Is Your Network Capacity Drying Up?

By: John Shepler

It can sneak up on you without warning. One day, the network is running smoothly. Next day it’s all congested. How did that happen? More importantly, what can you do about it?


Network capacity, especially MAN and WAN network capacity, can dry up quickly as applications become more demanding. Video is a major bandwidth hog. Backups to remote data centers can also chew up a lot of your capacity. Worst of all is The Cloud. You might think that your troubles are over when you outsource your applications to cloud service providers. What is often forgotten is that all that user bandwidth supplied by your LAN must now be supplied by the WAN. Not just any bandwidth, mind you. It needs to be low latency bandwidth or you’ll still have troubles.

Why low latency? You know that latency is critical for sensitive real time apps like VoIP telephony or high definition video conferencing. But how about those business applications that moved from the local data center to the cloud? Latency is easy to control locally. It can be an issue on long distance connections, especially if you elected to use the Internet as your cloud connection service. Latency shows up as hesitation in cloud response. A little can be annoying. A lot can be a major productivity killer.

Fortunately, high bandwidth low latency connectivity is easier than ever to fit into your IT budget. Prices have plummeted in recent years on everything from old school T1 lines on up to the SONET/SDH and fiber optic Ethernet. Even MPLS networks for connecting multiple business locations may cost less than you think.

If you haven’t gone out for competitive price quotes in a few years, you’re in for a pleasant surprise. You may find that you can double your MAN or WAN bandwidth for the same telecom budget that you have now. By upgrading from TDM based SONET fiber optic services to Ethernet over Fiber, you may well be able to afford a lot more capacity than you have now. The cost per Mbps or Gbps is much more attractive for Carrier Ethernet, especially if you get your service from a competitive provider who can provide both core network and last mile connections on their own network.

Could you use a bandwidth upgrade soon? Perhaps even right now? Get fast bandwidth quotes customer tailored to your particular needs now.

Taming The Video Bandwidth Monster

A recent projection by Cisco predicts that video will account for more than 50% of Internet traffic by the end of next year and increase to 62% by the end of 2015. Whether you are a provider or a consumer of online video content, it’s a fact that you’ll be scrambling to keep up with the enormous bandwidth appetite of streaming and downloadable video.

Certainly, the rise of Netflix as an alternative or adjunct to Cable and Satellite TV is hastening the day when video packets will be the lion’s share of traffic on the Internet. The consumer is going through a revolution in what used to be called “TV” viewing. Now computers, tablets and smartphones can provide the television function. The difference is that these computing devices don’t have over the air tuners or connections to external set top boxes. What kind of sense does a set top box make for something like an iPad?

The design of TVs themselves has morphed into more of a digital media display with Internet connections as well as HDMI and the now ancient coaxial connector. Some models come equipped to directly access Netflix content and other Internet services. The LED backlit HDTV is starting to resemble a very large tablet device that mounts on the wall.

This technology shift has not been lost on the Satellite and Cable operators. They are moving to make their content available through the Internet as well as over their dedicated delivery mediums. The advantage of Internet delivery is that the service can be accessed on mobile devices as well as any type of fixed monitor with an Ethernet or WiFi connection. It also increases the load on the Internet infrastructure, including the core network, content delivery networks, and last mile access.

Businesses that don’t produce or distribute video content may look at this situation with amusement but not be the least bit concerned that it will affect them. Oh, but it will if it doesn’t already. The days of using the Internet to send emails or look things up through a Web search engine are headed for nostalgia. Much of the information worth accessing online is now in video form. That includes training materials, news reports, demonstrations, promotional brochures, tutorials and even press releases.

As a savvy company keeping up with the competition, your people need to be able to check out all the resources a vendor has to offer, monitor industry news, and participate in conferences. More and more those conferences are online video conferences and webinars. The high cost of travel, which looks to be on the rise again, is going to limit business trips to the most important meetings. Employees won’t be able to jet off to all the seminars and conventions they might like to. That doesn’t mean that you are stuck waiting for your email or Twitter client to ding in order to communicate. Most of what can be seen and done in person can be done with desktop video conferences, webinars, or telepresence.

Don’t forget that you will likely need to produce video content to keep up with your competitors. If they’re all over YouTube and you aren’t, potential customers are getting comfortably up to speed with someone else’s products and services.

Are you thinking this over and feeling bandwidth constrained? That’s probably true for a lot of companies. Things are moving fast and traditional telecom services are expensive and time consuming to upgrade. Don’t despair. There are many new options available that can eliminate your WAN bottlenecks at a lower cost that you expect. For instance, did you know that you can get 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet access over twisted pair copper or coaxial cable for a fraction of what you’d expect to pay for fiber services. Even fiber costs have plummeted, especially for Ethernet over Fiber that is affordable for 1 Gbps and even 10 Gbps for the most demanding applications.

If you are hitting the upper limit of your old T1 line or DS3 connection, now would be a good time to get a new set of competitive bandwidth prices targeted for your business location or locations. You can probably afford higher speed service than you think.

Is 1 Tbps The Next Optical Network Standard?

For residential and corporate users just getting comfortable with 100 Mbps broadband, the need for bandwidths in the Terabit per second range seem very far in the future. Not so for network operators. The discussion is getting lively right now as to whether the next optical networking standard speed will be 400 Gbps or 1 Tbps.

What’s driving the need for new higher standards? It’s the inevitable march of technology from Kbps to Mbps to Gbps and soon to Tbps. The last lively discussion was whether to move up from 10 Gbps to 40 Gbps or go all the way to 100 Gbps. You’ll notice that the new proposed standards are 10x or one order of magnitude above those levels.

That makes sense because there is something of a “Moore’s Law” that applies to bandwidth as well as computer processing. Moore’s Law, formulated by Gordon Moore of Intel, proposed that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every year. Despite the fact that no one knew exactly how to do this more than a increment or two into the future, technology advancements have come along on schedule to keep Moore’s law viable for decades. The latest announcement of 3D transistors looks to keep the processing improvements going for the foreseeable future.

What about bandwidth? There is a prediction called Butter’s Law formulated by Gerald Butters of Bell Labs that says the amount of data coming from an optical fiber doubles every nine months. This is complemented by Nielsen’s Law, from consultant Jakob Nielsen, that says that bandwidth available to users increases 50% per year.

Based on this, getting standards in place for faster optical networks needs to proceed quickly. There’s little time to waste before we start talking about 10 and 100 Tbps networks and thinking ahead to Petabit per second networks.

What on Earth is driving these requirements? Is it simply technology gone wild on its own development cycle or is there a real need for such bandwidths. If there isn’t now, there soon will be. It can be summed up in one word: Video.

Video traffic now dominates the Internet. It’s said the Netflix alone may be the largest single application. Netflix might have been first out of the chute when it comes to streaming video content on a massive scale, but it won’t be in that position alone for long. Most new televisions and set top boxes have Internet connectivity built-in. The same is true for gaming consoles, which also make nice video set top boxes.

But don’t most people get their video programming over the air, through cable or satellite dishes? They do for now because those are the mature technologies. The bit switch from analog to digital OTA broadcasting has had a unexpected side effect. Having to buy new sets and make tricky antenna adjustments to receive the digital broadcasts has caused some TV viewers to rethink their options. The latest trend is to forego over the air broadcasts in favor of Netflix and video downloads directly from the Internet.

Far from being horrified, the FCC is considering auctioning off more of the TV spectrum to wireless broadband services. Smartphones and now tablet computers, particularly the iPad, are creating an almost insatiable demand for 3G and 4G bandwidth to support high definition video. There’s a proposal being floated to allow broadcasters to share frequencies taking advantage of the multiple program capability of each channel.

Likewise, Ethernet over Copper and DOCSIS Cable are easily capable of 100 Mbps broadband but start to strain above that. Further technical advances may push the upper limit on copper delivery but it’s just a matter of time before we have fiber to every premises. Verizon is leading the way with its FiOS passive optical service to the home and most medium and large business that don’t have fiber yet are taking a hard look at the lower cost of Gigabit Ethernet, where available.

How about your business? Are you feeling pinched by bandwidth services that are no longer as capable as they were when you installed them? You should know that business bandwidth prices have dropped significantly in the last few years, fueled by new technology developments and high levels of competition in metro areas. You may be able to get a lot more for your bandwidth dollar than you think. If you haven’t checked in awhile, this is a good time to get prices and availability on fiber optic bandwidth services. You may be surprised about what is available today.

AT&T Sees the Video Tsunami Coming

It's been predicted that video is going to sop up every Mbps of bandwidth available, and soon. Even today, broadband providers are repositioning themselves to say that unlimited bandwidth usage doesn't really mean you get to pound your access connection every second of the day. At least for consumers. Today unlimited bandwidth has monthly bandwidth caps because the provider's networks really aren't unlimited. In fact, they're strained.

One company that has recognized this and taken steps to add capacity is AT&T. But not just general capacity to the Internet. What AT&T has done is to add 400 Gbps of capacity last year to its CDN or Content Delivery Network.

So what's a CDN? It's a private parallel network to the Internet. You know that the Internet is the ubiquitous high bandwidth IP network that connects virtually the entire world in one big mesh network. If we were using the Internet for it's original purpose of research, educational and government email and file transfers, any bandwidth limitations might be transparent. But even as the Internet has been expanded to accommodate commercialization and general access, high bandwidth applications such as video have advanced even faster. Content and Internet service providers alike have recognized that it makes sense to move video applications to alternate networks before increasing bandwidth congestion brings everything to a crawl.

Enter the Content Delivery Network. These are privately run networks that connect (mostly) video content providers to drop-off points as close to the end user as possible. The content bypasses most of the international Internet to feed local nodes of the service provider. That content is then merged with Internet traffic and sent to your computer via DSL or Cable broadband. As far as you're concerned, it's all coming from the Internet.

Who are these CDN's. Big names include Akami Technologies, Limelight Networks, Level 3 Communications, and, now, AT&T. With its massive installed network base, AT&T has a leg up in that it also provides last mile solutions as well as Internet transport and private line networks.

The model of a Content Delivery Network is also applicable to businesses. If you need connectivity among multiple business locations, the service you want is MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching. This is a private network arrangement that has the ability to guarantee availability and performance, unlike the "best effort" service you can expect via the Internet. You can also get private line point to point connections when there are only two locations involved.