Your 50 Mbps WAN Bandwidth Options

By: John Shepler

The 50 Mbps bandwidth level has become very popular lately because of business requirements for cloud services, remote data center access, big data files, ecommerce, high resolution image transfer and video content distribution. You should know that there are several options to acquire 50 Mbps bandwidth connectivity. Let’s take a look at the advantages and limitations of each.


DS3 & T3
The classic telecom service at this level is DS3, also known as T3. It was developed by the telephone companies to transport large numbers of simultaneous calls between switching centers. DS3 actually runs at 45, not 50 Mbps, but this is close enough for many applications. DS3 is a time synchronous channel technology, not packet based. Therefore you need a DS3 interface module for your router. You may also acquire a managed router provided by your service provider to take care of this protocol conversion.

Copper / Fiber Hybrid
DS3 is actually a hybrid fiber & copper technology. It is delivered to the curb over fiber optic cable and then connected to your equipment using coaxial cables for transmit and receive. The same fiber optic cables that pass your location can also deliver true fiber bandwidth at the OC3 level. In fact DS3 likely rides as one signal on an OC3 carrier.

OC3 Fiber Optic
If you want the entire OC3 service, it runs at 155 Mbps, the equivalent of 3 DS3’s plus overhead. Some carriers will install OC3 but rate limit the bandwidth to 45 or 50 Mbps. If you don’t need more bandwidth than this, there are some cost savings involved. You may also have the option to upgrade to the full OC3 capability when you need it.

Carrier Ethernet
The new competitor to OC3 is Carrier Ethernet. This is an extension of the Ethernet that runs on your company network but scaled up for long distance transmission. The interface with your equipment is easy. You simply plug into an Ethernet connector installed by the service provider. Carrier Ethernet can be provided over twisted pair copper telco wiring or fiber optic cable. While it is possible to transmit 50 Mbps Ethernet over copper for limited distances, it is far more likely that you’ll have this service delivered over fiber.

DS3, OC3 & Ethernet Compared
Let’s compare DS3, OC3 and Ethernet over Fiber. All three will give you 45 to 50 Mbps in dedicated, symmetrical bandwidth. All three are highly reliable and come with service level agreements. DS3 and OC3 have been around longer and may be easier to find. Carrier Ethernet is newer, but where available it often has a significant cost advantage. It is also easier to scale Ethernet bandwidth up and down as you need to. Popular Ethernet bandwidths range from 10 Mbps on up to 10 Gbps, with 50 and 100 Mbps now commonly used in business.

The Cable Broadband Alternative
An alternative service called D3 or DOCSIS 3 is provided by cable companies. This is the same technology now used for residential cable broadband. The business version runs on the same cable but has options like static IP addresses and higher priority customer service. The advantage of D3 is that you get a lot of bandwidth for the money. For half what you’d pay for DS3 or Ethernet, you can get 50 Mbps business cable broadband. However this isn’t the same type of bandwidth. The total bandwidth on the cable is shared among many users, so your line speed will constantly vary. It is also asymmetrical, meaning that your download speed may be 50 Mbps, but your upload speed may be limited to 5 Mbps or so. This isn’t a problem for email or Web access, but may not work for other applications. Also, this service is provided on a “best effort” basis with no service level agreements. Availability of this service is limited to locations near the main cable run.

How to Choose?
Which type of bandwidth will work best for your business needs? Get advice and fast quotes on 50 Mbps WAN bandwidth or service from 10 Mbps on up to 10 Gbps and higher, please call toll free (888) 848-8749 or enter your inquiry.

Many Flavors of Business Internet

By: John Shepler

You need to connect your business to the Internet. In fact, it’s almost impossible to do business now without a broadband Internet connection. Your customers, your cloud services, your emergency backup, your suppliers and perhaps the connection to your home office, remote sites or franchisees are all via the Internet. The only question is how to best achieve that connectivity.

Most businesses don’t have a lack of options for getting Internet service. What they have is a confusing situation with may different services offering different characteristics at different price points. Choosing the lowest price option may result in frustration when the connection can’t support your particular business activities. Automatically picking the highest priced option can increase your internet costs significantly and may also not provide the connectivity you need. Let’s see if we add some clarity to this decidedly unclear situation.

Business Internet options generally fall within two categories. The first are telecom services, usually regulated and tariffed. These were the first connections invented and adopted by business as well as the carriers themselves. The other category includes information services that are were primarily designed to serve the consumer market but now available for businesses too.

Telecom services include familiar names such as T1 lines, DS3, SONET fiber optic services and the newer Ethernet over Copper and Ethernet over Fiber connections. These are almost always intended for commercial and large organizational use. Most carriers won’t even provision these services to residences. That’s seldom a problem, because these telecom services range from several times to an order of magnitude higher in price than what residential users are used to spending.

What do you get for your telecom dollar? These services almost always offer symmetrical, dedicated bandwidth with a service level agreement (SLA). The service level agreement specifies the technical characteristics of your line service, the expected availability and how fast problems get attention and repaired. It’s a type of guarantee that you’ll get top rate performance.

Dedicated bandwidth means that you have exclusive use of the bandwidth you are paying for. You have access to a certain number of Mbps or Gbps on a 24/7 basis. You can run traffic occasionally or load up the line to full capacity continuously. The price is the same. It’s your bandwidth and nobody else gets access.

Symmetrical means that you get the same bandwidth in both the upload (transmit) and download (receive) directions. This isn’t important if you are just browsing websites, but it can be critical if you are running a server, backing up files to a remote data center, using cloud computing services, video conferencing or VoIP telephone.

Consumer oriented services are also referred to as “information services.” This is intended to imply that they are not a guaranteed telecom service and offered on a more casual basis. That basis means “best effort” delivery. The providers will make a good faith effort to ensure that you have reliable bandwidth service, but there are no guarantees of performance.

Typical services that fall into this category are DSL, Cable broadband, WiFi hot spots, 3G and 4G wireless and consumer oriented satellite service. Beyond the best effort delivery, what helps to hold the cost down is the use of shared asymmetrical bandwidth.

Shared means just that. There is a pool of bandwidth to connect to the Internet that is shared among dozens or hundreds of simultaneous users. How much you get at any given moment is determined by how many other users are online to divide up that bandwidth pool.

Asymmetrical means that your download and upload speeds are different. Typically, you get several to a order of magnitude (10x) faster speed on download that upload. Why? It’s because most Internet users are accessing web pages or streaming video. These are primarily one way activities. You need the extra bandwidth for those large file transfers from the server on the Internet to your PC.

There are some factors that muddy the waters. The consumer oriented services have business equivalents that are basically the same service but installed at commercial than residential addresses. They are often 2x to 3x the cost for business users. You do get better customer service and, often, the option for static IP addresses if you need them to run a server. Most consumer services prohibit running servers or sharing the bandwidth, such as offering a free WiFi hotspot.

So are these lower cost services something to avoid? Not at all, if they meet your needs. Even home broadband can be highly reliable and quickly repaired if the line is cut or equipment fails. It’s not unusual to get higher bandwidths, as high as 50 or 100 Mbps download and 5 to 10 Mbps upload, for roughly the same cost as a 1.5 Mbps T1 or 3 Mbps EoC line. If most of what your employees do is use email and web browsers or view video clips, you’ll likely get faster speeds for everyone with cable broadband than even bonded T1 lines. Sometimes wireless is all that will work at your location. In that case, a 3G or 4G cellular broadband can save the day when there are no wireline services available.

On the other hand, if you are running enterprise applications, especially in the cloud, or have converted your entire telephone system to VoIP, you’re not going to be very happy with the lower end services. The variability in bandwidth, latency and jitter will drive you crazy and drive your customers crazy as well. You’ll be much better off with dedicated symmetrical bandwidth. In fact, you may well want a direct connection to your cloud service provider or between business locations rather than deal with the vagaries and security issues of the Internet. Many companies need both: dedicated private line service for internal operations and an Internet connection to reach customers and access data.

How do you sort through the myriad of options for business Internet and private line option? Get help from a bandwidth brokerage service that can give you a range of options and the consulting support to make the most effective choices for your business. Find business bandwidth options and prices instantly online now.

Asymmetric Bandwidth is Hot for Business

By: John Shepler

What has characterized serious bandwidth for business applications has been symmetry, or having the same Mbps capacity in both the up (transmit) and down (receive) directions. That’s being challenged, now, by new service products that promote asymmetry. Asymmetry means having a different bandwidth available depending on whether you are uploading or downloading. Let’s have a look at why this is happening and if it can be advantageous for your business.

Symmetry has its roots in telecom services that go back to the development of digital line transmission a half-century ago. The inventor of the T-Carrier standards, including the ubiquitous T1 line, was Bell Labs. Bell’s mission was to serve the telephone companies, so the digitization of telephone calls preceded computer to computer communications by decades. Switching from analog to digital long lines virtually eliminated the noise, distortion and crosstalk effects that plagued domestic long distance and international phone calls. It also enabled systems that could transmit hundreds and thousands of simultaneous phone calls on a single circuit.

Why symmetrical operation? Phone calls are bi-directional in nature. It doesn’t matter which end of the call you are on. You need the same line characteristics so that you can talk and listen simultaneously. This results in transmit and receive paths that are identical in design.

When T1 lines, DS3 connections and fiber optic circuits were pressed into service to meet the demand for computer communications, they automatically came with symmetrical bandwidth as well as dedicated circuits, synchronized channels and low latency and jitter. These features of Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) get the job done, but at a price.

Asymmetry has its roots in the rise of the Internet and consumer based Internet Service Providers (ISPs). When you access a web site, you send a small burst of packets to tell the server what you want and get back a large burst of packets that carry text, images, audio and video. Nearly all web access by users requires a lot more bandwidth in the download direction than in the upload direction.

This works well for telephone companies providing DSL over shared phone lines and cable companies using spare channels to deliver broadband Internet. Cable, especially, is a one-way medium. When TV was the only service, all channel content went from the head end to the consumer. For asymmetrical broadband, many fewer channels have to be allocated for the upload direction. That leaves the rest available for higher download speeds at premium pricing.

What some businesses, especially the smaller ones, have found is that asymmetrical DSL, cable, wireless and satellite broadband meet their needs just fine. This is especially true when their employees use the Internet primarily for web access and occasional email. Cable broadband is readily available and gives you higher download speeds for a fraction of the cost of a T1 line. When you get into higher bandwidths, say 10 to 100 Mbps, the cost differences are like night and day.

There are some hitches in this rosy scenario. Asymmetry is only one reason why DSL and Cable are cheaper than T1, DS3, Ethernet over Copper and fiber. A big driver in this cost reduction is shared rather than dedicated bandwidth. With shared bandwidth, the Mbps you have in either direction varies constantly depending on what your neighbors are doing. It’s one big bandwidth pool and the more users who are swimming in it, the less bandwidth is available to each user. This can get annoying when you have a critical project in the works and you can’t get much done because other people are downloading high definition videos.

Another difference between the symmetrical and asymmetrical services is that the symmetrical ones tend to be tariffed telecom services with Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that specify repair times for circuit outages, usually in a matter of a few hours. The consumer oriented asymmetrical services tend to be classified as “data services” and are provided on a best effort basis. The carrier will take your complaints seriously, but they may not be able to get the line fixed for some time.

Asymmetry doesn’t work for everyone. Applications like disaster backup and recovery, video conferencing, PBX & enterprise VoIP telephony, cloud computing and large file transfers between multiple business sites really need line symmetry for optimum performance. Companies running these applications also tend to need dedicated bandwidth and service level agreements to ensure maximum productivity.

Even so, the heavy competition from cable and other service providers is causing some major telecom carriers to rethink their service offerings. MegaPath, for instance, is rolling out asymmetrical service to customers at a cost savings. They are still differentiating their service with dedicated bandwidth, SLAs and Quality of Service (QoS) options for business applications that need these characteristics. Other big telecom carriers are expected to follow suit.

With so many service providers and connectivity options, how do you choose the optimum service that gives you the performance you need for the least expense? The best way is to get help from a bandwidth broker who works with many service providers and has the volume to get you the best discounts. Get instant online pricing and available consulting for bandwidth services available for your business locations.

Why Get Fiber Services From A Cable Company?

When we consider purchasing new or replacement fiber optic services, the first thing that comes to mind is the telecom companies. That is, the telephone companies and the competitive service providers or CLECs. Most bandwidth providers have their own core network facilities but rent lines from the telcos for last mile connections. This is especially true with SONET services that originated in the telephone industry.

There is a type of fiber optic service provider that doesn’t use telco facilities at all. That is the cable companies or MSOs (Multi System Operators.) The reason is that cable systems were all built from the ground up to serve a specialized market for television signal distribution to homes and businesses. In fact, most cable systems have been built from the ground up twice. The first implementation used large diameter coaxial cable to transport the combined TV signals picked up from over the air and satellite downlinks. The second implementation was an upgrade to use fiber optic cable for signal distribution to the neighborhoods, while keeping small diameter coax for the final connection.

This system is known as HFC or Hybrid Fiber Coax. Nearly everyone recognizes the 75 ohm coax and F type connector used for Cable TV work. What most people aren’t aware of is the extensive fiber optic infrastructure in place behind the scenes. The larger cable systems have thousands of miles of fiber optic cabling, some cables with 100 or more fiber strands. These cables run all over town and often between towns as well. Nationwide cable companies have nationwide fiber optic networks.

Television is the primary content transported by the cable fiber, but there is also a lot of telephone, Internet and point to point data traffic. Ever since television went digital, there is little difference with how you transport video and how you transport other services. It’s all bits and bytes.

The cable companies have recognized this and recently started marketing their capabilities to businesses. The low end services are delivered over broadband coaxial cable. Some of the most popular services are the shared bandwidth Internet access tiers up to 100 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload. This service is priced about the same as a T1 line but can serve many more employees using the Internet. Cable broadband is often used to feed WiFi hotspots for restaurants, hotels and other retail locations.

Many businesses, especially larger ones, don’t want the variability and lack of guarantees associated with shared bandwidth services, even at bargain prices. They need rock solid symmetrical bandwidth and guaranteed parameters for latency, jitter, bandwidth, packet loss and availability. The other thing they need is higher bandwidth levels for connecting multiple business locations and cloud services.

Many cable companies are eager for this premium level of business. They’re now in a position to provide it with some unique benefits as well. One major benefit is complete diversity from the telecom system for redundancy needed for business continuity. If you want to protect your connectivity from outages, you need a redundant connection. If that connection goes right to the same central office as the main connection, you haven’t added much redundancy. A fire or equipment at the CO can take out both your connections. So can a cable break if both your fiber strands are in the same bundle.

You won’t have that problem if one of your fiber services comes from a telecom company and one from a cable company. They have nothing in common to be a single point of failure. If the whole town gets wiped out, you may still have a problem. But that needs to be addressed with geographical diversity from multiple business locations.

What can cable providers offer in the way of fiber optic services? Typically, you can get 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps Ethernet over Fiber that is MEF (Metro Ethernet Forum) compliant. That includes point to point private lines, dedicated Internet access and MPLS networks that interconnect multiple locations. Those locations can be in the same metro area or they can be scattered around the country. Many cable companies have NNI (Network to Network Interface) agreements with other companies so that traffic can be passed from system to system.

What is the interface to these cable systems? You can often get your choice of a copper or fiber handoff at the demarcation point in your building. One standard arrangement is for the cable company to install a Gigabit Ethernet port regardless of the bandwidth level you are contracting. That way, if you decide you want a higher bandwidth level they can turn in up by simply making a few keystrokes into the system. No hardware changes will be necessary until you want to move up to a 10 GigE port.

Do cable system fiber optic services make sense for your business? You may well benefit from these providers. Find out by getting competitive quotes for fiber optic network services that meet your business needs.



Note: Photo of fiber optic conduit spools courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

What’s The Best Business Internet Service?

Does your new business need Internet service for the first time or does your established business need improved access? Perhaps you just have a nagging feeling that you could be getting more bandwidth for less money. You might be right. To answer all these questions, let’s take a look at what’s available in the way of business Internet service now.

The preferred professional-grade business Internet connection has long been the T1 line. Why? It is highly reliable and has a rock solid bandwidth of 1.5 Mbps in both the upload and download directions. This is called symmetrical bandwidth. You’ll see that not all Internet connections are symmetrical. The rock solid nature of the bandwidth is also not guaranteed on some of the other services. T1 is a dedicated bandwidth service. That means that you have 1.5 Mbps set aside for your exclusive use. Once again, not all Internet connections are exclusive. Service reliability is often guaranteed by a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that spells out how fast line problems will be fixed and what the remedies are if the provider fall short of the agreement.

In addition to these attributes, T1 is popular because it is almost universally available. Would you be surprised to learn that T1 technology, also called T-Carrier, was developed over 50 years ago? Using T1 to connect to the Internet is much newer. It was originally developed for telephone trunk lines. For both applications, T1 is provisioned over one or two pair of twisted copper telco wiring. That wiring is available in nearly every business location.

The two drawbacks of T1 is that it is relatively expensive compared to low-end data services and the 1.5 Mbps limitation. A decade or two ago, 1.5 Mbps was a lot of bandwidth for most businesses. Today it still works for smaller concerns but is too little for medium and large companies. You can work around this limitation by bonding multiple T1 lines together to achieve anywhere from 3 to 12 Mbps of total bandwidth.

A similar but newer technology service that is catching on fast is Ethernet over Copper (EoC). It also uses multiple telco pairs to transport the signal, but works a bit differently. T1 bandwidth is always 1.5 Mbps no matter how far the line runs, even into rural areas. EoC offers higher bandwidths near the central office and less farther out. Several miles is the distance limitation of Ethernet over Copper. However, if you are within the service footprint, you can easily get 10, 20, 30 or even 45 Mbps. Sometimes even 100 Mbps on EoC. The other big advantage of EoC is cost. You can get twice the bandwidth for the same price as a T1 line or the same bandwidth for half the cost of bonded T1 lines.

Small retailers, especially chain stores or franchises, have used two way satellite Internet for years. Satellite will work anywhere you have a clear view of the Southern sky, even in the back woods if power is available. Satellite is often less expensive than T1, although the difference is shrinking. It has limited bandwidth available and latency, or time delay, makes it unsuitable for telephone or two-way video. It does work well for point of sale terminals and general Internet access.

Like T1, satellite has a newer competitor. This is 3G fixed wireless. It is a business grade Internet service similar in bandwidth to T1 lines or satellite but using the broadband capability of the cellular phone network. Unlike simple wireless aircards, 3G fixed wireless service uses a special antenna and modem system that makes the system more reliable and usable in most all business locations nationwide and in Canada. The cost is about half that of T1 service. It is perfect for POS terminals and is offered with PCI level security for credit card transactions.

If your application needs more bandwidth, Ethernet over Fiber or SONET fiber optical services will provide all you can use up to 10 Gbps. This level of bandwidth costs more, of course, and isn’t available for all locations. Construction costs to connect a particular building are often the deal breaker.

Two asymmetrical, shared bandwidth services of note are DSL and Cable broadband. These were designed for the consumer market and cost considerably less per Mbps than dedicated telecom services. However, you do get what you pay for and shared bandwidth services achieve their cost savings by creating a “party line” arrangement where you and many other users share the same bandwidth pool. That means your bandwidth will vary up and down all the time. There are also no SLAs because these are “information services” not telecom services. Even so, with Cable business broadband you can get 100 Mbps download & 10 Mbps upload for about the price of a T1 line. If the cable passes your business and cost is paramount, this service might well meet your needs better than any other connection.

Scratching your head as to which way to go? A more business-like approach is to get availability, features, and prices for several business Internet service options suitable for your location and needs. You may be surprised by how much has become available recently and at reduced costs compared to years past.

A Dedicated Line Between Offices

Many companies have two offices that they would like to link. These offices may be in the same city, across the country or even in different countries. What options are available to do this and what services can you get?

The traditional telecom services link between offices is the dedicated private line. T1 lines have been long used for this purpose because they are almost universally available and often the lowest cost solution. A point to point T1 data line will give you 1.5 Mbps of symmetrical bandwidth. That means 1.5 Mbps upload and 1.5 Mbps download. Symmetrical bandwidth is important when used to link business locations because you’ll have similar traffic levels going in both directions. That differs from the Internet where downloading predominates.

Two other characteristics of T1 lines are important to consider. One is that this is a private line. It’s like having a pair of wires connected at one building and the opposite end of the wires connected at the other building. In fact, for local T1 lines that may be close to the way it is wired up. Over longer distances, your T1 service will probably be multiplexed on a higher bandwidth connection, likely a fiber optic network, for the long haul portion of the interconnection. Regardless, you have a private service that is difficult for anyone to intercept. If you want to ensure the ultimate in privacy, you have the option to encrypt your transmissions on that line.

The other important characteristic of T1 lines is that the bandwidth is dedicated to your usage. You can load it up with two-way traffic 24/7 or just use it when you want to transfer a file. Whatever doesn’t get used just sits there waiting for you. You’ll never run into the situation where your service slows down because some other company is downloading HD videos from the Internet. This also means that there are no usage restrictions. Your T1 line can be used lightly or continuously and your bill at the end of the month will be the same.

T1 lines are available in both data and voice configurations. The voice configuration, called T1 telephone, can transport 24 separate phone conversations. A variation, T1 PRI or ISDN PRI transports 23 phone lines plus a switching and information channel used to provide Caller ID.

What if you need more bandwidth? The next step up with traditional telecom services is DS3 at 45 Mbps, followed by SONET fiber optic including OC-3 at 155 Mbps, OC-12 at 622 Mbps, OC-48 at 2.5 Gbps and OC-192 at 10 Gbps.

You also have the choice of Ethernet line services from typically 10 Mbps on up to 10 Gbps as point to point dedicated connections. Ethernet tends to be lower in cost than traditional services and more scalable. In other words, it’s easier to increase line speed with Ethernet than with T-carrier or SONET.

Another option to link offices, especially over long distances like coast to coast or internationally, is MPLS networking. MPLS networks are highly secure, well engineered to provide committed bandwidth levels, and reasonably priced. It may well be cheaper to order a last mile connection at each end and let the MPLS network handle the long haul than specify a dedicated point to point line service. You’ll get similar performance either way.

Are you looking to establish a dedicated line between offices, perhaps with one of them overseas? Compare options and prices online for T1, DS3 and Ethernet up to 1 Gbps. Note that US to international destination connections will require some manual effort to price, with quotes delivered promptly to your specifications.

MegaPath Pushes EoC to 400 Mbps

The bandwidth of Ethernet over Copper services has been setting new standards on a regular basis. It’s now at the point where you have to think seriously whether you really need to invest in fiber optic construction to light your building or if EoC will get the job done. MegaPath has just upped the ante for those doing copper/fiber tradeoffs. The new upper limit is 400 Mbps.

Many companies that are using Ethernet over Copper are doing so as T1 line replacements to get twice the bandwidth for the same cost. The 2x2 Mbps and 3x3 Mbps options are especially popular for this application. Other companies are moving to mid-band Ethernet where even bonded T1 cannot go. These are bandwidths in the 10 to 20 Mbps range, suitable for many mid-size operations. It’s the companies that have hundred or thousands of employees to support or are engaged in high bandwidth requirement applications that have been stuck with fiber as their only option.

That’s all changed within the last year. More sophisticated modulation schemes and bonding to 8 copper pairs have pushed the bandwidth limit past 50 Mbps to 100 Mbps and even 200 Mbps. Now, MegaPath is offering a new service that can exceed 400 Mbps. This could be a strong option for companies that have specified OC-3 SONET fiber optic service at 155 Mbps and even OC-12 at 622 Mbps.

To be fair, the 400 Mbps speed is only specified on the download path. Upload speeds could be a fraction of that. Does asymmetrical service make sense in a business environment? It could, depending on what you are doing with it. Internet access is typically asymmetrical in nature, with download speeds 10x what you use for upload. That’s because most internet usage at the desktop consists of sending keyboard requests for Web pages or files and then viewing the results or making other use of the data in applications. The principal is that the huge files are almost always coming to the user rather than being sent.

That’s especially true for video, now the number one source of traffic on the Internet. It takes relative little upload activity to request the video files, even streaming, and a considerable amount of download bandwidth over extended periods of time.

Some cloud applications also fall into this category. If you routinely send huge files to the cloud and expect little back, then the asymmetry is wrong for you. However, if most of your bandwidth activity is using large information packages delivered from the cloud, then an asymmetric bandwidth connection could work in your favor.

MegaPath is also offering symmetrical Ethernet bandwidth up to 100 Mbps x 100 Mbps for point to point, point to multipoint and dedicated Internet access. Other options include Ethernet over DS1 and Ethernet over DS3 to address the inherent distance limitations of Ethernet over Copper service. As part of rolling out the new higher bandwidth services, MegaPath is increasing the number of central offices with EoC equipment from 200 to over 680 within a year.

Are your bandwidth requirements increasing, perhaps because of a current or planned move to cloud-based services? If so, you should know that fiber optic connections are only one option to get the line speeds you need for efficient operation. Get competitive quotes now for low, mid-level, and high bandwidth Ethernet over Copper line services for your business location. Sorry, no residential service available.

T1 Line Cost At A New Low

Over the years, most companies have come to own T1 lines either sooner or later. Larger companies got them for dedicated Internet connections back when business was just getting acquainted with the Internet. Small operations often get into T1 lines after becoming frustrated with shared bandwidth information services, such as DSL and Cable. There’s only one thing not to like about T1 lines and that’s the cost... or is it?

If you think that T1 lines cost a small fortune, you probably remember getting a quote some time ago. Yes, less than a decade ago it wasn’t uncommon to pay $1,000 a month for a typical T1 line. I say typical because there are different flavors of T1 service and pricing has been very location dependent. Today, you might pay about a third of that in most locations nationwide.

Costs have plunged due to maturity of the service, deregulation that has opened the market to many more competitive carriers, and new technologies that now compete directly for your bandwidth dollar.

It’s never been a better time to get into T1 line service if it will meet your needs. Let’s take a look at how T1 lines work, what you can use them for, and how to decide if T1 or something else is the right service for your company.

T1 is one of the most mature telco technologies, developed by the Bell System for telephone trunking. T1 formed the basis of digital telephone service and later was pressed into service to transport data also. A half-century of experience means that T1 is well understood, almost universally available and well supported. As a tariffed telecom service, carriers take T1 seriously. Most are sold with an SLA or Service Level Agreement that spells out what you can expect in the way of availability, time to respond to an outage and mean time to repair.

T1 lines were designed to be provisioned on two pair of ordinary telephone wire. One pair is for transmit or upload. The other is for receive or download. This is a symmetrical bandwidth service. You get the same bandwidth in both directions and it is full duplex. You can transmit and receive at the same time. That was designed-in to support telephone conversations that are also full duplex.

The original use for T1 lines was telephone trunking. A trunk line supports multiple phone conversations. A T1 telephone line supports up to 24 separate conversations, each with its own synchronized channel. Think of these as individual business phone lines. A device called a channel bank can convert the 24 channels back and forth to 24 analog phone lines.

A more popular configuration of T1 telephone line is called ISDN PRI or T1 PRI. This also divides the T1 line into 24 channels but only 23 of them are used as phone lines. The last one is reserved for switching signals and data, such as Caller ID. ISDN PRI is very popular as a telephone trunk line that plugs directly into many PBX phone systems.

When used to transport data, the idea of channels is dispensed with and the entire payload of the line service is used to carry data packets. T1 has a payload of 1.536 Mbps. The actual line speed itself is 1.544 Mbps. The difference of 8 Kbps is overhead used to keep the line synchronized and for maintenance. A T1 line is typically said to provide 1.5 Mbps of bandwidth.

That bandwidth can be used to connect to the Internet in what is called DIA or Dedicated Internet Access. Dedicated means that you have exclusive use of the bandwidth at all times. Use as little or as much of it as you need. The remainder will still be available and not shared by other users.

T1 lines are also popular as point to point connections to link two business locations. A specialized use is to transmit digitized audio from radio station studios to rurally located transmitter sites. T1 is also the most popular backhaul technology that connects cellular wireless towers to telephone switching systems.

Has the cost of a T1 line come down enough to make it attractive for your business use? If so, you may also want to compare T1 against the newer Ethernet over Copper that typically offers twice the bandwidth for the same money. If EoC is available, it's an even better bargain. Get quotes now for EoC and T1 line services at your business locations.

5x5 Mbps Ethernet over Copper Saves Money

Many companies wish they had more bandwidth, less telecom expense or both. There’s a new service called 5x5 Ethernet than may be just what you are looking for.

Ethernet services are fairly new on the scene. Prior to Ethernet becoming fairly common, your best bandwidth options were T1 lines and fractional DS3 bandwidth. Occasionally, fixed location wireless service has been available for locations with a nearby line of sight path to their service provider.

How do Ethernet services change the options mix? You can often get more bandwidth for less cost with Ethernet, including low bandwidth services over copper.

You’ll hear Ethernet services described as Metro Ethernet, Carrier Ethernet or by their bandwidth level. For instance, 5x5 Mbps Ethernet means a dedicated speed of 5 Mbps in both the upload and download directions. That symmetry is similar to what you get with other telecom services, but much different than the consumer oriented information services such as DSL and Cable broadband.

Symmetrical bandwidth is important if you expect to do file transfers between locations or backup your data to the cloud or a remote data center. Asymmetrical services with low upload speeds were designed for Web browsing. When you are requesting Web pages, there is a lot more data coming down than the few commands you are sending up to the server. That’s also true for video streaming, but not for video conferencing. In general, any two-way activity benefits from symmetrical bandwidth.

If you are currently using a T1 line or a few of T1 lines bonded together, sometimes called fractional DS3 bandwidth, you may well find that EoC or Ethernet over Copper is much more cost effective. You’ll get the same high quality of service that you expect from T1 or other telecom services. You’ll just pay less.

How much less? Let’s say that you want 5 Mbps symmetrical bandwidth to meet your need for file transfers, video conferencing, or dedicated Internet access. You could get close by bonding 3 T1 lines together to get 4.5 Mbps or 4 T1 lines for 6 Mbps. With T-carrier service, you need to move up in 1.5 Mbps increments.

The problem is that there is no economy of scale with T1 lines. Two lines cost twice as much as one line. Three lines, the number needed for 4.5 Mbps bandwidth, will cost you 3x the T1 line price. You also have to have new lines installed any time you want to increase bandwidth. There’s no cost savings in having extra capacity available.

Ethernet pricing is more than competitive with T1. You can often get 2 Mbps Ethernet for the same or less cost than a T1 line. Sometimes you can even get 3 Mbps for that price. Your 5x5 Mbps Ethernet will likely cost somewhere around twice the cost of T1 service but give you over 3 times the bandwidth. You might even do better. The reason these cost figures are vague is that pricing for both T1 and Ethernet is highly dependent on what services and competition are available for any particular business location.

Another thing you should know is that Ethernet over Copper uses the same twisted pair telco wiring that brings in T1 service. The technology uses multiple pair to increase bandwidth. That technology is also much more scalable than T-carrier services. What you want to do is install an Ethernet port capable of the bandwidth you expect to need for the foreseeable future. Then order the bandwidth you need right now. You should be able to quickly and easily increase your bandwidth at any time by simply contacting your service provider. No additional installation or construction delays should be necessary.

Are you ready to get some real numbers comparing Ethernet to T1 and DS3 services? Get pricing and availability for 5x5 Mbps Ethernet over Copper and other bandwidth services now.

20x20 Mbps Ethernet over Copper

You need bandwidth and a lot of it. So, call up your service provider and upgrade your account. Oh, you can’t do that? Is it because there are no facilities at the level you want or the cost is so astronomical that it isn’t worth considering? Have you considered 20x20 Mbps Ethernet over Copper?

What’s special about 20x20 EoC is that it offers an extraordinary level of bandwidth using only commonly available twisted pair copper cable. You get a symmetrical 20 Mbps upload and 20 Mbps download speed. This is a professional-grade WAN networking service that is highly reliable. Your bandwidth is dedicated to your applications and is not shared with other customers. It’s also full duplex, so you can upload and download at the same time using the full bandwidth available.

T1, the basic and most popular of the T-carrier services, offers just 1.5 Mbps delivered using 2 copper pair. You can upgrade that by adding more T1 lines with a binding process that combines their bandwidth. This works well up to about 10 or 12 Mbps. Then it becomes too expensive compared to other solutions.

The next logical upgrade is T3 or DS3, which are pretty much the same service these days. The bandwidth is an impressive 45 Mbps, but you won’t get that over twisted pair telco cable. You’ll almost certainly need to have a fiber optic connection. In some situations you may be able to get fixed location wireless at that bandwidth as long as you have a short line of site path between you and your provider.

What 20x20 Mbps Ethernet over Copper does is fill the gap between slower speed bonded T1 lines and higher speed fiber options. A bandwidth level of 20 Mbps is fast enough for many medium size companies to use for dedicated Internet access, file backup and restore, medical image transfer, computer aided design and manufacturing, video transport and similar demanding applications.

The way 20x20 Mbps EoC works is that it divides the bandwidth among multiple twisted pair wires in a binder group. The modulation scheme is chosen to minimize interference between the signal wires or even cancel out interference on the lines. One of the technical reasons that EoC is highly reliable is that no one pair carries the entire signal. If a wire breaks or the circuit connected to it fails, other pairs can continue to provide service, albeit at a reduced bandwidth level until repairs are made.

It sounds like 20x20 Mbps Ethernet over Copper is an almost ideal service, doesn’t it? It gets better. Mbps for Mbps, Carrier Ethernet services tend to be less expensive than their legacy telecom competitors, including T1 and DS3. The one caveat is that EoC isn’t universally available as of yet. It’s primarily a Metro Ethernet service found in cities and suburban areas, with very little rural service. There are distance limitations to the technology. You need to be within a few miles of a carrier POP (Point of Presence) to get Ethernet over Copper services.

What about higher bandwidths? EoC is most popular in the range of 2 Mbps up to 20 Mbps. Very near provider offices, speeds up to 45 Mbps might be available. Above that, you are going to need fiber run into your building. This is not necessarily a budget breaker. Some competitive providers anxious to acquire fiber optic business will subsidize or even fully cover the cost of a fiber optic buildout if you order significant bandwidth.

Are you in need of higher bandwidth but unsure about availability and costs? Find out quickly and easily if you can get 20x20 Mbps Ethernet over Copper or other high bandwidth services at very affordable prices.