So Many Locations, So Little Budget

By: John Shepler

Your company has lots of locations and guess what? They all need to be connected. That has traditionally meant big bucks and some pretty heavy IT staffing to make sure that all the phone calls, file transfers and applications run transparently for your employees and customers. It’s more than possible that you’ve long settled for less capability than you really need just because of the sheer cost involved. Does it still need to be that expensive to get connected? Perhaps not so much anymore.

Why Connecting Business Locations Cost a Fortune
The traditional business connection has been the telecom private line. These started out as T1 lines when 1.5 Mbps was big bandwidth and moved up to DS3 and then OC3 and higher bandwidth SONET fiber as capacity needs increased. All of these were sold as point to point dedicated private lines. One line from headquarters to each remote site. The more sites, the more lines.

Dedicated private lines weren’t cheap to begin with. There is also no economy of scale. Two lines cost twice as much as one line. Lines in rural areas cost more, perhaps a lot more, than the same line downtown in a big city.

How do you interconnect a dozen sites so that they can all talk and exchange data? You set up routers and PBX or IPBX systems at HQ and have your IT team operate a fully meshed network.

Let Someone Else Run the Network to Save Money
MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching networks were designed to let you outsource the big multi-site network. A private operator runs a multi-tenant network using a proprietary protocol that routes traffic only on this dedicated network. It’s reasonably secure and has all the bandwidth you need.

Best of all, you are only using part of the network’s capacity so you only have to pay a fee for the portion you need. You also don’t have the network management headaches. The MPLS operator handles everything. You still have the cost of private lines from each location to the net, but not the expense of private interstate or international long lines.

The Cheapest Network of All
The big, beautiful public Internet connects just about everyone, everywhere. There’s more capacity than all of us will ever need. Plus, it’s cheap. Your small fraction of the cost of running the Internet is built into your connection charge. It’s inherently a mesh network, so all you need to do is get a broadband connection at each of your locations and whatever servers you need back at the home office. You might even rent servers in the cloud and offload that responsibility.

Now, the downside. Cheap doesn’t mean cheap and perfect. You and everyone else in the world are on this network and your critical business apps have no more priority than than binge watchers in a video feeding frenzy. Security is a joke. Every scam artist has tools to hack the web or make your life miserable by jamming your servers if they can’t rob you blind. Is this Internet really worth the trouble?

Mix and Match to Optimize Cost / Performance
A plain vanilla Internet connection may not be all you need for your business. It depends. SSL security makes it possible for millions of people to use their browsers to bank and buy things with confidence every day. You can install security appliances in line with your servers to mitigate denial of service attacks and intrusions. You can even outsource this complication by ordering managed security in the cloud.

How about priority service for sensitive applications like VoIP telephone calls and business critical cloud services? You may or may not find Internet performance good enough. One tradeoff is to use dedicated last mile connections versus shared low cost broadband. The core of the Internet runs pretty fast. It’s that local connection, especially the lowest cost ones, that get oversubscribed and bog down.

Why not get the best compromise by using both? Your really, really sensitive packets may not be all that bandwidth demanding but are highly latency dependent. Meanwhile, the bulk of file transfer activity, video streams, email, and page views work just fine over low-end broadband connections and are good with typical broadband latency. A newer technology called SD-WAN or Software Defined Wide Area Networking employs a smarter router connected to two or more Internet connections to pick and choose what packet goes down what path. Dedicated T1 lines or a low capacity MPLS network service can handle phone calls while a higher speed cable broadband line takes care of general web access.

If you have been frustrated by the high cost of connecting your multiple business locations, it’s time to take another look as line prices have plummeted and new technology offers higher performance from cheaper connections. See what’s available in the way of cloud communications, SD-WAN, MPLS networks and dedicated and shared broadband lines that can give you a lot more capacity for your limited budget now.

Private Lines and Virtual Private Networks

By: John Shepler

Businesses often have need for a private line to communicate between headquarters and branch offices, factories & warehouses, retail franchises or suppliers. What’s important is reliable connections with security and transparency. The ideal private line gives you the same experience as your local area network.

Classic Point to Point Private Lines
Telephone companies have offered private lines since the analog days. Security systems and radio station studio to transmitter links are examples of private lines that were often little more than pairs of wires that ran directly from one location to another via the central office.

Digital communication introduced the T1 point to point private line that serves the same purpose. Bits go in one end and come out the other. T1 lines at 1.5 Mbps, DS3 at 45 Mbps and OC3 at 155 Mbps all offer private line service. Latency and packet loss are low. Speeds are fixed at the capacity of the line.

These private lines work well for connecting a central headquarters as a hub to branch offices as spokes. It takes one line per branch with the central switch or router directing traffic. The lines themselves serve as very, very long network wires to interconnect the LANs at the various locations.

Ethernet Private Lines
Since Ethernet is the protocol used on virtually all local networks today, it makes sense to have the private line running the same protocol. The telco solutions already mentioned require a protocol conversion module to convert between Ethernet and the proprietary protocol that runs on the lines themselves.

Carrier Ethernet private lines run the Ethernet protocol on the line itself. Carrier Ethernet is available as Ethernet over Copper for lower speed connections and Ethernet over Fiber for 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps, with 100 Gbps becoming more available.

Ethernet services have more carriers competing for business which tends to reduce prices per Mbps. The cost per Mbps is almost always less for Ethernet and scalability is much easier. You can have a Gigabit Ethernet port installed and order any bandwidth from 10 Mbps up to 1000 Mbps. When you want an increase or decrease in capacity, a simple phone call to the carrier will make that happen quickly with no equipment changes required.

MPLS Networks
Private lines are a great solution if you only need to interconnect a few locations in a small geographical area. As the number of locations and their distance from headquarters increases, the cost goes up quickly. Each line has a charge and it varies with distance.

A popular alternative is the MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching network. This is a privately run network that uses a proprietary protocol called label switching instead of the more common TCP/IP. The fact that access is limited to subscribers only and the uniqueness of the LS protocol provide a level of security even though you are sharing the network with other users.

MPLS operators work to ensure that you have no awareness of other traffic. Bandwidth, latency, jitter and packet loss are carefully managed to meet the needs of all subscribers with extra margin for bandwidth bursting when needed.

MPLS is also known a MPLS VPN or Virtual Private Network. That’s because it isn’t truly private and fully dedicated to your use like a private line. If you are feel that you need a additional level of security, you do have the option to encrypt your data before it enters the MPLS network.

Why choose MPLS? It’s a big money saver over long distances where private lines get expensive. All you need is a short private line connection to the network at each location and instructions to the operator as to how to route your traffic.

Internet VPN Solutions
The Internet is the least cost wide area networking solution with highest geographic connectivity. Performance can vary widely. It’s also the least secure network you can find. Anyone and everyone can easily get a connection, and they do.

How can you make the Internet act like a private line? You provide your own encryption from point to point. Two popular approaches are IPsec based on software installed on each computer and SSL or Secure Socket Layer that is already built into web browsers.

Choosing a Private Line Solution
Which approach is best? It depends highly on how many locations you have, where they are, what traffic you intend to send, and what level of performance you require.
There are cost/benefit tradeoffs to each of the above solutions. What’s right for you? An expert consultant will be happy to review your private line or VPN network needs and provide one or more solutions that can do what your business needs done.

Encrypted Wavelengths Offer High Bandwidth and High Security

By: John Shepler

With data security becoming more and more of an issue, every weak link in the IT infrastructure needs to be identified and hardened. If your network extends beyond your premises, like most every one does, those MAN and WAN connections represent a vulnerability that has to be addressed. A relatively new service does that now for very high bandwidth users. It’s called Wavelength Encryption or Encrypted Waves.

Security of Dedicated Lines
The vulnerability of your connection can vary dramatically, depending on how your packets are getting from point A to point B. Back when the connectivity standard was a point to point T1 line, you had pretty decent security. A single line consisting of 2 twisted pair was dedicated to your use only. It was “nailed up”, as they say, meaning it was as close to a hard wire between two points that you could get. Only when you discontinued service was the connection “torn down” and the resources assigned to someone else.

Fiber Optic WAN and Multi-Tenant Networks
That’s not the way it is today. Unless you own a complete dark fiber run and light it yourself, you are sharing facilities with some and probably many other users. Note that you aren’t sharing bandwidth itself if you order a dedicated line. It’s just that high bandwidth fiber, be it SONET or Carrier Ethernet, is multiplexed to transport multiple streams of data and yours is simply stripped off the stream when it is delivered to your door.

It gets even more complicated in MPLS networks. These networks are multi-tenant by nature. The operator routes your data and that of other customers on the same core network and hands yours and only yours to you at the network edge.

Then, there's the Internet...
The security issues of the Internet need hardly be mentioned. You would have a hard time building a network that is less secure. But you don’t use the Internet for anything critical, right? If you have SDN connections over Cable Broadband or 4G Cellular, you probably are using the Internet for transport without realizing it.

Making the Insecure Secure
The answer to security jitters is encryption. On public networks, these encrypted data streams are said to be going through a “tunnel”. You can do the encryption and decryption yourself, or you can have your managed service provider take care of it.

Who Needs Encrypted Waves?
When it comes to high demand, high stakes uses, like medical data within hospital groups, there is a need for very high bandwidth channels that also have high security built-in. Level 3 Communications is at the frontier of a relatively new high performance connection called encrypted waves. These are based on the same wavelengths that are generated by coarse (CWDM) or dense (DWDM) wavelength division multiplexing. Each wavelength or set of wavelengths can deliver 10 to 100 Gbps of dedicated bandwidth. The multiplexing refers to multiple wavelengths, called colors or Lambdas, traveling over the same fiber strand. While leasing an entire wavelength does improve your security, encrypting that wavelength really adds security.

It’s simple in concept. The new wrinkle is that Level 3 is providing you with the wavelength already encrypted and protocol agnostic. Send whatever you want down the channel without having to worry about the nuts and bolts of securing that data stream.

Encrypted Wave Services Available Now
Here’s what Level 3’s Encrypted Wavelength service offers. The encryption is AES-256, the gold standard. You handle key management through your separate MyLevel3 portal that has two form factor authentication access. Ethernet speeds are supported at 10, 40 and 100 Gbps. SONET / SDH 10 Gbps is supported, as is OTU 2, 2e, 3 and 4. FICON and Fiber Channel (metro only) is supported at 8, 10 and 16 Gbps SAN. Low latency routes are optionally available for the highest performance.

Do you have high bandwidth needs that also require high security? You should take a closer look at what encrypted wavelength services have to offer. You may also be interested in dark fiber solutions. See what bandwidth options are available for your business locations now.

How Your Network Provider Can Help Keep You Secure

By: John Shepler

It seems like every week there’s a major “hack attack” against companies large and small. Once upon a time, this was more of an annoying curiosity than a serious problem, as the intruders were mostly curiosity seekers looking to enhance their tech cred within their computer enthusiast community. Now it’s serious trouble. Today’s attacks are at least disruptive to the conduct of business and at most create unrecoverable destruction.

Have You Covered ALL The Bases?
You’ve tried to adhere to recommended practice, but there’s always that nagging feeling that you’re still vulnerable. Is there anything else within reason that can be done to keep the bad guys out? Let’s take a quick look at some Cybersecurity Basics, courtesy of Level 3 Communications, a major network service provider:


You are probably already implementing software patch updates, strong passwords, anti-virus software, and Internet firewalls as technical solutions. Employee training to avoid things like clicking on email links is also excellent practice.

Where The Network Provider Fits In
Even so, as shown in the video, there are protections that your network service provider can implement to stop these attacks before they even get to you. Certainly, the service provider can monitor their own core servers and mitigate attacks, such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) that try to traverse their network connections. But, a managed service provider can also extend that level of monitoring and protection into your network as well.

The Team Approach
Why go it alone, when you can have high reliability wide area networking services along with full-time security monitoring and attack protection working on your behalf behind the scenes. Seems like there is no such thing as too much security these days, so this could be a great time to consider adding managed network security to the protections you have already established… just to be sure.

Your Options
Are you interested in higher performance connectivity with the advantages of monitoring and added network security? Find out about the wide range of networking options available to you now.

The Ultimate Wireless Firewall: Networks That Don’t Connect

By: John Shepler

Network security has become a major concern of any business that connects to the Internet. There’s hardly a day goes by that we don’t seen another announcement of a company that has been breached. We may be seeing only the tip of that iceberg. The public reports tend to be about companies that have their customer information compromised, especially credit card numbers. Other businesses might discover intrusions that don’t affect their customers and may elect to remain mum simply to avoid the embarrassment and bad press.

Who Can Afford Cyber Security?
The result of all this hacking and cyber warfare is that IT departments have gone on high alert. If they are going to stay connected on the Internet, they have no choice but to pay up for security appliances and cloud based network security. But what about small and medium size businesses? Can your typical doctor’s office or restaurant really afford to pay for cyber defense?

Common Sense Measures
Certainly, any independent professional or small business can take the basic common sense steps to keep casual snoops and hackers scanning for low hanging fruit out of their networks. Nearly every router also includes a firewall function and encryption for Wi-Fi access. Anyone who neglects to change the default login and password and enable the highest level of encryption their equipment will handle, is just too naieve for words.

Public Access Is Always Vulnerable
Even so, there are still those lingering doubts that the network is protected. When you unlock Wi-Fi access so that customers can use your hotspot, you run two risks. First, you open a vulnerability. The vast majority of your customers will only use the broadband access as a convenience. They’re not out to cause you trouble. But… there are characters with malicious software on their laptops who can sit themselves down and troll other customers or try to break into your network. Wi-Fi doesn’t stop at the door these days, so they may be parked outside or even sitting a block away.

Wired Only?
The safest solution is to only use wired access inside the business and avoid Wi-Fi altogether. That may really limit you and your employees by ruling out any portable and mobile devices. The next step up is to have a Wi-Fi router but lock it for employee use only. That leaves customers and guests frustrated, since they’d like to use their tablets while waiting.

Will a Firewall Work?
Is it sufficient to simply install a firewall between your business network and your public-facing Wi-Fi hotspot? The idea makes a lot of business owners nervous. It’s hard to tell, especially when you don’t have a full-time IT department watching everything, whether you are truly protected or not. Consequently, they opt for either locking down their wireless network or not having one at all.

The Two Network Solution
Here’s another approach. Install TWO networks instead of one. The first is your internal business network. This can be high performance Ethernet over Copper or Fiber Optic WAN bandwidth. It might not even connect to the Internet. Either way, connect only your own equipment to this network. If you have wireless access, lock it down. Then order a second Internet connection. This one is for your customers and does not need the performance characteristics of your primary network. A good choice for many small and medium businesses who deal with the public is cable broadband, just like they have at home.

Why Cable Broadband?
The beauty of cable broadband is that it is inexpensive, even for business locations. You get decent bandwidth levels of 10 to 100 Mbps and it's pretty reliable these days. There’s a bonus for businesses with customer waiting areas. You can bundle cable TV service with your broadband for little extra cost. You may want the TV service anyway. Why not add Internet broadband as an extra convenience?

Keep 'em Apart
Here’s what you don’t do. You NEVER connect your business network with your customer network. They remain completely separate. If you get them from different providers and keep the wires apart, there is no chance of an interconnection. If someone sits outside at night and steals your broadband signal or tries to break into the public wireless network, they won’t get far. It doesn't really connect to anything other than the Internet.

What About Your Primary Internet Access?
Most organizations do need some type of Internet access to acquire information, place orders and connect with their customers. If your main business network is not strictly internal to your company, you still need network security between your LAN and the Internet. If you have the expertise on-board, you may be able to install and manage your own firewalls. Most smaller and medium size companies will find it more cost effective to order managed security in the cloud. WAN bandwidth providers who offer this option have the necessary expertise in-house and available 24/7.

For Emergencies Only
I know. There’s a temptation to use that second network for business purposes if your primary network runs out of capacity or suffers an outage. Be very careful. In such an emergency, you may wish to disconnect the public Wi-Fi hotspot or lock it to prevent any but employee access.

Do you need point to point WAN bandwidth, primary dedicated Internet access or separate customer-facing hotspot bandwidth? How about managed security for your company? If so, find out what secure network solutions are available and appropriate for your size business.

Build Your Own World Wide Web

By: John Shepler

You love the World Wide Web… kind of. It’s a thing of beauty when you want to get information anywhere, anytime. It’s gets a lot less pretty when you are trying to share large files between offices, have high quality teleconferences, or interact with your applications as fast as you can. It gets down right ugly when your ISP crashes or gets so congested by people streaming high def video that you can barely get anything done. And then there are the security problems. You either have been hacked, are being hacked or will be hacked soon. Is this really the best one can hope for?

The Connectivity Conundrum
What would be ideal is to have the Internet all to yourself. Think of it. Only you, your valued customers and suppliers, and all of your business locations could use the network. Think of the performance! All that bandwidth and no competition. The network really would achieve that ideal of being transparent.

Of course, there is this little matter of not being able to access anything outside of your domain if you are the sole owner and user of the web. That’s not going to work. How will you do your banking, get to Wikipedia or buy and sell anything online?

No, you still need the Internet for connectivity to all the content out there and connections with other people. It would just be nice if you could split the Web in two. One side would be general public access. The other would be internal private communications only.

My Private Internet
Want the network all to yourself? Build your own! That may sound a bit nuts, but it’s how performance demanding companies have been doing it for decades. They sure don’t call it the Internet. That term refers to the Public Internet designed by the government and later made available to everyone. Instead, these “private Internets” are constructed using dedicated private lines.

A private line is just that. You order a point to point line service that connects directly from one location to another via a telecom service provider’s office. The only traffic on that line is what you put on it. The rest of the time it sits idle.

For point to point connections, a dedicated private line can’t be beat. You order all the bandwidth you need. There is minimal latency, jitter and packet loss because these are high performance copper and fiber telecom lines. You’ll recognize them as T1, DS3, OC3 to OC48, Ethernet over Copper and Ethernet over Fiber. In some locations private microwave or even laser line of sight wireless service is available.

Adding More Sites
What if you have more than two locations to connect? Simple. You order more private lines. You could have every location connect to every other location, but the cost of this goes up exponentially as you add sites. A more practical solution is to have each remote location connect to a central headquarters data center. That is where the switching and routing takes place to ensure that all locations can communicate.

Voila! You've just built your own private Internet, also called an Intranet. You now have the high performance, high security… and high cost of going it alone. It may well be worth it. With a Wide Area Network (WAN) under your control, you’ll be able to bypass the public switched telephone network for long distance calls between facilities and create your own private cloud that will be as response as if it was right down the hall.

Hackers getting into your servers? How are they going to do that when there is no outside connection? If your data is really, really sensitive, you can encrypt the transmissions between facilities to completely frustrate anyone who might “tap” the line.

Reducing Costs Without Losing Performance
Owning and managing a fleet of dedicated private lines and the infrastructure needed to route the packets gives you the ultimate in control, but it costs a pretty penny. Is there a way to get the same result cheaper without giving up the superior performance of this arrangement?

There is and it is a public/private hybrid called the Multi-Protocol Label Switching Network or MPLS Network. An MPLS network is a private “Internet” that someone has built with fiber optic connections to many cities and countries. The largest ones can connect hundreds or thousands of business sites worldwide. That’s just like the Public Internet, except that this one is privately run and serves only a limited number of paying customers. There is no access to the general public.

MPLS uses a proprietary protocol to route the data through the network. This makes it hard to hack because the usual IP snooping tools won’t work, especially if you encrypt your "last mile" connections. Any intruders looking to gain access to the core of the network will find that quite challenging compared to the Public Internet. For these reasons, MPLS Networks are called “virtually private” by the nature of their design.

No, this isn’t your own private network. There are many companies using the MPLS network at any given time. Unlike the Internet, the MPLS network is run with sufficient resources to offer each client as much bandwidth as they need with low latency, jitter and packet loss. You also have the option to create classes of service for your own data streams so that VoIP phone calls aren’t disrupted by large file transfers that aren’t so time critical.

You’ll Need Internet For a Complete Solution
MPLS networks sure sound like the closest approximation you can have to the Public Internet without all the limitations. Even with complete high performance connectivity among all your business locations, you are still missing a way to communicate with the general public and use all the resources of the World Wide Web. The answer? Take both.

You can set up two networks within your organization. MPLS for internal communications. Public Internet for going outside. You can manage the merger of this arrangement yourself, or turn it over to the MPLS operator. You still have private connectivity between locations, but you also have the Internet available as a separate data stream in its own class.

Have It Both Ways
That’s right. When you build your own World Wide Web you can have the best of both worlds. You have multiple classes of service that prioritize packets based on their criticality. Real time audio and video streams get the highest priority with critical business applications a close second. Your Internet access is lower on the list, with background activities like data backups to the cloud on the bottom rung.

All of this will be invisible to your employees. They’ll simply experience a high performance network that works extremely well for every application. They might even wonder what their peers at other companies are complaining about.

Would you like to investigate an improvement to your current Internet performance or a cost reduction to a privately run suite of dedicated private lines? Get expert recommendations and competitive cost quotes now. This may be more affordable than you think and well worth making the move.

What’s to Become of Data Centers?

Both large scale colocation centers and traditional in-house company data centers are being challenged by cost and technology. Here’s a quick graphical look at what’s going on right now in this infographic courtesy of David Vellante on Wikibon:


Your Data Center Options
Are you thinking that it may not make sense to invest in a new data center or continue running the one you have now? There are a wide range of options available from colocation at a major commercial data center to cloud hosted services to choose from. Call now toll free at (888) 848-8749 to speak with a product specialist who can recommend everything from WAN connectivity up to complete IT outsourcing or describe your data center needs for quick quotes on appropriate services.

Hosted Network Monitoring Services

Metro and Wide Area Networks are becoming more and more important to businesses. The steady migration toward electronic transactions, online services and cloud storage & computing are making networks a critical part of the business infrastructure. That, in turn, is making networking monitoring a necessary function in every IT department. It breaks down to doing it yourself or contracting with a provider to monitor the network.

Companies have been monitoring their own LANs since they started installing networks. It’s logical to extend that philosophy to include any telecom links between facilities. That includes point to point networks and both public and VPN connections to the Internet. There are good reasons to rethink this approach now. Let’s have a look at how the networking monitoring processing can be improved.

One area of weakness is networks used by smaller businesses. A lot of factories, offices and retail outlets aren’t open or staffed around the clock. What’s going on in the wee hours? Who knows? A construction crew could be working late and cut through the cable that is your last mile connection. The alarm lights on the terminal equipment illuminate, but there is no one around to take action. You come in to open up in the morning and find that you have no network connection. You report it, of course, and the carrier will start the investigation process. You may or may not be back in business by noon. That’s only if you have a good SLA (Service Level Agreement) or a very proactive service provider.

There are measures you can take. You can set up a process to monitor the alarms and ping remote servers periodically to make sure the link is still up. If something goes wrong, you can have it send you or someone on-call in your IT department a text message. Somebody sill has to be awake enough to get the alert and then start working the problem. That involves figuring out if the outage in on the telecom link or in your equipment and contacting the right party to get some corrective action.

Large companies with 24/7 coverage of their data centers and other IT assets may consider this part of their charter. Small and medium companies, especially those with branch offices and critical e-commerce infrastructure, may have the need for faster response but not the budget to provide “just in case” staffing. These are the companies that hosted network monitoring services work wonders for. With hosted monitoring, the responsibility of what’s happening beyond your network’s edge belongs to the service provider. They do have the automated equipment and round-the-clock staffing to keep an eye on every network link to make sure that it is working properly.

In most situations, the network edge is a managed router installed by the service provider. This equipment terminates the line with the proper interface, be it T1, DS3, EoC, EoF or SONET. The other side of the router is where you connect, generally with an Ethernet interface. The router itself is considered “in the loop” as far as network monitoring and testing is concerned. If anything goes wrong, the provider has the ability to test functionality through all their equipment and lines, right on up to your Ethernet connection.

In some cases, you even have the option of letting the service provider include your internal local network within their networking monitoring service. You decide whether to let them have access to the entire network or just a portion. This is the ultimate level of support for smaller companies that have little or no on-site IT staffing.

A particularly robust network security solution is provided by MegaPath, a major facilities-based carrier. MegaPath goes far beyond just monitoring to ensure the network is “up.” They include comprehensive Unified Threat Management (UTM) to implement network security. This involves an advanced firewall, intrusion prevention, anti-virus and anti-spam filtering, web application control and data loss prevention. Network management involves deep packet inspection and uptime monitoring that monitors for latency, jitter, delays and packet loss. It is sometimes difficult for even larger companies to provide this depth of networking monitoring and security.

Are you interested in better management of your network connections at a reasonable cost? You should look into hosted network monitoring and security services suitable for the size of your business and criticality of your network.

New Enterprise Ready Colocation in San Francisco

Many large enterprises are coming to the conclusion that running their own data centers just doesn’t make the kind of sense it did in decades past. It costs a small fortune to build and operate a facility with the necessary size, security, environmental control, backup power, and 24/7/365 staffing to meet the technical demands of a major business. Not so long ago, you didn’t have much choice but to do it yourself to get the kind of facility that could support your demanding requirements. Now you do have a choice with the advent of enterprise ready colocation.

A shining example of a facility designed with enterprise colocation in mind is the Level 3 data center at 200 Paul Avenue in San Francisco. Level 3 has invested the capital to expand their data center so you don’t have to. That’s one of the primary benefits to colocation. It works especially well for companies that have reached the limits of growth in their own data centers but shudder at the thought of building an additional facility. By incrementally expanding into the Level 3 data center, you can get the enterprise level support you need but pay only for the resources you use.

What are some of the features and benefits of 200 Paul Avenue colocation? You’ll find 8,000 square feet of high density cabinet and suite space with 8-12 KW power cabinets and support for 200 watts per square foot power density. The juice is there no matter what your power requirements are. That primary power is backed up by fully a redundant uninterruptible power supply.

You won’t have to worry about keeping your equipment secure. Level 3 is set up with multi-layer security that includes 24/7 closed circuit video and alarm monitoring and dual authentication security.

HVAC is another major investment when it comes to data centers. The Level 3 facility is set up with industry standard heating, ventilation and air conditioning. Pull all the power you need. The cooling air is available to whisk that rejected server heat out of the rack and out of the building.

Beyond the bricks and mortar, a major reason to consider colocation is connectivity. By moving into 200 Paul Avenue, you have zero latency direct connectivity to Level 3’s global network. How much bandwidth can you get? How much do you need? Many companies would love to hear a major carrier say that about their current location. However, the reality is that copper and fiber assets are limited in all but the most densely metro areas. Even there, full conduits and right of way issues may prevent you from upgrading to the connections you really want. Or, you could get hit with a big construction bill to bring in new fiber.

That won’t happen in the colo facility because the network POPs (Points of Presence) are already there and waiting. This includes a wide variety of bandwidth options plus carrier neutrality so that you can stay with the service provider you already have. Looking for new service? You won’t find a greater range of service providers to pick from than you have access to in the colocation facility.

You may be scratching your head, wondering how colocation can be gaining such popularity when all you hear is about companies moving to “the cloud.” Cloud computing and other cloud service are, indeed, expanding at a high rate of speed. However, some companies already have proprietary processes on systems of their own architecture design that are fine tuned to their unique needs. Re-engineering to use multi-tenant cloud facilities isn’t all that attractive and comes with more than a few security concerns. By the way, if the cloud is right for your business, Level 3 offers public, private or hybrid cloud services to match your requirements.

Have you developed a need for additional data center space or simply want to do some cost//benefit tradeoffs to see if running your own facilities still makes the most sense? If so, get prices and options for enterprise ready colocation and cloud services to help in your decision making process.




Note: Photo of downtown San Francisco courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Online Backup For Disaster Recovery

In computing, disaster is always just around the corner. There are so many potential points of failure. Disks can crash at any time. Data can be accidentally erased. Both equipment and data can be stolen or destroyed by fire, storm or flood. So, why are we so convinced that it just isn’t going to happen?


The problem with computer disasters is that you may never get a warning. One minute everything is humming along nicely. The next minute, it’s all gone. That scares most of us just enough that we occasionally copy important files to other computers, alternative hard drives, thumb drives, CD ROMs or DVD ROMs. It’s a lot better than nothing, but the hit and miss nature of these backups means that there are long periods when data is changing but only in one place.

The other weakness of our ad-hoc personal backup systems is that they only protect from certain types of losses. A CD ROM backup protects against a hard disk failure. It doesn’t protect from natural disasters that wipe out the entire office, not merely a few computers or one hard drive. Just what would a tornado, hurricane, flood, fire or earthquake do to your facility? Think your backup disks would still be in good condition? Maybe. Maybe not. Can you really take that chance?

The traditional solution for robust backups is to send copies of your files to a remote location, such as a separate data center across town. Smaller companies store CD ROM backups in bank vaults away from the company facilities. Today’s solution is online backup. Everybody has a broadband connection and there are companies that specialize in being that secure data center that you can’t afford.

One of the best online backup companies is SOS Online Backup. They’ve been around since 2001 and have won numerous industry awards.

A really important feature that SOS offers is called Engage Live Protect. It detects whenever a file has been changed and immediately backs up that file. This certainly takes the weak link of remembering what to backup out of the loop. With file backups happening as needed, there is also no long time lag to the next scheduled backup during which something can go wrong.

Another nice feature of this service is that you can access your files on the Web from any computer with a web browser. You don’t have to use the computer that the file came from, which helps if that machine smokes. You can even share files by using an email address. SOS lets you backup to five computers with one simple account. There are enterprise level services available for larger organizations with many employees.

Have you integrated iPhones or iPads into your organization? SOS iPhone App lets you access all of your files anytime, anywhere from your iOS mobile device.

The big hesitation many people have with online backup systems is security. How can you be sure the bad guys won’t steal your data right out from under you? SOS protects you with a three-tiered encryption system that offers military grade security. The data to be backed up is first encrypted right on your computer using 256 bit AES encryption. While in-transit, 128 bit SSL is employed to secure the link. Finally, the data is stored using 1024 bit AES encryption.

Are you feeling a bit squeamish about all those files on your computer that could go “poof” at any time? How much would that hurt? Don’t let it happen. Get SOS Online Backup now and rest easy that your important files are stored away securely in the cloud, ready to retrieve at any time.

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.

Two Routes to Virtual Private Networking

Virtual Private Networks or VPNs have become the preferred solution for connecting multiple business locations. What’s caused this migration from private ad-hoc point to point connections is cost and ease of maintenance. By partnering with a managed service provider, you can have the benefits of secure multipoint communication without having to staff up or pay exorbitant monthly line lease fees.

Virtual private networking is in the clouds. The question is which type of cloud to choose? You can implement your VPN solution using the public Internet. You can also choose to go totally private for higher performance.

The Internet based VPN is where the term virtually private got started. Everybody knows that there is little private about the Internet. It connects everyone, everywhere with nothing in the way of assured performance or data security. What the Internet has going for it is economy of scale. The monstrous size and diverse connection methods mean that broadband connections are fairly cheap at the consumer level and reasonably priced for dedicated business access with a service level agreement.

What about those security issues? It seems like any data you put on the network is subject to interception by those who could do you harm. It’s not even safe to connect a PC to the Internet without installing virus blocking software first. Some tests have shown that it takes only a matter of minutes to browse the Web with an unprotected computer to have it become infected by compromised sites or malicious messages.

Yet, we use the Internet every day for such sensitive applications as banking and shopping. The key to keeping your data secure is encryption. Establishing encrypted links through the Internet is called “tunneling.” You create a private tunnel through a public thoroughfare. Your network connection isn’t private, but it is virtually private.

Another form of virtual private networking is provided by privately run network clouds, such as Frame Relay or MPLS. These networks strictly limit access to paying customers. They are also managed to establish only those connections that you specify. Because you are sharing the network cloud with other users, your connections are described as virtually private rather than private line. They offer a high level of security, but may also be encrypted to provide an even higher level of guaranteed privacy.

Private networks offer assured performance, especially in the critical areas of latency and jitter that are important for VoIP telephone and real-time video. The Internet is offered with “best effort” performance, but generally lower costs. How do you choose the right solution for your application? Perhaps the best answer is the obvious one. Get price and performance quotes on competing solutions and recommendations from experts before choosing. That’s all made easy with a quick Virtual Private Networking inquiry at AffordableVPN.com. You’ll get a fast reply and the support you need to make the right VPN decision.