100 Mbps Ethernet over Copper Rivals Fiber

Ethernet over Copper is rapidly taking over from T1 lines as the bandwidth service of choice for low to medium speed applications. Multiple copper pair can support bandwidths of 20 Mbps up to 50 Mbps in some locations. Beyond that, it’s assumed that fiber optic service has to be brought in. Not any more. Now there’s 100 Mbps Ethernet over Copper available from Paetec.

Twisted pair copper has a legacy of connecting central offices to telephone sets for over a century. The enormous installed base of copper connections makes this an extremely valuable resource even in the era of digital communications and fiber optic cabling. The problem is that unshielded small gauge copper wire loops were engineered to carry low frequency audio signals up to several miles. It’s a tribute to clever engineering that these same pairs can be repurposed to carry high frequency digital signals.

Paetec is applying Ethernet over bonded Copper Products from Overture Networks as the technology behind this amazing bandwidth fete. Overture acquired the technology when it purchased Hatteras Networks earlier this year. Their HN product series can deliver up to 15 Mbps per copper pair depending on distance. By bonding up to 32 pairs, bandwidths approaching 500 Mbps can be achieved. Typically, the equipment is used to support user bandwidths from 10 to 100 Mbps.

Speeds in the hundreds of Mbps, even up to 1 Gbps, over copper have been announced in experimental setups. Now, you can order 100 Mbps Ethernet over Copper as a standard bandwidth service. This is particularly significant in that 100 Mbps “Fast” Ethernet is a standard LAN speed. By extending this into the MAN and WAN, the bandwidth speed bump experienced when exiting the office is eliminated. Two locations can share files as if they were side by side in the same building.

Ethernet over Copper technology has been gaining in popularity as the need for higher speed network connections increases. Business automation, medical file transfers, video transport and the move to cloud based services is rendering low bandwidth connections obsolete. T1 line used to be considered a broadband service at 1.5 Mbps. Now many companies need at least 10 Mbps to get their jobs done. So, too, wireless backhaul was fine using T1 lines as long as the traffic was voice and low speed data. Since 3G and 4G have become so popular, slow backhaul is no longer acceptable.

Why not just switch to fiber optic service with it’s unlimited bandwidth? Someday that will be the case. Right now, ready fiber access is available in core business districts and colocation centers. Many metropolitan buildings remain unlit for fiber. Small and medium size towns are relatively fiber-poor. Yes, there is a lot of fiber construction underway. But why pay a king’s ransom and wait six months to a year when there are multi-pair copper cables already run into your building? By employing Ethernet over Copper technology to take full advantage of that existing wiring, you can have higher bandwidths now without enormous construction costs.

Can high speed copper-based bandwidth be the solution that works best for your company? Find out by getting availability and pricing for 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet over Copper service for your business locations.

Dark Fiber Network Expansion Underway

If there is any doubt that we are a bandwidth addicted society, it should be removed with the announcement that a major dark fiber network project has been launched by Allied Fiber. When finished, it will circle the US perimeter with 548 dark fibers and 300 tower sites.

Fiber optic communications is coming into its own, and this time it’s likely here to stay. Back in the 1990’s, thousands of miles of fiber optic cable were buried in anticipation of a telecommunications revolution that fizzled along with the technology sector in general. There is still lots of unlit fiber laying quietly in the ground, but it’s probably going to get lit sooner rather than later. That telecom revolution looks to be on again.

The original fiber optic cables were installed to support telephone calls. Voice services are the least of the demand for bandwidth anymore. Data is on the rise and rising, but video is the killer app. By that, I mean the app that will kill your network bandwidth faster than anything. Video has morphed from NTSC analog television to HDTV, with 3D starting to gain a foothold. It’s not just television, either. Video means YouTube, Netflix, Telepresence, and mobile. The proliferation of all types of video services have necessitated special content delivery networks that offload the Internet up until the last mile service provider.

The traditional T1 lines that backhaul cellular towers are just about out of capability, now that every smartphone has a data service and everyone wants to download apps on the fly and watch video content while on the go. The next generation of phones will have 2 cameras, one facing out for taking pictures and recording video clips and the other facing the user for 2-way video conferencing. There’s a new bandwidth demand that far exceeds the traditional voice conversation. It’s just as expensive to bury new copper to meet the demand as it is to bury fiber optic cables, so new backhaul will be over fiber.

Independent service providers, content delivery networks, major corporations, medical center networks and scientific research labs are among those users who find that leasing or owning dark fiber assets give them the bandwidth they need, when they need it. Dark fiber is just what it sounds like. It’s glass fiber strands within a cable bundle that haven’t been “lit” or connected to terminal equipment yet. Without a laser light shining through their core, they are truly “dark.” But those who have access to dark fiber, can choose what equipment to connect for the bandwidth and protocols they want to support. If you need more bandwidth down the road, you can use the same fiber by simply upgrading modules in your terminal equipment.

Do you need the flexibility of being able to completely manage your wide area network down to the very terminal equipment at each end? If so, you may want to take a closer look at dark fiber as the most flexible way to connect between locations. Prices are lower than they’ve ever been. You might be surprised by how affordable dark fiber is in special circumstances. Let our Telarus bandwidth consultants consider your applications and offer you an array of solutions that include dark fiber network services.

How Many T1 Lines Do You Need?

When your business is small and you're frustrated by DSL or Cable broadband services, you may aspire to a professional grade T1 line. The high reliability and dedicated bandwidth of T1 lines has made them the preferred voice and data line service for business. But one day your business will be much larger and you'll be hitting the bandwidth limit on that once spacious T1. Now what?

Another situation is the high technology business, such as a Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP) or video production company. You may look at the 1.5 Mbps bandwidth spec on a T1 line and know you need twice that or several times. Now what do YOU do?

In many cases, the answer is simply to order more T1 lines. Yes, you can do that. Multiple T1 lines are not at all uncommon for larger or more demanding business applications.

Let's take a typical example. A small call center has a PBX system with a T1 line interface card. The T1 line is configured for ISDN PRI service. That gives them 23 outside lines with fast call switching and Caller ID for each line. Soon that call center gets more customers and finds that even with 23 lines they are running out of capacity. The answer is simply to order another T1 line configured the same way and get an additional 23 lines. Many modern PBX systems have the capability to handle 2 or more T1 lines on one or more interface cards.

A WISP finds that T1 dedicated Internet service offered enough capacity when they were getting started, but is now getting poky as more and more users sign-up. In this case the answer is to get 2 T1 lines bonded together. Bonding is a standardized way to combine the bandwidth of 2 or more lines so that they behave as one larger line. If you bond 2 T1 lines you get 2x the bandwidth or 3 Mbps. Bonding 4 lines gives you 6 Mbps and 6 lines gives you 12 Mbps.

So why order all these T1 lines instead of just getting a larger service? After all, DS3 will give you 45 Mbps, OC3 provides 155 Mbps, and Carrier Ethernet offers standard speeds of 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and 1,000 Mbps.

There are good reasons to stick with T1 lines. First of all, you may want a service such as ISDN PRI telephone trunking that requires a TDM based service, not Ethernet. Or, you may want to start small and add bandwidth incrementally as your business grows. Most importantly, outside of major metropolitan areas you may find that it's T1 or nothing. T1 lines are provisioned on standard telephone trunk wiring, which is available just about anywhere. Higher bandwidth DS3, OC3 or Ethernet services may require fiber optic lines that are too expensive to install. That's especially true for wireless backhaul at WISP towers out in the countryside. T1 may be your only affordable solution.

What bandwidth solution is best for your company? It depends highly on where your business is located. Some areas have a wealth of competitive resources available. Others have only a few. The way to find out is to use the GeoQuote (tm) bandwidth search engine and see just what is available and at what cost.

Backhaul is Backing Things Up

If you primarily use a cell phone rather than a landline and make your Internet connection using cellular broadband or WiFi hotspots, you might start thinking the whole word is wireless. It is, between you and the nearest transmitting tower or access point. But then what happens? The connection between the wired and wireless worlds is called backhaul. You may never have heard of it or thought about it, but it could soon be limiting the bandwidth of your wireless connections. Backhaul is getting all backed up.

Backed up? What is this, a plumbing problem? In a way, it is. In the electronic world where wires and fiber optic strands represent pipes, backhaul isn't much of an issue. That's especially true for business telecom services. For instance, a T1 line is symmetrical and full duplex. It's actually a four wire system. One twisted pair is designated as the upload or transmit path. The other is the download or receive path. Each pair is running at a synchronous 1.5 Mbps. The twain, as they say, never meet. You can use the transmit and receive circuits independently. For instance, radio stations use T1 lines to send program audio from studio to transmitter. The signal pair coming back from the transmitter to the studio can be off-air audio, remote pickup signals, or a satellite network feed.

You may have T1 wirelines in your business. Popular uses are for dedicated Internet access and PBX telephone service. But go out to a cell tower and somewhere with the base station equipment you'll notice a little square gray box labeled "T1". That's the T1 line that connect the cellular tower back to the telephone switching office. That's how they do it and that's the part of the circuit called "backhaul." It hauls the traffic from the cell tower to the switching office. But, of course, it also hauls the phone calls and Internet data from the switching office to the cell tower.

Now that you know how it's done, here's the problem. Cell site and T1 lines are well matched. T1 lines can transport or "trunk" multiple telephone conversations and/or internet bandwidth. With few concurrent calls to a particular tower and dial-up speed data transmissions, one T1 line might be all that is needed to serve a tower site. But engineering advancements have greatly increased cellular broadband speeds to 1 Mbps and even 3 Mbps. Suddenly, that T1 line with plenty of bandwidth margin has hit its limit. Without some additional resources, users are limited in the service levels available from the site.

One easy and popular answer is more T1's. If you can run one T1 line, there's probably enough copper in the ground or overhead to support several. T1 lines can be bonded into contiguous data pipes of 3, 4.5, 6 or more Mbps. This solution also works for WISPs or Wireless Internet Service Providers with growing subscriberships. They can start off with 1 or 2 T1 lines and add more as more users come online and revenues increase.

So, that's it? Just add more T1 lines as you need them? To a point, that's it. But what happens when wireless bandwidth needs are 30 Mbps or even 70 Mbps? This is what WiMAX requires. Seventy Mbps would take nearly 50 T1 lines if you could even find a way to bond that many together. The costs are multiplied by the number of lines, so this would also get expensive. The logical approach is to move up to DS3 service over fiber optic lines. DS3 gives you 45 Mbps and two of them is 90 Mbps. SONET fiber optic services go up to a Gbps if you ever need that much.

There's only one little rub. No fiber in the boonies. Cell sites or new WiMAX towers in metropolitan areas can be connected to existing fiber optic rings. But what about up on the hill in the middle of nowhere? There's no fiber optic cable to those sites and the cost of providing them can be a major capital expense. This is where the backup on backhaul can rear its ugly head.

Solutions? New modulation techniques make Ethernet at 10 Mbps and even Fast Ethernet at 100 Mbps practical over copper pair without incurring big construction costs. Still, there are distance limits to these techniques even with repeaters. Point to point microwave transmissions may come back in vogue, especially given the transmitting height advantage of tower locations. Or it may be as simple as WiMAX backhauling WiMAX. After all, this is a wide area transmission scheme. By reserving half the bandwidth for backhaul and the other half for subscribers, a completely wireless system can be constructed.


Are you in need of serious bandwidth to support your business activities? We can help you with T1, DS3, SONET, Ethernet, and Satellite connections, with competitive pricing from a suite of 30 carriers.