The Value of Low Latency Fiber Optic Connections

By: John Shepler

If you are frustrated with your network performance, especially those connections going to the Internet or other business locations, you may be suffering from a latency related problem. Let’s take a quick look at achieving lower latency network connections for businesses and organizations:


When you are involved in very demanding applications where maximizing network performance is critical to success, such as high frequency financial trading, it’s clear that you need to focus on minimizing latency. Some companies have gone so far as to co-locate in the same facility as the stock exchanges to be a matter of feet rather than miles from the servers.

Most applications are nowhere near that demanding, but do require some attention to bandwidth, latency, packet loss and jitter. These are areas where private lines and MPLS networks shine and the Internet doesn’t do so well. Revisions to the network neutrality doctrine might, and I emphasize might, offer some performance increase for the Internet. That will be done by giving some traffic priority over other traffic.

Still, if you want to take control of your destiny, you need control of all of your network connections and you’ll only get that with services that you own or can lease with strict performance guarantees.

What common applications are highly sensitive to latency issues? Anything real time certainly is. That includes VoIP telephone systems, any network voice services, teleconferencing and telepresence.

Slightly more tolerant are interactive services that are not strictly real time. Think cloud servers. You issue commands or requests and the server sends back responses. Delays in cloud server response have come as a shock to some companies that thought they would get more performance, not less, when they moved from local data centers to the cloud. After all, cloud resources are virtually infinite, aren’t they? Even if they are, you’ve got to take the link between you and the cloud into consideration. Any latency caused by limited bandwidth, network congestion or equipment induced time delays are going to show up as an unexpected pause in data going up and down between you and the cloud.

If you upgrade to higher performance network connections, will your latency problems go away? Not unless you also manage your local network to minimize latency on critical applications. You’ll need multiple classes of service so that voice packets get priority and interactive cloud packets are next in line. Big data transfers, email, downloading videos and even casual Web browsing have to take a lower priority and they generally can. Companies that are just implementing enterprise VoIP to replace old-school analog phones are more likely to run into these issues than those who have worked the bugs out of their networks over the years.

What class of network connection service is optimum for your needs? There are a wide variety of private and public connections, each with a particular performance and price tag. Why not get a fresh set of low latency bandwidth quotes available at your business locations. This service is fast and the cost can be lower than you expect.

A Map to Unified Communications and Collaboration

Thanks to Level 3 Communications for this informative infographic



Today’s knowledge work and drive for increased employee productivity are enabled with new tools such as web conferencing, screen sharing, presence and teleconferencing. Do you feel like you are missing out on this competitive advantage? Get more information about the latest in Unified Communications and Collaboration solutions from Level 3 Communications and other top tier network service providers.

MPLS VPLS Offers Virtual Private LAN Service

Nearly every business has its own LAN or Local Area Network based on some combination of wired and wireless Ethernet. For businesses with a single office, everything is self-contained other than a single broadband connection to the Internet. What about businesses with many locations that include branch offices, franchises, warehouses, factories and data centers? Each of those locations also has its own self-contained LAN. The question is how to best connect them together.

There are all sorts of schemes used to provide inter-office connectivity, including using the Internet as a VPN or Virtual Private Network. Other companies, seeking more security or higher performance have created their own private networks using dedicated private lines from each location back to headquarters. This is an elegant, but both expensive and management intensive solution. Is there anything better?

The introduction of MPLS networks created the opportunity for companies to get out of the proprietary network business and turn that traffic over to a privately run network that could interconnect their many locations in a secure and high performance fashion. There’s a substantial cost savings involved because MPLS networks aren’t dedicated to the traffic of only one customer. The cost of the network is amortized over the entire customer base, reducing the cost for each.

Isn’t this the same as using the Internet to communicate? Not by a long shot. The Internet is a public resource that allows easy access to anyone and everyone with the modest price of a connection. There are no performance or security guarantees. Even so, for connection to the general public, the Internet is a terrific bargain. It’s just that you may not want your internal company communications on such a public network.

MPLS networks have inherently better security because they don’t use IP routing in their core. Instead they use a proprietary system called label switching that determines how packets get from one location to another. It’s all very deterministic and programmed by the network operator to ensure that each company’s data is visible only to that company. Resources are managed to ensure a committed level of bandwidth and technical characteristics such as latency, jitter and packet loss.

It sounds like MPLS networks are ideal for interconnecting business locations. In fact, MPLS networking has been growing rapidly and now includes the ability to connect to sites nationwide and even internationally. The quality of service controls make it particularly well suited to support latency sensitive applications such as VoIP telephony and teleconferencing.

VPLS is a particular service offered by MPLS networks. It stands for Virtual Private LAN Service. Like any MPLS network, it interconnects two or more locations anywhere served by the network. But VPLS has some unique characteristics. It’s not just a mechanism to transport traffic. It’s a system that interconnects multiple LANs as if they were all part of a single bridged LAN. In other words, two offices on opposites coasts are just as close on the network as if they were right down the hall from each other.

With VPLS, companies can truly create virtual organizations that are co-located on the network if not physically. There are a couple of technical requirements that must be met to do this. The virtual LAN depends on everything being connected through layer 2 switching rather than layer 3 routing. That means you’ll need Ethernet connections to the MPLS network. These can be Ethernet over Copper, Fiber, Fixed Wireless, or DS1 (T1) connections as appropriate. VPLS arrangements are also meshed by nature. They operate on an any-to-any basis, just like you’d expect on a LAN.

Does a VPLS network sound like what you need to interconnect your business locations? If so, get prices and availability on MPLS VPLS Ethernet Virtual Private LAN Service for as many locations as you need to support.

Advantages of Virtual Business Travel

As we begin the new year and new decade, it’s a good time to rethink some of the things we’ve been doing as a matter of habit. For instance, how do you feel about business travel? Do you relish the opportunity? Do you jump at every chance to go, no matter what? As a manager, do you lobby for the highest travel budgets you can get because your employees love it so and the return on the investment is fantastic? Or, does the whole subject make you cringe a bit?

If you are in the cringe category, you may find there are great benefits in trading off a substantial portion of your in-person business travel with virtual business travel. See if one or more of these advantages sound attractive.

1. Reclaim at least two days of productivity per trip. It’s hard to go any distance by air without losing one day going, one day returning, plus the wait time at the destination before you can actually engage with your client, supplier, or prospect.

2. Save almost all the cost associated with taking the trip. That includes air fare, auto rental, hotel, meals, and other misc. fees you won’t be writing up on an expense report if you stay put.

3. Avoid the mounting stress of long distance travel. Even back in the days when air travel was relatively easy, how well did you sleep that first night in the hotel? I don’t think I ever did get a full night’s sleep on a business trip. Now you have the added pressure of intrusive security, reduced amenities, and legitimate concern over your personal safety.

4. Save yourself the coming abuse of air travelers. New airline rules intended to counter terrorism in the air are threatening to make airline travel more like a stint in the state pen than the thrill of flying that the Wright Brothers experienced. Currently proposed is a mandate to remain in your seat for the last hour with nothing in your lap. No trip to the bathroom, no working on the computer, no listening to the iPod, no reading a book, no talking on the cell phone. Just stare forward, please. You don’t want to look suspicious.

Even if cooler heads prevail and security rules are limited to only the absolute necessities, you’re still faced with long check-ins, tarmac delays, few amenities (like food) and rising costs as the pressure of limited cheap oil supplies comes back into play. Chances are it’s not going to get cheaper or more fun to travel. Still want to go?

If you’d like to travel less, but just don’t know how, here’s how virtual business travel can work. Instead of going somewhere to meet in person, you meet electronically. The most sophisticated version of this is Cisco’s Telepresence system. In a fully decked out Telepresence room, you sit at a half-round conference table. The other half is visible through a wall of high resolution flat screen monitors pushed up to where the physical table stops. Your counterparts at the other end have the same experience. With video cameras and microphones, you have the experience of sharing a conference room even though half the group is in one city and half in another.

Another approach is called desktop conferencing. Citrix GoToMeeting creates a conference environment on your personal computer. You view applications and files, share keyboard and mouse control, chat with the group or particular individuals, have a simultaneous audio conference through VoIP or telephone conferencing, and use tools to draw, highlight and point to items of interest on the screen.

The beauty of conferencing on demand is that you can get together as much as you want. With travel involved, conferences and project reviews need to be scheduled in advance and structured to meet an agenda. Sometimes just preparing the agenda takes longer than a series of virtual meetings. As businesses take another look at the expense, time, and irritations involved in extensive travel, it’s likely that virtual travel is going to gain an increasing share of team collaboration, presentations, discussions and reviews.

This may be another one of those tipping points. Once virtual travel becomes ingrained in the business process, it will be seen as the normal and proper way to work. Physical travel will become an extraordinary event. Without the need to be physically co-located, we’re also likely to see an increase in the formation of virtual companies. Everyone will be part of the same operation but few, if any, will reside in the same building. It won’t matter. They’ll be so tightly coupled virtually that the sense of common purpose will be as strong as if they occupied the same maze of cubicles or sea of desks.

Conference Bridge to Everywhere

A conference bridge is a piece of telephone equipment that connects multiple phone lines together so that people in far flung locations call all participate in a discussion. Very large organizations may elect to buy and maintain such equipment, but for individuals and small to medium size businesses it is much more cost effective to simply pay as you go.

CogniConference is low cost conferencing service that lets you organize and participate in telephone conference calls as you see fit. You may be well served with audio telecons using speaker phones in conference rooms and individuals on handsets. But you may also find that CogniConference is valuable in providing the audio link that complements a web conferencing tool such as GotoMeeting.

Managed teleconferencing services can be expensive, but CogniConference is designed to be a low cost solution that offers flexible management and high quality performance. It is based on toll free numbers for the U.S. and Canada. As moderator, you invite participants to join the call by giving them the toll free number and access code for your particular conference. Both you and they simply dial-in to be connected. Note that the number is toll free so it doesn't cost participants anything, although they may be using minutes if they are calling in from a cell phone. The cost to the host of the call is 9.9 cents per participant per minute in the continental U.S. and 24.5 cents per minute for Canadian participants. Participants from other countries can also join in at rates particular to their location. Some countries may not have toll free numbers available.

The per minute per participant rates are it. There are no per conference or monthly fees. It's pay as you go. Like other telephone services, there are governmental taxes also. But you pay those no matter what service you use.

To see the cost advantage of CogniConference, let's take a look at a typical call. Say 8 people participate in a 30 minute business conference call. The rate is 9.9 cents per minute for each of the 8 participants times 30 minutes. $0.099 x 8 x 30 = $23.76.

Compare that with a face to face get-together. Even if you are all in the same town, you might spend that much alone on gas driving to and from the meeting. If you need to pay for a meeting room, that's additional. Then there's the lost productivity involved in just getting there and back. Suddenly $23.76 looks dirt cheap, doesn't it? If your group is scattered around the country, costs for an in-person meeting soar into the thousands.

This is why more and more businesses are saving travel for when it's really essential and leveraging technology such as telephone conference calls for day to day needs. That includes things like team collaboration, training, presentations and distribution of important information to management, employees and stockholders.

CogniConference holds your costs down and gives you flexibility by allowing you to schedule conferences on the fly, with up to 16 legs in each call. A leg is one phone calling the conference service at the toll free number. Of course if that phone is a speakerphone, there could be a dozen participants at that particular location. No operator is required to set up your conference calls. You or the moderator you designate gets a special host password that they can use with the easy Web and telephony interfaces. Payment is by credit card and you can set a usage limit to control costs.

Have you been spending too much money and getting too little participation via email, physical meetings, or a more expensive conference calling solution? You should give CogniConference Ultra-Low Rate Conference Calling a try.