TelePacific Takes Business Continuity Seriously

TelePacific Communications, a competitive telecommunications carrier serving customers in California and Nevada, is taking a comprehensive approach to disaster planning and the need for business continuity that follows disasters natural and man-made.

Their Business Continuity Services are focused on maintaining your ability to use voice and data services in the event you lose a trunk line or even your entire facility. But how just how can you do that?

Let’s take a look at telephone first. Most medium and large size businesses, and some smaller businesses that are heavy users of telephone communications, are using digital trunk lines. T1 PRI and SIP Trunks provide one to two dozen outside lines for management by an in-house PBX system. That trunk line offers a considerable cost savings over multiple individual phone lines, but does represent a single point failure risk. With that in mind, you can backup your primary trunk line with a few individual analog POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) lines. The key is to have the phone system programmed to automatically switch over to the backup lines when the trunk goes down. Another approach offered by TelePacific is to have your incoming calls automatically forwarded to the backup lines.

Even smaller businesses using IP PBX systems or Analog Telephone Adaptors may keep one analog telephone line in service as an emergency backup. The idea is that a fault that takes out your digital data line may not affect the analog lines. In many cases, that’s true. But what happens if a construction accident cuts all the underground lines in an area or the ground opens up in an earthquake and breaks every wire in the area?

If all your telecom connections are out, you may have also lost power. In that case, TelePacific has the ability to forward your incoming calls to a number at another business location. You could also choose to have your most important numbers, such as your main phone line and FAX number, forward to a mobile phone or even a residence. If there are too many incoming calls for you to answer immediately, the overflow can be answered by voicemail at the carrier’s facility. You then have the option to listen to and return those calls from another location when time permits.

Data lines, such as Dedicated Internet Access, are subject to the same disasters that befall telephone lines. T1 lines are the most popular connections for business users. If all you have is a single T1 line and it goes down, your connection is broken until it is fixed. But bonded T1 lines can be set up so that if you lose one, the secondary or other T1 lines will keep running. Your bandwidth will be temporarily reduced, but you’ll still have broadband connectivity.

Of course, if all lines are cut you will lose data service coming in and going out of your business location. If you have a second business location you can set up a private IP VPN arrangement so that all traffic can be routed to the secondary location. If you have only a single facility or all of your offices are located so closely together that they might all lose power or communications in the same event, you probably want to think about using a colocation service. A carrier colocation facility is probably more robust than your onside data center. The facilities are built with extensive physical security, fire and flood control, and both battery and generator backup. They also have multiple incoming and outgoing trunk lines going in different geographical directions.

TelePacific offers colocation facilities as do other providers around the country. You can house your application servers there and have an email backup server in case your primary email server fails. Remote data storage is a necessity these days since the most important business documents are now electronic documents.

Do you feel a bit uncomfortable with your ability to conduct business in the event of a fire, flood, tornado, earthquake or other unforeseen disaster? If not, it’s worth your time and peace of mind to talk with an expert consultant who can recommend the most cost effective ways to ensure your business continuity. Find out now what TelePacific and other competitive carriers can do to ensure your voice and data reliability with a toll free call or online inquiry about business continuity options.

Why Bandwidth is Cheap Downtown

Are you looking to expand your business bandwidth at bargain prices? Then go downtown. You'll find more competition and lower prices in the heart of the city than anywhere else. Well, if you can't afford to move there for the outstanding bandwidth pricing, I do have an alternative that's just as good for many companies.

The price of good real estate downtown is astronomical. Why should bandwidth be cheap? It's for the same reason that real estate is expensive: density.

Think of real estate as being a pie. There's only so much of it and the choice pieces command a premium. The more people that want to grab a slice, the higher the price goes.

Now consider bandwidth. The more people who want a slice of bandwidth, the cheaper it gets. That's because the high cost of business bandwidth lies in the capital expense (capex) that it takes to dig tranches, pull wires and fiber optic bundles, and install electronic racks to manage the signals at both ends. With fiber optic, especially, it costs little more to pull a hundred fibers at once as it does to install a single strand.

Once the capital investment has been made, the incremental cost of electronically transferring data from point to point or to the Internet is relatively small. With lots and lots of clients to amortize the buildout costs, providers can afford to offer reduced prices in areas of high business population density.

A related reason for better bandwidth prices downtown is competition. If you want to catch fish, you go where you know there are lots of fish. If you want to provide voice and data services to business, you go where the businesses are. That's not down the country lane where establishments are few and far between. It's downtown where they are literally stacked on top of each other. What once was the exclusive domain of the telephone companies is now home to dozens of competitive carriers, each hungry to expand their service footprint and client list. Competition leads to lower prices, as providers vie to capture the lion's share of the business.

A third factor is technology. There's a newer last mile delivery technology called Ethernet over Copper or EoC that can provide your business with up to 45 Mbps of Metro Ethernet connectivity at bargain rates. The hitch is that you need to be located within a few miles of a carrier point of presence to qualify. Such high bandwidth signals don't travel far over twisted pair copper wiring. But where they do, you'll get an excellent price per Mbps compared to other service options.

So, is your business located downtown? If so, find the best deals on business bandwidth services through a simple online query.

Are you farther out in the burbs or in a small town or rural location? One way you can also get excellent rates on bandwidth services is to colocate your equipment, not your entire business. A T1 line or bonded T1 lines will get you connected from you place of business to the colocation center. Install your servers in the center and you'll have easy access to multiple competitive carriers located in the same facility. Find the best deals on colocation bandwidth and decide for yourself if the cost savings justify a move to where the cheap bandwidth is.

From T1 to Ethernet

Your LAN is running smoothly, but now you need to connect to the outside world for dedicated Internet service, point to point data transfer, or VoIP call termination. A T1 line seems like a cost effective solution, but your network protocol is Ethernet, not T1 data. How do you make the conversion?

Relax. Pick the right T1 line carrier and they'll take care of it for you. Yes, there was a time when you had to deal with Channel Service Units, Data Service Units, router setups and interfacing everything together. The new way is to let the service provider handle all these issues with a managed router.

A T1 router is a level 3 device specifically designed to work with T1 lines. The T1 standard is very specific with regards to line coding, framing, signal levels, impedances and synchronization. Ethernet is equally specific with regard to packet organization. The CSU / DSU portion of the T1 router accepts the T1 line signal from the Smart Jack at the demarcation point and performs all the necessary functions to transmit and receive data. The Ethernet interface gives you an RJ45 jack that connects to your LAN. The magic in-between makes sure that packets and frames get properly matched.

Another advantage of managed routers is that they allow the T1 service provider to monitor the complete WAN or Wide Area Network from their facilities through your router. That makes maintenance and troubleshooting easier and faster. It's likely your carrier will also set up automatic monitoring of your link so they can swing into action if something goes wrong even after business hours.

The latest option in WAN options is end to end Ethernet. The entire circuit between facilities runs IP protocol, not TDM the protocol of T1 lines. Your connection can be a level 3 router or level 2 switch, depending on how the network is setup. In practice, your field offices and main offices can be on the same LAN even though they are hundreds or thousands of miles apart rather than a few feet.

This service is also called Carrier Ethernet. It is provisioned directly onto an IP-based fiber optic carrier, so there are no awkward protocol conversions involved. It's also the most cost-effective WAN bandwidth you can get, especially for 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and Gigabit Ethernet connections. You'll need to be in or near a building that is lit for fiber optic Carrier Ethernet. Such a facility might be closer than you think. Check to see if your building is lit for Ethernet.

Not very near an Ethernet carrier point of presence? One common solution is to relocate your servers to a colocation facility, where lower cost bandwidth is readily available. Another is to use T1 lines, alone or in multiples, to create the bandwidth connections you need. Call the toll free number or enter a quick online search now to see what service is available for your location.