1G, 2G, 3G, 4G

Wireless phone standards have a life of their own. You can tell, because they're spoken of reverently in terms of generations. There's great-granddad who's pioneering story pre-dates cellular, grandma and grandpa analog cellular, mom and dad digital cellular, 3G wireless just starting to make a place for itself in the world, and the new baby on the way, 4G.

Most families have a rich history of great accomplishments, famous ancestors, skeletons in the closets and wacky in-laws. The wireless scrapbook is just as dynamic. There is success, infighting and lots of hope for the future. Here's a brief snapshot of the colorful world of wireless.

First of all, this family is the wireless telephone family. It is just starting to compete with the wireless Internet family that includes WiFi and the other 802 wireless IEEE standards. But it is a completely different set of standards. The only place the two are likely to merge is in a marriage of phones that support both the cellular and WiFi standards.

Wireless telephone started with what you might call 0G if you can remember back that far. The great ancestor is the mobile telephone service that became available just after World War II. In those pre-cell days, you had a mobile operator to set up the calls and there were only a handful of channels available.

The big boom in mobile phone service really began with the introduction of analog cellular service called AMPS (Analog Mobile Phone Service) starting in 1981. This generation is 1G, the first for using cell technology that let users place their own calls and continue their conversations seamlessly as they moved from cell to cell. AMPS uses what is called FDM or frequency division multiplexing. Each phone call uses separate radio frequencies or channels. You probably had a 1G phone, but never called it that.

The next generation, quick on the heels of the first, is digital cellular. One standard uses a digital version of AMPS called D-AMPS using TDMA (Time division Multiple Access). A competing system also emerged using CDMA or Code Division Multiple Access. As you might suspect, the two are incompatible but you can have a phone that works with both. Europe embraced yet a third standard called GSM which is based on TDMA. Digital transmissions allow for more phone conversations in the same amount of spectrum. They also lay the groundwork for services beyond simple voice telephone calls. Data services such as Internet access, text messaging, sharing pictures and video are inherently digital.

This is where the whole "G" thing got started. The original analog and digital cellular services were invented to cut the wire on landline phone service and give you regular telephone service you could take with you. As such, the bandwidth they offer for adding data services is pretty meager, in the low Kbps region. Now that a cell phone is not merely a cell phone, but also a PDA, a messaging system, a camera, an Internet browser, an email reader and soon to be a television set, true broadband data speeds are needed. That new generation of cell phone service has been dubbed 3G for 3rd generation.

3G has proven to be a tough generation to launch. The demand for greater bandwidth right now has spawned intermediate generations called 2.5G and even 2.75G. One such standard is GPRS (General Packet Radio Services) which is an extension of the GSM digital cellular service popular in Europe. It offers download speeds up to 144 Kbps.

3G phones and services are just starting to come into their own. One service you'll find is called EVDO which stands for EVolution Data Only. EVDO has download speeds up to 2.4 Mbps, which is faster than T1, DSL or Cable broadband service. There is also an evolution that includes voice called EVDV which is in the works.

While 3G is going to enable telephones to also become Internet computers, video phones and television receivers, its maturity phase will find it competing with wireless VoIP telephone services on WiFi, WiMAX, WiTV and the new wireless mobile standard 802.20, which doesn't seem to have a catchy name yet. The slug-fest between analog wireline phone service and wired VoIP seems likely to be continued on the wireless front.

There is also an emerging cellular standard you should be aware of called 4G. The fourth generation being championed in Japan will boost the data rates to 20 Mbps. These speeds enable high quality video transmission and rapid download of large music files. The first 4G phones may appear as soon as 2006. That means we better starting thinking about what to do with 5G if this generation thing is going to continue.

You may also enjoy reading some telephone history.

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Recycling TV Bands Into Broadband

Wireless regional broadband service may be coming to a TV channel near you. No, this isn't the Internet on TV, it's using channels originally assigned to TV stations to transmit a new type of wireless broadband service with a range as far as 30 miles and the ability to penetrate walls.

The new standard is just starting development now. It's designated 802.22 and called WRAN for Wireless Regional Area Networks by the IEEE. It's also picked up the nickname WiTV for WIreless over the TV band.

If you think that WiTV sounds like something similar to WiMax, you are right. They are both new wireless networking standards and both with the ability to operate over a range of miles rather than the 300 ft. radius typical of WiFi networking. So why yet another standard? To be sure, WiTV and WiMAX have some overlap in their results, but they also have some key differences. WiMAX will operate on the microwave bands of 2-11 GHz and 10 to 66 GHz. WiTV is targeting the UHF and VHF television bands that are located between 54 and 862 MHz.

The significance of these bands is that radio waves propagate differently at different frequencies. Lower frequencies tend to travel farther and more easily penetrate structures. For instance, a hard rain will break up your satellite TV reception, but doesn't seem to affect over the air broadcasts. When there is a storm pattern with low clouds, you might even clearly pick up a station hundreds of miles away for a short period of time.

WiTV offers the possibility of true regional wireless Internet service that will be just as easily accessed in rural areas as it is in town. With WiTV in your laptop computer, you could log onto your VPN, send and receive email, surf the Web, or enter data into a website sales form in the customer's office, in your car (stopped, I hope), on a table at home, or in a motel room that offers no Internet service.

The other big appeal of WiTV is the allure of using spectrum that isn't already in service for wireless data networks. Truth is that the UHF television band never really filled in with broadcast stations. After the VHF band became fully occupied and broadcasters were pushed up the dial into the much wider UHF band, cable and satellite broadcasting started to pick up steam. So how about giving someone else a shot at putting that spectrum to work?

Sounds good, but at the moment a lot of stations are squatting on two channels as they begin their digital HDTV broadcasts. The plan was that broadcasters would establish themselves on their new digital channels and then abandon their traditional analog channels. The cutoff was supposed to be 2006. There's not much chance of that actually happening on schedule, but the FCC is not waiting around to get better use utilization of the UHF TV spectrum. It's given the nod to wireless networking on those channels, with the provision that they can't interfere with stations already there.

This is where the 802.22 standard is expected to get very clever. There are a couple of innovative ways that new signals can be introduced into already assigned spectrum and not cause a problem. The first is to include a GPS locating system in each access point and compare the physical location of the transmitter with a database of licensed services assigned in that area. The frequencies that a particular wireless access point could use would be limited to protect existing services. Move the access point and you change the allowed channels it can transmit on.

An even more radical plan is to develop what is called a Cognitive Radio (CR). A radio that can think? No, actually the cognitive part means a radio that is aware of what is going on in the radio spectrum around it. It searches for unused channels and uses those while avoiding channels with existing signals. This sounds a little like the original Ethernet CSMA/CD or Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Detect system, doesn't it? I guess if you consider radio signals to be something akin to digital packets, it makes sense to actively avoid the interference that is caused by colliding signals.

The cognitive radio approach offers a new dimension in spectrum utilization and one that might spread beyond sharing channels between television and broadband. This concept could be extended to other parts of the spectrum so that new services have some place to go well before the legacy services reach the end of their useful life.

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Technorati Tags: broadband

Is Long Distance Service Dead or Alive?

The last couple of decades have seen fierce competition among telecom companies that want be the long distance telephone service provider for consumers and businesses. Have you noticed lately that you don't hear much about competitive long distance rates? Why is that?

Long distance phone service doesn't generate the buzz it once did. Now all the talk is about VoIP, bundled plans and cell phones. You might think that long distance carriers have dried up and blown away. Not so. Competitive long distance service is alive and well, if no longer in the spotlight. Would you be surprised to know that it might still be your lowest cost calling option?

Despite what you see advertised, one size phone service does not fit all situations. Oh, you can make just about any arrangement work as long as you have the ability to place local phone calls and long distance phone calls when you wish. But what is cost advantageous for one user can amount to paying too much for another. Here are some options and ideas on how to pick the right one for your business.

VoIP is indeed the hot new thing. The cost savings is believed to come from bypassing the long distance carrier, and preferably the local phone company as well. You do this by keeping your phone traffic within your own network or by using the Internet. Of course, you pay for any calls to phones on the public switched telephone network. You also need to factor in the cost of new VoIP phones, IP based PBX equipment or hosted PBX service, and expanded network bandwidth to accommodate both voice and data traffic. Enterprise level VoIP may or may not save you money, depending on the cost to convert and how much of your traffic goes outside anyway.

Since the incumbent and competitive local phone companies have been allowed to offer long distance service, the "bundled" packages of local and long distance minutes have become all the rage. Packaged arrangements offer the advantage of getting one bill a month instead of two. Low volume users will have a fixed price bill each month, regardless of variations in usage. Single line VoIP services may also offer a bundled plan of minutes per month intended for the residential and small business market. Bundled plans make sense if your combined local and long distance bill is higher than the bundled package price.

Some people avoid all wireline costs by cutting the wire and going completely cellular. This avant-garde approach might work for you if you are an independent professional or run a one-person sales office. It can be your best choice if you pair it with an inbound toll free service that lets your customers ring through to your cell phone or voice mail. This way you'll stay in touch with your clients no matter where you are.

Yes, alternative long distance providers are still around and offering lower per minute prices than ever before. There are several flavors of this service that you should be aware of.

The long distance service you are most familiar with is called one-plus or 1+. The provider you select notifies your local phone company that they are now providing your long distance service. It's called 1+ because you dial 1 plus the area code plus the seven digit phone number to reach your party.

If you are happy with your current local and long distance providers or have a bundled arrangement including broadband that can't be split up, you might still save on your long distance calls with a service known as "dialaround." What you do is dial a special toll free number, enter your access code, and then call the long distance number you want. You can generally program buttons on your phone to dial the access number and code so it's almost as convenient as 1+. In essence you are "dialing around" your current provider. Dialarounds generally offer very low per minute rates to particular destinations, especially overseas, that make them worth using for calls to those locations.

A mobile version of the dialaround is the billable calling card. Minutes are billed to your credit card so you are in no danger of running out like you might with a pre-paid card. Like the dialaround service, you call a toll free number from wherever you are and then enter a PIN code. You then dial the number you want. Billable calling cards are particularly good for domestic and overseas business travel where you might otherwise get dinged with very high hotel long distance rates.

The very lowest long distance rates you'll find are offered to volume business users with digital lines. If you have a medium or large company PBX system that uses T1 line service, you can get per minute rates that will make your eyes bug out. But, you have to use thousands of minutes a month to get these attractive rates. If you are running a call center or have a staff that spends a lot of time on the phone with customers or vendors, you may easily qualify for these special rates. Long distance T1 line service can be competitive with enterprise level VoIP because you keep the phone system you have now, including your TDM based PBX. If your system currently is connected via analog phone lines, you may have to add a digital interface card to your PBX to get the advantages of T1 based services.

Here are some low cost long distance calling options that you should compare with your current services. LongDistanceRateFinder.com offers a selection of 1+ long distance providers and bundled local and long distance service packages, including broadband phone options. If you don't want to switch providers or can't due to bundling or contractual arrangements, you can still get the benefits of dialaround long distance services and pre-paid or billable calling cards.

Going completely wireless? Get the best prices on cell phones and cellular phone service here. Get an inbound toll free number so your customers can call your cell phone toll free.

Companies with PBX phone systems using T1 or PRI digital line service should get a competitive quote on T1 long distance voice service.

Fiber, Fiber, Everywhere You Dig

Fiber optic cable is something that we have in abundance. Well, a certain type of fiber optic cable. It's the cable that was buried by the mile and seemingly forgotten. Now there's a treasure hunt underway to rediscover all this hidden potential bandwidth and put it to good use.

The history of buried fiber treasure goes back to the buccaneering pirate days of the late 20th century. Some of those pirates are back in the news and getting the justice they deserve. Others were never pirates at all. They were simple fortune seekers, Ninety-Niners, out to make their fortune in the great telecom gold rush. Using backhoes in place of picks and shovels, they salted the Earth with rich veins of refined silica strands. Then they covered the trenches they had made and left their treasure dormant.

But why would anyone go to that much trouble and never capitalize on the massive capital and labor invested? "Irrational exuberance" is the term Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan uses to describe those heady days of the 1990s. Most of us would say that the telecom carriers "just got carried away." There was a belief that the booming technology sector would be able to gobble up all the bandwidth the carriers could provide and still want more. But when the boom went bust, what was left is politely called a "global fiber glut."

Perhaps it won't be a glut for too much longer. Business, including the technology sector, is not only recovering but changing in its needs. The latest hot trends of offshoring, voice and data convergence, and supply chain integration all have huge appetites for bandwidth.

Massive amounts of bandwidth translates to fiber optic links. Copper tops out at the T3 level of 45 Mbps. Satellite, long haul microwave and local point to point wireless is lucky to do that well. If you want to move Gigabytes and Terabytes of data around town or across the country you really need to send it via fiber optic cable.

Your choices in fiber optic transmission come down to leasing bandwidth on existing fiber circuits, buying or leasing dark fiber strands, or burying your own fiber network. Within a business park or corporate campus, trenching your own cable runs makes sense. But when you leave your own property it gets very expensive very fast.

Dark fiber is those rich veins of silica hidden underground by the tens of thousands of miles. Fiber strands are so small that 100 or even 1,000 fiber pairs may have been buried in the right of way during the buildout process. Now, even that massive potential bandwidth has been multiplied by Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM). This means beaming more than one laser down a fiber strand. Each laser is set to a different "color" or lambda.

There are two flavors to WDM. CWDM or Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing uses typically 4 to 8 different lambdas. Each lambda is independent of the others and carries as much data as a single laser would send down the fiber in the original transmission plan. DWDM or Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing uses tighter tolerance equipment to pack 16 to 64 or even 128 lambdas per fiber pair.

You don't have to own the entire fiber cable. You can lease individual fiber strands or individual lambdas on a CWDM or DWDM system. On "lit" routes, you can also just order bandwidth by the DS0 or 64Kbps channel, including T1 (1.5 Mbps), T3 (45 Mbps), OC3 (155 Mbps) up to OC192 (9.95 Gbps). Some carriers also offer Ethernet (10 Mbps), Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps), Gigabit Ethernet (1 Gbps) and 10 GigE (10 Gbps). It all comes down to how much bandwidth you need and how much it is worth to you.

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Direct Inward Dialing Saves Lines

Direct Inward Dialing (DID), sometimes known as Direct Inward Dial or Direct Dial Inward (DDI), is a technique for sharing phone lines. Everyone in the office thinks they each have their very own telephone line with their own unique number. You can print this number on business cards, publish it in a company phone directory, and otherwise let the world know it is your private number, just like at home. A thousand people at a thousand desks can enjoy this fantasy without knowing the hidden truth that there are really only 20 or so real telephone lines hooked up.

The sleight of hand involved with DID is based on a special interface between the company's PBX telephone system and the telephone service provider. With DID, the phone company reserves blocks of contiguous phone numbers for you in lots of 10 or 20 and more. What they don't do is hook up copper pairs or digital trunks for all the numbers you choose. Instead, the telco switch detects calls to your block of numbers and connects each incoming call to the next available trunk line to your PBX. You may have only a single DID trunk, a couple of DID analog trunks, or a digital PRI trunk with 23 lines available.

There's one more thing that rides along with the incoming call. It's the phone number or 3 to 4 digit extension number that your PBX system is supposed to ring. That number can be passed to your system through dial pulses, DTMF tones (touchtones), or in the data channel of your T1 PRI trunk. At that point, it is up to your PBX system to ring the correct extension and connect the incoming call.

The person calling doesn't talk to a switchboard operator or encounter an auto-attendant, so they think that they are on a direct line to the person they called. The party receiving the call hears the phone ring and picks up, none the wiser to the fact that they are actually using a shared line. When they hang up, that trunk line will be freed for the next call.

The only way this can go horribly wrong is if you run out of trunk lines due to heavy calling. If your callers can't get through, you can add more analog or digital trunk lines to handle the increased calling volume and maintain the direct phone line illusion.

The companion service to DID is called DOD for Direct Outward Dialing. This is where you dial 9 for an outside line and then dial the number you wish to call. DOD lines are shared just like DID lines. Both analog and digital trunk lines can be ordered as one-way inward, one-way outward or two-way.

Let T1 Rex help you find the lowest prices on PRI and T1 lines with DID and DOD capabilities.



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BPL, I Hear You Whistling Through The Wires

When I was in engineering school, we had the best time broadcasting over the power lines. Most campuses of the era had carrier current AM radio stations that legally transmitted their programs without an FCC license to the classroom buildings and dorms. It was all on the up and up thanks to Part-15 of the rules and regulations that permitted sending medium radio frequencies down power lines. The only rule was that they had to stay on the power lines, which limited the coverage area to school grounds.

Now that same idea, transmitting information over power lines, is the center of a major controversy. The technology is called BPL for Broadband over Power Line. It's regulated by the very same FCC Part-15 rules, updated to account for the quirks of sending broadband Internet service over the public power grid.

It's a compelling idea. Not everyone can get broadband via DSL on a telephone line, cable modem service or wireless transmissions. It's expensive to string new fiber optic or copper cables on poles or bury them in the ground. But just look up and you'll see plenty of power lines available.

Electric utility service is about the most universal service you can find. The power lines run underground in cities and subdivisions, then overhead around town and on giant towers as far to the horizon as you can see. If all that existing transmission line can be pressed into service for carrying data as well as power, the broadband infrastructure problem is solved. Even better, every house and office is wired for electrical service. You wouldn't even need to run Cat-5 networking cable. The wires in the wall are your network. No computer, printer or VoIP telephone would need anything more than a power cord to connect it.

As you may suspect, there are some flies in this ointment. The biggest one is that the medium and short wave frequencies used for BPL don't like to confine themselves to the power wiring. They escape by radiating just like radio waves from an antenna. The question is who do they bother and is there a way to avoid it?

The group having the most anxiety over this is the Amateur Radio Operators or Hams. Their hobby involves listening for very weak voice and coded signals from around the world. Even the low power requirements of Part-15 may not be enough to prevent the broadband data signals form BPL from creating static that can drown out faint signals in very sensitive receivers. Actually, any radio service operating in the bands from 1.7 to 80 MHz, including shortwave broadcasts and marine & public service two-way radio, could potentially be affected.

The government has protected certain interests by prohibiting BPL transmission on key channels used by aircraft and excluding operation near coast guard facilities and radio telescopes. Otherwise, BPL is allowed to share channels with commercial and amateur stations, but not to interfere.

The compromise solution to the interference problem is to deal with it on a case by case basis. The expectation is that a relatively few people located close to overhead power lines will actually experience a conflict. When a complaint occurs, the BPL operator will "notch out" or remove a narrow slice of BPL signal on the particular channel being contested. That works because the BPL signal is actually a wide spectrum consisting of hundreds and even thousands of individual carrier signals, each responsible for just a part of the entire bandwidth. Remove a few and you decrease the speed of your BPL service, but not by much. This scheme is called Multi-Carrier Modulation (MCM) or Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and is widely used in digital signal transmission, including DSL Internet and digital radio broadcasting.

The other fly in the ointment is cost. Power lines were designed to efficiently carry 60 Hz, not 60 Megahertz. Special couplers have to be installed to get the BPL signal around transformers that tend to filter out high frequencies. Repeaters are needed on long stretches of open wire because the low power digital signals fade as they go down the line. At this point, it looks like the population density is too low in rural areas to support the cost of providing broadband over power lines without special public funding.

It's important to remember that the FCC only authorized BPL with updates to its Part-15 rules on October 14, 2004. There have been only a handful of pilot programs with varying degrees of success up to this point. My best guess is that BPL is very unlikely to unseat DSL, Cable and Dedicated Internet services and achieve the dream of the nation's power grid also becoming the nation's data grid. Instead, it will find niches where it works well and is profitable and others where it doesn't. Further technology developments may surprise us the way broadband over telephone lines keeps increasing in speed to where it can now rival fiber optic cables.

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Technorati Tags: broadband

Sharing Phone Lines

Business telephone lines are expensive. You want to have enough of them so that your people can get an outside line at any time, but not so many that they are only used a few minutes a day if at all. You also want to make sure that customers, suppliers and outside personnel can call in without annoying busy signals.

The simplest scenario is a home office or a teleworker operating at home. If usage is very light and you don't need a special business listing, the residential landline or personal cell phone may be enough. If more that one person needs to use the line, you simply add extensions or get a wireless phone system that includes one or more extra phones.

But what if usage is heavy or you want a special line just for that business? One solution is to add a second phone line with its own telephone, answering machine, and FAX machine. Going a step further, install two-line phones so you can select which line you want to answer from anywhere in the house.

This is the start of what's called a key telephone system or key telephone unit. Every phone has all of the telephone lines available. A light next to the line switch tells you whether that line is in use or not. You answer the line that's ringing because its light is blinking, or select a line that is not in use to make your call. If you choose a line that is in use, you have an instant party line conference going.

Many small and even medium sized offices have key telephone systems as an alternative to giving everyone their very own outside line. If your business doesn't require everyone to be on the phone all the time, two, four or six phone lines might be all you really need to service the whole office, factory or store.

The next step up is a PBX or private branch exchange. It's like having your own little phone office. Phones connected to a PBX system do not have phone line buttons. Instead you dial a number such as 9 to get an outside line. The PBX system assigns you next available line when you need it. If you are going to call someone in the same building, you just dial their extension. The call is connected through the PBX and doesn't even use a public phone line.

You can add phone lines to the PBX as your need grows. Once you get up to a dozen or so outside lines, it is often less expensive to consolidate all those individual local lines into a single digital T1 or PRI line. T1 gives you up to 24 phone lines and PRI gives you up to 23 plus caller ID information. If you need more than 23 or 24 lines you just add another interface card to your PBX and install a second T1 or PRI line.

A competing technology is VoIP or Voice Over Internet Protocol. In the home office example, a VoIP phone could be installed instead of a second landline. The VoIP phone or VoIP adaptor connects to the home's router and shares the broadband service with one or more computers. Some VoIP adaptors let you add two phones or one phone and one FAX machine, each with their own phone numbers. If you already have broadband, you'll probably find that using VoIP for a second phone is cheaper than installing a second landline.

With VoIP the concept of a phone "line" gets a bit fuzzy. VoIP converts telephone voice and signaling into data packets that are carried on computer networks or broadband Internet. If you need to add more phones, you increase the capacity of your network instead of adding more wires from the phone company. From an electrical standpoint it seems like one big party line. Unlike the party lines of old, however, every VoIP conversation is separate and private. You don't have to worry about your neighbor picking up the phone and listening in to your conversation ...like many of our parents and grandparents did.

For PBX based phone systems, T1 Rex will help you find the best prices for your T1 or PRI line service.

Copper That Thinks It's Fiber

I was shocked when reading "Om Malik on Broadband" to see an announcement about a new chipset that offers 100 Mbps upload and download speeds on copper telephone wire, of all things. Is this DslMAX, the landline equivalent of WiMAX?

Ikanos Communications, the company that issued the press release on the new chipset, isn't calling its product DSL anything. It goes by the name "FX 100100." The FX stands for fiber extension. At first I thought the 100100 might be a binary 36, but on closer inspection it simply indicates a symmetric 100 Mbps upstream and 100 Mbps downstream data rate.

Fiber extension is the real goal of the Ikanos chipset. The range at this speed is more like a few hundred feet rather than a few miles. The idea is to run fiber optic service to the neighborhood or curb, and then deliver service to the commercial building, apartment building, or single family home using Ma Bell's good old copper pairs. Why such a hybrid arrangement? It avoids the messy and expensive process of trenching fiber for a passive optical network to each and every dwelling. Getting copper to run at fiber speeds has even greater leverage in downtown areas where it can be cost prohibitive or even impossible to go tearing up streets to reach every building.

So how do they do that? I keep hearing that copper pairs are on the verge of being reclaimed by nature after a hundred years in the ground. The only sensible transmission medium for the future is fiber. Right? Well that would be true if we were starting from scratch. Everyone would be installing bundles of glass fibers for data, telephone, television, and everything else. You only need copper to bring in power. In a situation where you are trying to provide new high speed services to an already built-up infrastructure, the lure of using all that in-place copper wiring is just too compelling to ignore.

I'm starting to think that there is something of a "Moore's Law" for copper. Gordon Moore of Intel postulated 40 years ago that processor speed would double every 18 months without knowing exactly what breakthroughs would be needed to keep going at that rate. Yet, it has happened. Copper telephone wire was supposed to be tapped out with 56K dial-up modems. Yet, ISDN and the various flavors of DSL keep pushing the bandwidth limit up and up. Even in the office, copper twisted pair keeps fending off the advance of fiber with speeds up to 1 Gbps and experimentally up to 10 Gbps.

The magic that Ikanos Communications is using is an intelligent set of integrated circuits that combines discrete multitone modulation (DMT), a 150 Mips (millions of instructions per second) microprocessor, plus analog and line driver interfaces. The system is smart enough to measure the characteristics of the particular phone line when it powers-up. Then it cleverly transmits more bits in frequency bands that have less noise, and fewer in bands affected by interference or bridged line taps. The performance comes from the fine tuning required to flow as many bits through that copper straw as you might just dump down a fiber optic fire hose.

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Outsource Your Number Crunching

Computing and data centers are pricey propositions. Small companies can get away with a few PCs and a broadband connection to the Internet. Medium and larger sized corporations are faced with tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars in capital investment. To that you have to add the recurring costs of electricity, environmental controls, regular system upgrades and the expert personnel to maintain all that magic behind the curtain.

These costs are just the price you pay to be in the modern business game, right? Companies have tried various options to get the same result cheaper, including outsourcing the help desk overseas, using application service providers, leasing equipment and hiring temporary and contract personnel. Now here's a new wrinkle: Outsource your computers.

After years of downsizing human resources, hardware is now the one with a bullseye on its back... er... back of the rack. The selling point is that data centers tend to accumulate rooms full of equipment that starts going stale nearly as fast as a fresh gallon of milk. Just when you think you've got it paid for, it's time to add more machines or upgrade the processors, memory, storage and so on. All the while, these centers are turning electricity into heat and more electricity into air conditioning to get rid of the heat from the computers. This goes on even during times of the day when the loading on the computers is low. Is there any way to offload these costs?

The people promoting grid computing or utility computing think it can be more efficient to treat computing power just like electric power and have it delivered by a utility. You don't find it cost effective to go off the utility grid, so why not consider getting on the computing grid?

Grid computing itself isn't really based on having a single monster computer sitting next to a power plant. It's based on the idea that a super computer can be built cheaper from thousands of small microprocessor based computers, even standard PCs. With the right software orchestrating this army of machines it's possible to get terabytes per second throughput, perhaps even petabytes some day.

Now, who has lots and lots of the latest model computers at their disposal? Why, the computer manufacturers of course. That's why you see Sun promoting the "Sun Grid" for utility computing. HP and IBM have their own offerings. Sun is currently running a promotion offering their 10,000 CPU grid for a buck per cpu-hr. I guess that's $10K an hour if you need all of them. Still, what do you pay for a cpu-hour all told?

Seems unlikely that anyone is going to outsource their office PCs or even a small mainframe. But, if you need massive processing power for a particular project or just in short bursts, utility computing could make a lot more sense than owning. Typical examples include engineering design automation, scientific modeling, financial simulations, and high resolution graphics rendering to make movies.

Sun is actually taking this utility idea further by also offering a storage utility for $1 per gigabyte per month. Now maybe you can give the heave-ho to some of those disk arrays and tape libraries. What WILL you do with all that extra floor space?

If utility computing catches on, we may see a lot more pay-per-use or metered services become available. With high speed bandwidth coming down in price, accessing pooled resources located far away gets easier and less expensive. Perhaps market economics will flip and we'll generate our own electricity with solar panels but buy our computing and data storage from a utility.

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Connect Aloft With The Flying ISP

Do you suffer from Internet withdrawal when you fly? Does your PC seem almost useless sitting on that plastic tray table? No need to be offline anymore, at least on some popular international routes.

Connexion by Boeing is a broadband Internet service that gives you broadband at 30,000 ft. as you wing your way overseas. You can browse the Internet, send and receive email, and even connect to your corporate VPN. In some cases, it's a flying hotspot. Otherwise, you plug in an Ethernet cable.

So how does Connexion service work? It's satellite based Internet service with the satellite receiver mounted atop the aircraft. That sounds like the satellite Internet service you can get at home, but with one little wrinkle. The plane is moving. Not just moving, but zipping over the ocean at 600 miles an hour. A regular dish antenna wouldn't do any good because it wouldn't stay pointed at the satellite for long.

Instead, Boeing has developed a Ku band phased array antenna that electronically tracks the satellite signal. Phased array antennas have long been used by the military and now weather radar systems. There are no moving parts. The antenna is made up of a number of elements whose signals can be combined to be perfectly in phase in a particular direction.

The Connexion satellite link is a 5 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speed to the plane. Like any other ISP or Wi-Fi hotspot, this backbone speed is shared among the users through an onboard router. In many cases, it's a wireless router. You simply set up a wireless profile for Connexion by Boeing and then sign up for service using your web browser. Prices range from $7.95 for 30 minutes use on short flights to $29.95 for full service on flights over 6 hours.

Here's some more good news. Boingo has just announced an arrangement so that Boingo subscribers also have access to Connexion by Boeing. Would you call that Boeingo?

The Connexion service is available extensively on Lufthansa, and also available on Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways. It should be starting soon if not already available on Scandinavian Airlines.

Check the Connexion by Boeing Website to see if the flights you are interested in have the broadband service available. Service on US domestic flights has been delayed by all the financial problems, but may start as soon as 2006. The FCC is reviewing licensing for the Aeronautical Mobile Satellite Service that could also open the market to other providers.

MPLS Networks Are Coming Your Way

MPLS networking doesn't get quite the same hoopla as IP networking, but it's quietly growing by leaps and bounds. If not already, MPLS may soon be part of your network strategy. Here's the how and why.

MPLS stands for Multi-Protocol Label Switching. The multi-protocol part gives you an idea of how versatile this type of network is. Like IP or Internet Protocol networks, you need a special setup for MPLS. Of course the same is true for SONET, ATM, Frame Relay and other network protocols. MPLS tries to work with all of these other protocols, mostly by encapsulating them in its own tunnels. Why? To add speed and features that you might not otherwise have.

The way this works is that your packets enter the MPLS network through an ingress router that is also known as a tag router. Think of the MPLS network as a sovereign nation and the ingress routers as the customs checkpoints where you enter the country. To get out, you need to pass through an egress router. While you are traversing the network you are routed by tag switches also called label switch routers. It is important to note that your data packets will be the same when they leave the network as when they entered. In between, they will be in the MPLS protocol.

If this sounds a little like VPN tunneling, it actually is. Instead of encrypting the packets, MPLS adds a 32 bit tag to the packet headers. The ingress router examines the desired destination address and creates a tag that chooses a virtual circuit or label switch path for that packet. The ingress router will also assign quality of service requirements to the tag. From that point on, the tag switches look only at the tags to determine how to forward the packet. There may be multiple routes available for each label switch path so that the tag switches can manage outages, congestion and differentiated services. At the egress point, the MPLS tag is removed before sending the packets on their way.

Why go to all this trouble? For one thing, processing the relatively small tags is much faster than having to deal with larger headers at each router. For another, the MPLS network can be designed to provide more bandwidth or shorter latency paths for voice packets in VoIP telephone systems. Video packets really need lots of bandwidth available, so you don't want them crammed into paths where computers are backing up large databases. At the very least, voice and video need priorities to commandeer the bandwidth they need to maintain quality service. Most electronic data interchange isn't quite so sensitive.

Where will you find MPLS networks? Most major carriers now have them or soon will, perhaps as their primary backbone. Network traffic is evolving from time insensitive data transfers to time critical voice streams that are leaving the traditional public telephone network. Experience shows that just piling voice traffic on top of data traffic on wide area networks can lead to poor voice quality and dropped calls. MPLS supports traffic engineering needed to ensure that each type of packet, including voice, video and data, gets the quality of service it needs while on the network.

In fact, MPLS networks are now spreading to include access networks and may eventually find their way into your enterprise network. Service guarantees could be easier to manage when it's MPLS from end to end.

T1 Rex can help you get the MPLS or other network services, including dedicated Internet service, point to point trunking and optical carriers. Let us get you a fast, no obligation quote for the best carrier pricing to meet your specific needs.

Voice Over Whatever

Telephone communication was once limited to heavy desk phones with dials that came in any color you wanted as long as it was black. They were permanently wired to the wall because only authorized telephone company service personnel were going to repair or move them. No way that YOU were ever going to exchange them for something else. There wasn't anything else.

Things have changed, right? Now there's a shooting war in progress between old and new telecom technologies with new and ever more exotic players jumping in all the time. With voice over this and voice over that, how do you know what to pick at all?

Lets take a look at some of the more popular legacy and emerging technologies and what they do:

Analog Phone: Also known as POTS for plain old telephone service. Sounds dull, doesn't it? It may still be your best choice for a single business line or a few lines with a key telephone system or small PBX. The latest wrinkle is bundling local and long distance service for a special price, or even including DSL Internet service in the package.

Voice Over TDM: Also known as digital trunking, T1, PRI, or Integrated T1 service. You don't plug phones into this type of service. It connects through a PBX interface. Your phone works the same whether the line to the phone company is analog or digital. But if you have more than half a dozen phone lines plus company Internet service, you might be able to save on your monthly telecom bill with this option. If you have more than a dozen phone lines and are still using analog, digital service can almost certainly save you money.

Voice Over IP: People like to call this "vOYp". With VoIP your analog phone is replaced by a digital phone and a network connection, same as a computer. That's what it is. Your phone has been taught to speak computer language, in particular IP or Internet Protocol. At the local network level the connection is known as Ethernet. One advantage of VoIP is that computer and telephone networks can be merged into one network since all the equipment speaks the same language. A possible problem is not having a fast enough network to handle both, with the phone conversations usually more affected than the data. Probably the biggest advantage of IP over other network standards is that it is quickly becoming THE network standard. If you want Internet telephony, VoIP is the way to go.

VoFR: Voice over Frame Relay offers a way to make phone calls on a private frame relay network. Many larger companies use frame relay networks to interconnect their various offices and plant sites. Like VoIP, VoFR can be used to share an existing computer network with telephone traffic. Since frame relay networks are private networks, you have more control over call quality than on a public medium like the Internet.

VoATM: No, you don't go to the ATM machine to make a phone call. In this case ATM stands for Asynchronous Transfer Mode. It's a private networking standard something like frame relay. ATM is designed around small cells of uniform size. This design is compatible up to and including optical carrier networks, which offer massive amounts of bandwidth from location to location. Traffic engineering features of ATM networks make quality of service for telephone calls fairly easy to achieve. Many of the well known long distance carriers use ATM as a transmission standard in their own national and international networks.

VoWiFi: Voice over Wi-Fi is a fast emerging technology that lets you make telephone calls at WiFi hotspots. Savvy computer users have been able to do this for a long time using "soft phones" which are software programs running on their laptop computers. If you don't fancy lugging around your computer to make phone calls, you'll soon find cell phones that also work on WiFi or perhaps special WiFi only phones. The technology has a ways to go yet before you can maintain a call as you move from hotspot to hotspot. A more advanced design will let your phone switch seamlessly from cellular to WiFi, depending on which is the best choice for wherever you happen to be.

VoWiMAX: Voice over WiMAX is a more powerful longer range version of VoWiFi that's not ready for prime time yet. When WiMAX becomes generally available in a couple of years, it might just give cellular a run for its money.

Cellular: This is the wireless phone system that is almost universally available for fixed location or mobile use. There are multiple standards worldwide, although you can get world phones that handle just about any cell network. Cell phones that combine voice, PDAs and BlackBerry text transmission are altering our notion of what a telephone really is. When VoWiFi and VoWiMax capabilities are included, it will be possible to integrate the cell phone into the corporate telephone system including PBX features like transfers, forwarding, conferencing, receptionist control and 3 or 4 digit dialing.

Tag: voip

UWB From Titanic to Today

Ultra Wideband, UWB, is touted as a once secret esoteric military technology now being readied to take over the short range wireless market. It could potentially lay waste to Bluetooth, ZigBee and Wi-Fi as it offers the desirable characteristics of very high bandwidth and low power consumption. It could potentially lay waste to all communications if ever allowed to rule the airwaves like it once did, nearly a century ago.

Ultra Wideband is a bizarre transmission system by conventional radio design practice. First of all, there is no carrier wave like you have with AM and FM. That's not unprecedented. SSB or single sideband radio sets are often used for two-way communications on the shortwave bands. The carrier isn't really mandatory. It simply makes for a simple transmitter design and ease of tuning at the receiver. In most communications schemes, the information (audio, video, data, etc.) rides on a carrier wave that is discarded at the receiving end. Instead of a carrier, UWB transmissions consist of a stream of pulses only picoseconds wide. A nanosecond is 1,000 picoseconds if that gives you an idea of how short these pulses are. The pulses themselves aren't ordinary sine waves, they're just impulses.

Short impulses result in high frequencies spread over a wide band. Thus the term ultrawideband. How ultra? A 4 GHz UWB transmission would have a minimum bandwidth of 1 GHz. If you tuned into a UWB transmission, it would sound like white noise on a regular radio. But isn't background noise on transmission channels made up of white noise? Ah-ha. Now you know why the military likes this technology. It's hard to detect without the right equipment. Anyone stumbling across a UWB signal thinks it's just extra noise and won't suspect there is a huge datastream being transmitted.

The invention of UWB tends to be credited to research on microwave transmission in the 1960s. Actually, what happened was that researchers finally had the mathematical theory to understand electrical impulse response plus the test equipment to check their theories. With that they could build a body of knowledge that would lead to practical UWB systems, at least modern UWB systems.

The very first UWB transmissions were made by Heinrich Hertz in 1887 and refined by Guglielmo Marconi into a transatlantic radio system in 1901. And this is where the Titanic comes in. It was Marconi spark transmitters that sent the CQD and SOS emergency signals from the doomed ocean liner in April of 1912.

Marconi had invented a radio system based on UWB simply because an electrical spark naturally generates impulse signals with very wide bandwidth. Any transmission system with a bandwidth greater than 25% of its center frequency can be considered ultrawideband. Radio pioneers considered that a liability rather than an asset. Each transmission hogged the entire low frequency spectrum, preventing other stations from being heard. They quickly adopted the narrowband system using sine wave carriers that allowed many stations to share a band of frequencies.

Today's circuit miniaturization and solid state components make it easy to use microwave bands in the GHz range where there is lots of spectral space available. Or so it seemed. UWB goes back to the idea of spreading out to occupy the whole available bandwidth. But today's wrinkle is sophisticated receivers that can decode complex signals riding just above the noise floor. No one, least of all the FCC, is going to allow UWB to ride roughshod on very expensive communications spectrum. In fact, UWB is now allowed only if it stays below the Part 15 "unlicensed" power levels and even less on frequencies used for GPS (Global Positioning System) transmissions.

Fortunately, UWB is so efficient that less than a milliwatt is all that is needed to transmit hundreds of Mbps as far as 30 feet. That puts it into the category of PAN or personal-area networking, now dominated by Bluetooth and WiFi. True, UWB as currently approved doesn't approach even Wi-Fi hotspot coverage. But who's to say what might be constructed with mesh networks and further advances in the technology?

Need Internet or private line bandwidth to feed your wireless networks? Let T1 Rex help you find high bandwidth at low prices.

Wireless Mesh Networks and Broadband Co-Ops

Instead of getting your Internet service from an Internet service provider, how would you feel about BEING the ISP or at least participating in helping to spread the connection throughout your community? With wireless mesh networks, you're not just a user, you're a provider too. For your participation, you get a share of the cost savings that come from be part of a cooperative effort, or co-op.

The whole model of carriers vs customers is being challenged by a different way of routing packets. Your typical WiFi hotspot has a central 802.11 wireless access point or WiFi base station that acts as the Internet service provider. The various people waiting in the airport lounge or sipping coffee in the cafe are the clients or users of the service. All communications are between the clients and the access point. This client/server relationship is the defacto standard in computing today.

That's today. Tomorrow a different topology may rule. The WiFi card in your laptop might become an access point in addition to its normal role as network client. In mesh networking every node communicates with every other node, not just back and forth to a central router. In another variation, called a partial mesh network, nodes communicate with all nearby nodes, but not distant nodes. This partial mesh network arrangement is what lets you build a community level "hotspot" by passing data packets from node to node until they get to their destination. Each low power access point may only have a range of 300 feet. Two of them push the range to 600 feet, three take you to 900 feet and so on. As computers join the network, they get to send and receive packets from the mesh, but they are obligated to share their bandwidth by also passing along packets that are intended for other users.

It's a very cooperative arrangement. To make this practical, the network needs enough intelligence to understand where nodes are located in respect to others, so that all nodes do not have to route all packets. That would really bog things down quickly. Instead, your node only serves itself and a few others.

So, what force is behind this move to denigrate the traditional ISP? Would you believe it is none other than Microsoft itself? Yes, they are hard at work in Redmond, Cambridge and Silicon Valley on what Microsoft calls "Self-Organizing Neighborhood Wireless Mesh Networks." The IEEE has a working group standardizing the hardware end of wireless mesh networks as 802.11s.

Pushing the Internet Co-Op envelope is the community of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. They have an up and running project called CUWiN for Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network. In this case, the technology consists of specialized access point hardware using outdoor antennas. If you want to participate you need to donate a PC to help with the routing or acquire a Soekris single board computer to mount in a weatherproof enclosure on your roof, along with a 802.11b wireless card and 8 dBi antenna. You can also help supply Internet bandwidth as a network edge node if your provider allows bandwidth sharing. Or you can simply act as a relay node to help extend the reach of the wireless network.

Mesh networks are very robust in that if a node goes down, the rest of the network simply routes around it. As nodes join the network, their resources expand the network and make it more robust. Almost sounds organic, doesn't it?

Will these living, breathing network organisms digest the traditional DSL and Cable ISPs? Not completely. You still need a DSL, Cable, Satellite or T1 dedicated Internet connection to feed the network edge. However, in communities that traditional broadband providers have forgotten, wireless mesh could spawn and preempt any hardwire build-out. Once WiMax nodes become practical, there really is no geographical limit to the spread of mesh networks resembling something of a... web!

Need broadband access to feed your network edge? Get business grade dedicated Internet service from T1 Rex.

Outsourcing The PSTN Gateway

Enterprise VoIP and VoIP based telephone systems for the small and medium business continue to encroach on the turf of the PSTN or public switched telephone network. If you have already implemented VoIP in your organization, you know that your telephone calls piggyback on your data network without any per minute charges, taxes or fees. That is, as long as they stay on your network or the Internet. As soon you need to make a call to someone with a conventional landline or cell phone, or take a call from them, the free ride is over. Now you need to access the PSTN.

How you get to the phone company's network depends on how you've implemented VoIP, but in the background it's all the same. At some point a device called a gateway, gateway router or PSTN gateway converts the packets of your VoIP datastream into analog voice signals of varying electrical current levels. The gateway also handles signaling, which is how you tell the phone company you want to make or take a call and what number you are dialing.

If you have chosen a hosted VoIP service or hosted PBX system, the PSTN gateway is somewhere out there at your service provider. You're typically buying access for so much per month, which also includes routing your VoIP calls.

At the enterprise level, you probably have your own softswitch or gatekeeper, routers, phones and so on for a completely self-contained network. For PSTN access, you have a gateway or hybrid PBX system that you maintain yourself. You also need conventional phone line or digital trunks to the local telephone company office. But what if you could outsource this function and let someone else provide the gateway, similar to the arrangement that hosted plan users have?

Now you can. Broadwing Communications, a tier 1 voice and data networking carrier, is offering a hosted gateway solution called PRIorityConnect SIP. Customers simply route their PSTN bound VoIP traffic to the Broadwing platform using SIP or Session Initiation Protocol. Inbound calls are converted to SIP based VoIP and routed to the corporate network.

That's another vote for SIP as the preferred signaling protocol over H.323, the older and more comprehensive standard. SIP has pretty much become the defacto standard for residential and small & medium business VoIP. It's been making inroads into enterprise VoIP, with many business phones now able to support both standards.

Let T1 Rex get you a quote on competitive voice and data services from Broadwing and other tier 1 providers.

Synchronizing FM Radio Stations With T1 Lines

In the world of radio broadcasting there are large, medium and small stations. The large stations are generally associated with high power and major market coverage. Medium and smaller stations may completely serve smaller communities or partially cover larger metro areas. Big stations mean large audiences and big bucks. But there are only a few available to go around. What would you think of building a huge FM station by combining a bunch of small stations?

The latest digital technology is making it possible to synchronize two or more stations on the same frequency transmitting the same program so that you won't notice when your car radio moves from one station's coverage to another. This is similar to cellular phone service where the radio cells seamlessly hand off your phone call from one to the other, ensuring that you always get the strongest signal possible.

Harris Broadcast Communications has a system called Intraplex SynchroCast that uses GPS receivers and T1 telecom lines to tie stations together so they act like one larger and more powerful transmitter. The system uses Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers at each transmitter to precisely synchronize the carrier and stereo pilot signals. That puts the transmitted signals in phase rather than some random phasing that you would notice when you are situated between stations.

The other important part of this system is using T1 lines to transmit the station audio digitally between studio and transmitters. That's done by stations anyway because digital studio to transmitter links preserve audio quality over a distance of miles. The new wrinkle is to install an additional GPS receiver at the studio and send its timing signals along with the audio to each transmitter.

What this does is let the SynchroCast system determine the time delay of the audio program coming from the studio to each transmitter. Chances are they are different because the transmitters are not the same distance from the studio. SynchroCast adjusts a small digital time delay for each program signal so that they are transmitted from each antenna at exactly the same time. The programming will then arrive at the point between stations correctly in phase so you won't be able to tell when your radio switches from station A to station B.

Clever, right? With an arrangement like this, a broadcast company can buy up smaller stations on the same frequency that ring a metro area or are located along an interstate highway. Listeners will be able to hear the programming much further than if they had to switch stations to find the same program. They'll also avoid the distortion that you get when stations on the same channel carry the same program but are not synchronized.

If you are in the radio, television or audio network field and are interested in T1 lines for audio transport, let T1 Rex help you get the T1 links you need at the best prices.

The Shock and Awe of Competitive Quotes

The standard procedure for getting digital business lines such as T1 or T3 service has been to call the local phone company and place an order. A sales representative in a suit might stop by with the contract and show you where to sign, but the price is what the price is. Well, that's how it USED to be anyhow.

Since telecommunications deregulation, competitive suppliers have sprung up with their own networks and pricing that can be much lower for standard T1 line service or fractional T1, integrated T1, bonded multiple T1 lines, DS3 service, a T3 line or even optical carrier service for OC3 and higher speeds.

If you have been signing the standard telco contract over and over, your eyes might just bug out when you see what else is available that you didn't even know about. In fact, the telecom business has become so competitive since the end of the "boom" years of the 1990's that you can almost certainly save money on any contract more than a year or two old. Perhaps even the contract you just signed a couple of months ago.

So how do you find these great deals? You have to know somebody. Us. Actually, you could search around and find a few competitive providers and go through the bid process with each. Or, you can use a telecom brokerage service like the one we have available. Brokers negotiate the best rates possible from as many top tier suppliers as they can. Ours has a dozen. Plus, we have access to something you can't do on your own and that is get automated quotes while you wait.

Dedicated services are priced based on distance to the nearest POP or point of presence for the service provider. The tool we have available lets you enter your business phone number and street address and get a list of available options in a matter of seconds. The database is programmed for automatic T1 and T3 line service quotes. Optical carrier services are more complex and one of our consultants will call you with a quote.

So, are you sitting down and NOT holding a cup of coffee? Well, put it down before you run any quotes or you might just dump it all over your keyboard... and we don't want that to happen. Now, click here to get your complimentary dedicated line service quote.

Control Your Computers With KVM

KVM is a technology that lets you control 2, 4, 100 or 1,000 PCs or servers from a single keyboard, monitor and mouse. Take command of that virtual data center from the comfort of your office or simply switch between a couple of different local computers while you're doing Web design or programming. There's a level of KVM that's just right for you.

First of all, let's explain those initials KVM. They stand for Keyboard, Video and Mouse. Those are the three peripherals every computer needs to make an operations console.

The simplest arrangement is a KVM switch which is a device about the size of a modem. You plug your keyboard, monitor video and mouse into the KVM switch instead of a computer. Then you run a set of KVM cables from the switch to each computer you want to control. A 2 port KVM switch controls 2 computers. You can also get 4 port and 8 port KVM switches in a desktop size.

How do you work KVM? You can push a button on the KVM switch to move from computer to computer. Or, there are keyboard shortcuts you can use to make the switch back and forth. Another mode automatically switches the monitor between computers every few seconds so you can keep an eye on what's going on. That's especially useful for monitoring a group of servers that you expect to run automatically. If you need to intervene to fix a problem or install new software, simply select that particular server on your KVM switch.

This simple type of KVM switch will work up to about 50 feet away from the computers you are controlling, so it is generally used in a server room or office environment. If you want to get farther away, you'll need to install a Cat5 KVM switch or a Cat5 KVM extender. These use Cat5 computer wiring instead of the short bundles of keyboard, video coax and mouse wires. With a Cat5 KVM switch you can move your control point hundreds of feet from the server room. Some of these switches are stackable so that you can add KVM switches to control dozens or hundreds of machines from one console. A matrix KVM switch lets you have multiple consoles to let several operators have access to any desired server or PC.

KVM switches and Cat5 KVM switches are analog devices. The signals are analog control signals that use their own wiring network between devices. This is also called out-of-band KVM control. In-band systems work over the company LAN, much like the way VoIP telephones and computers share a common LAN network.

Digital KVM uses IP transmission for in-band operation. These are the newest and most sophisticated KVM switches. With IP networking built-in, there is no distance limitation. You can sit in your office in Chicago and control a data center in Asia if you wish. Or set up a "virtual data center" with servers in scattered locations. It's all the same when you are accessing them over the Internet.

That brings up a good point about security. Remote KVM solutions need security features such as encrypted transmissions. This is typically built into the system, essentially creating a virtual private network specific to your KVM over IP system.

Small KVM switches like those made by Belkin can be purchased at office supply stores for control of 2 to 4 computers. Larger Cat5 KVM switches and digital KVM systems are sold by companies such as Raritan, Avocent, and Rose.

IP bandwidth including virtual private networking is available through T1 Rex.

Dedicated Internet for Farms

Agribusiness is now high tech business. GPS systems in tractors keep tabs on exactly how much acreage has been planted and harvested. Livestock is electronically tagged and monitored to know the health of each animal and the costs involved in raising it. Everything from buying seed to monitoring market prices to keeping tabs on the weather is computerized. Yet, getting high speed voice and data connections in rural areas can still be a challenge.

A large part of the problem is that the methods of Internet access most popular for small business and home businesses are based on technologies with limited delivery range. DSL, including low cost consumer ADSL and business grade SDSL, can't be delivered more than a few miles from the nearest telephone company central office. In fact, the speed of a DSL connection goes down rapidly as you get farther from the DSLAM (digital subscriber line access multiplexer) that feeds the broadband Internet signal down the phone line.

Cable Modem Internet service is also limited. Cable companies may run their lines to a few outlying subdivisions and then stop. Their business model is based on dense populations so that they can get a lot of TV and Internet subscribers for every mile of expensive cable buried or strung on poles.

WISPS or Wireless Internet Service Providers are sometimes an option, but they are also limited in range and need a line of sight path from their tower to the antenna they set up on your property. When WiMAX enters service starting later this year and next year, coverage will greatly expand and wireless Internet service to farms, ranches, vineyards and rural residents will become more available.

That really leaves only two good options right now for Internet service on the farm. A very practical and professional grade Internet connection can be provided using T1 line service. T1 is a technology developed by the telephone companies for long haul of telephone and data traffic. As such, T1 is available just about anywhere you can get a telephone line. In fact, T1 is transported on two pair of ordinary copper phone wires with special regenerators spaced every mile or so to maintain signal quality.

That's a big difference between T1 and DSL. T1 was designed with means to keep boosting the signal out to 20 miles or more from the telco office. With T1 you get 1.5 Mbps both upload and download with a service level guarantee to ensure reliable operation. With T1 you have the speed to run multiple computers, VoIP telephone or a hosted PBX system, and even a web server if you wish. If you don't need the power of a full T1 connection, fractional T1 service is available for a lower price. In some areas, Integrated T1 lets you share the line for Internet access plus a small PBX or key telephone system for your business phone calls.

If you are interested in T1, Fractional T1 or Integrated T1 service to your farm, ranch, vineyard or rural homestead, let T1 Rex find the best T1 prices for you.

When Dial-Up Internet Service Makes Sense

In the great migration to residential broadband and T1 dedicated Internet access for business, it's easy to forget that nearly half the people accessing the Internet in the US are using dial-up modems on standard telephone lines. Dial-up access has improved greatly over the years and still makes sense for many people, even business people.

But isn't dial-up Internet so last century? Not necessarily. For instance, how can you get your email or visit web sites when you broadband goes down? That happens even to the best DSL and Cable Internet providers on occasion. It helps to remember that much of the time broadband is a convenience more than an absolute necessity. In a pinch, you can live with plugging a phone wire into the back of your desktop or laptop and dialing into 56K Internet service.

Not everyone lives on the Internet like some of us. There is no point in paying $35 to $45 a month for broadband or $24 a month for the heavily advertised dial-up services if you only log on an hour a day to check your mail and a few web sites. If you are online 15 hours a month or less, consider CogniSurf for $7.95 a month. Or, for unlimited dial-up access you can go with WorldVerge at just $9.95 a month.

What do you get for your $9.95 a month? WorldVerge offers unlimited 56K dial-up Internet service with spam and virus filtering, 5 email accounts, free 24/7 tech support and both standard PC and Macintosh dialers. Add the accelerator option for another $2.95 a month and you'll be downloading email and accessing web sites up to 6 times faster. That's almost the broadband experience, although accelerators don't affect the speed of software downloads & web site FTPs, and don't improve VoIP pc to phone calls over dial-up.

Dial-up Internet service is alive and well and less expensive than ever for broadband backup, business travelers, occasional users, and anyone living in areas that aren't supported by DSL or Cable Internet service.