When Broadband is Hard to Find

By: John Shepler

If your business is located downtown in a major metro area, the idea of network and telecom services being hard to find seems a little odd. You probably have at least a couple of competitive providers vying for your business, as well as the local telephone company. Your challenge is to find the best deal on connectivity, trunk lines and cloud services. There are likely options available that you don’t even know about.

If you are located in a rural area or working from a home office, this wealth of opportunity may be missing. You may feel that nothing is available or you are stuck with a single option that’s a real stretch for your budget. Actually, there may be more bandwidth options available than you think.

T1 Lines are Readily Available
Businesses with their own commercial addresses have it the easiest. They can almost always get at least some traditional telecommunications services. These include POTS phone service and T1 lines. Both use the same twisted pair copper cables that connect nearly every building.

T1 started out as a telephone trunking service, but has been used for dedicated private lines and Internet access for decades. Each T1 line provides 1.5 Mbps in both the upload and download directions. Today that’s pretty low-end broadband, but it’s more than sufficient for credit card verification, email and simple Web access. You can also run backups to the cloud and connect with headquarters.

Boosting T1 Bandwidth
Not enough bandwidth? T1 lines can be bonded together to create a larger data pipe. Two bonded lines gives you 3 Mbps, 4 lines offer 6 Mbps and so on up to 10 or 12 Mbps. Bonded T1 is highly reliable and readily available. You might find it a bit pricey because there is no economy of scale. Two lines cost 2x one line. Even so, out in the boonies T1 and bonded T1 is likely well worth the cost. That cost has dropped precipitously in the last few years, by the way. If you haven’t taken a look at T1 lately you may be surprised by the value. Even so, expect to spend a couple hundred dollars a month or more for T1 service.

Broadband From Space
Another service almost universally available is two-way satellite or VSAT. Many small retail locations use satellite for their transaction processing and connectivity to HQ. Satellite bandwidth has been similar to T1 at a somewhat lower cost. More advanced satellites now offer bandwidths of 10 Mbps or more for a higher price. The thing to know about satellites is that they can connect anywhere in the country with a clear view of the southern sky. You can even power the equipment “off the grid.” Limitations are that bandwidth is shared and you are generally limited in the amount of data you can upload or download each month. Latency is also high, making the service hard to use for VoIP telephony. Compare that with dedicated line services that offer low latency and have no usage limits.

Broadband From Cell Towers
If your needs are modest, you may get by with 3G or 4G fixed wireless. This is a fancier “all office” version of a smartphone hotspot. If you can get smartphone broadband at your location, this service should work for your office or store. Just know that usage is limited and sometimes involves overage charges. It’s great for transaction processing and simple Internet usage, but not for heavy video usage and software downloads.

What’s Available for the Home Office?
SOHO (Small Office Home Office) users generally choose DSL or Cable broadband because of the low cost with decent performance. It’s not uncommon to get all the speed you need for $50 or so. You won’t find anything like those prices with T1 or bonded T1 lines. That’s because the bandwidth is shared among many customers and is a “best effort” rather than guaranteed availability service.

I often get inquiries from home office users who can’t get or don’t “like” their cable or DSL choices, but are shocked at the cost of more reliable and higher performing business telecom services. Are there any other options available?

You, too, can get two-way satellite service. You may be quite happy with it or be frustrated by the latency (time delay hesitation), usage limits, and interruptions during bad weather. It depends on what you are doing.

Fixed Wireless for SOHO Use
How about fixed wireless? If you can get good cellular service, you might consider something like a “Mi-Fi” hotspot that creates a WiFi hotspot using bandwidth on your 3G or 4G LTE cellular plan. This lets you use your desktop and laptop computers, tablets and other Internet devices on the same Internet access available from your smartphone. Once again, this is “light duty” service that is great for limited or emergency usage, but not for consistently heavy traffic.

Other Wireless Options
Another option that’s available in some areas but not others is non-cellular fixed wireless. These are WISPs or Wireless Internet Service Providers. Generally, these companies install a small dish or antenna on your home or office building and give you a wired connection for your router. You’ll need to look for these locally, as they are typically local enterprises not connected with nationwide providers. You also need to be within line of sight from their tower or towers and not too far away.

Call for Fiber… Maybe
How about fiber optic service? Verizon, Google and other companies have been building out fiber systems in select locations around the country. If you are lucky enough to be within one of these service footprints, you can get a lot of bandwidth for the money with FTTP (Fiber to the Premises).

Finding Home Office Broadband
If you are have a home office, you can try checking for DSL/Cable services or 3G/4G cellular wireless. You can also do an Internet search for satellite broadband from Dish Network, DIRECTV and others. Look locally for non-cellular fixed wireless.

Finding Business Location Bandwidth
If your business has a commercial location, then the Telarus GeoQuote search on Megatrunks.com is for you. This service gives you instant pricing for T1 lines, DS3 bandwidth, Ethernet over Copper, fiber optic and business grade Cable broadband. A quick inquiry will also get you quotes on VSAT and high capacity fixed wireless services appropriate for your business locations.


Note: Photo of Monument Valley courtesy of Josep Renalias on Wikimedia Commons.

Why Demand a SAS 70 Type II Data Center?

If you are considering a move to the cloud or colocation center, you want to be sure that you are dealing with a high quality operation that has the controls in place to ensure the privacy and security of your data. If you are in certain industries, such as health care and financial services, you may well be required to use this type of facility.

SAS 70 is about a very structured audit into the operations of a company that handles customers’ data. It’s done to a standard developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) called Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70, Service Organizations. This isn’t something you run yourself. You hire an independent accounting and auditing firm that performs the audit and issues a written report.

Actually there are two audits and reports. Type I is used to assess the suitability of controls that the organization has put into practice to achieve the security objectives. Type II includes that information, but is also a review of how effective the controls have operated during the time period being reviewed. That’s why Type II is so desirable. It shows that management has not only created a system but is actually performing to the procedures it has put in place.

What sort of things are audited? Important areas for the auditor include management and organization policies and procedures, physical security of the data center, logical security to ensure only authorized personnel have access to customer data, network security and management, application security and change control, system maintenance controls, incident reporting and resolution, change management, transaction processing, use of subcontractors and business continuity.

You can think of SAS 70 as something akin to the International Standards Organization ISO-9000 quality management standards and auditing for manufacturing organizations. They’re not the same thing, but both have the goal of providing assurance that you are dealing with a company that has effective processes and procedures in place and follows them. The principle is that sloppy seat-of-the-pants operations tend to deliver results that are all over the map. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don’t. You are much better off with a provider that can produce the same results over and over reliably.

What you want in a data center or cloud service provider is an operation that is secure and reliable above all. You wouldn’t prop open the back door to your in-house data center and let anyone who wanted to wander around unsupervised. Likewise, you want the peace of mind that the colocation facility that houses your servers has them secured in locked racks or cages and that nobody who doesn’t belong there can get into the data center at all.

The same is true of the networks that transport packets in and out of your servers. Those connections and the data that traverses them need to be under strict control so that your systems and data cannot be accessed by anyone who doesn’t have your express approval. One advantage of moving to a colocation center is that you are literally within walking distance of your carrier and perhaps your cloud service provider. With all the connections in-house, there is less likelihood of service disruptions or outsiders being able to tap into your data stream.

Service reliability is important as well. Having the servers and appliances locked down is great, but they also have to be on-line 24/7 to fulfill their mission. That’s where backup electrical power, cooling and network connections help keep your applications running non-stop is so valuable. The availability of trained technicians nearby is a way to ensure that if something does go wrong, it gets immediate attention.

Are you interested in moving to a high quality colocation facility or cloud service provider? Many now offer SAS70 Type II certification, so be sure to ask for that assurance when evaluating vendors. Get pricing and location for colocation and cloud services using SAS70 Type II Data Centers.