with many locations. These can be branch offices, retail outlets, franchises, warehouses and factories. You have the ability to upload a site list rather than having to individually enter a dozen, a hundred or a thousand locations, or mail-in a list or electronic file. That alone can shave days off the quote process and improve accuracy.

The automated analytical tools available to Telarus consultants further improves the opportunity to find the lowest cost solutions from among a large suite of competitive carriers, making it easy to get a good deal on MPLS services.

Tell Me You're Not PAYING For Equipment Leads

As a solution provider, you're not still paying for equipment leads... are you?

Oh, no. That gets so expensive, and a lot of those leads just fizzle out anyway. Right?

Here's a better idea. Why not get your sales and marketing leads for telephone systems and IT networking equipment on a commission basis. In other words, qualified leads from serious business customers in your area are emailed to you as they come in, at no cost to you. You choose which ones you want to pursue and do your best to make the sale. If and only if you successfully complete the job and are paid by the customer, do you remit a small percentage of the sale back to the agency that provides you with the leads.

That's right. This business model is quite different from any marketing methods you've been using. Other lead sources require you to pay up front for ads or a set of leads, be it a flat fee or on a per lead basis. Online advertising is worse. You pay by the click and a lot of them are just curious individuals, not even actual businesses. With the VAR Network, your leads come to you with no up-front charges. The online database system is targeted to business users with specific current needs, and are screened by service footprint and product line. These are good leads that may be costing you $25 or more now, if you can even get this quality of lead on a regular basis.

Who joins this network? Nearly 2,500 solution providers, including branch office sales people of major telecom equipment partners. Also independent consultants, telephone system installers, and network equipment resellers. The cost to join the network is the same for everyone. Free. You sign up for the VAR Network quickly and easily online. A VAR Network consultant will call you to complete the application and activate your listing within the network. Typically, your information is active in the database within a business day and being matched to warm leads as they come in.

Where do the leads come from? The VAR Network and its independent marketing agents actively pursue potential business customers online, by direct mail, in print advertising, by telephone and in-person. Many requests for equipment and service support come from existing customers who are leasing telecommunication lines through Telarus, which also runs the VAR Network. Because of this relationship, you have immediate access to qualified technical and sales consultants who can provide line services such as T1, PRI, DS3, and Ethernet WAN to your customers. If you refer a line requirement back to the network, you'll share in ongoing monthly commissions if the sale is closed by Telarus. Stop giving away telco line and WAN business to the phone company, when the VAR Network can help you offer a total solution and a share of the income.

The VAR Network is a new and exciting concept in IT and telecom equipment sales leads. It's a business model that is expanding exponentially. Beat your competitors to the punch by augmenting your sales leads with those from the VAR network. Eventually, you may dump all of your paid advertising. This network is that good.

Have a look at the VAR Network and see how it operates. If you like what you see, you'll find the partner sign-up opportunity right there. Or, get more details on how the business opportunity works at the VAR Partner site, designed for resellers only.