Who Still Needs a T1?

With all the hoopla over copper and fiber Ethernet, plus new options in Cable broadband, that stalwart of business connectivity, the T1 line, is getting little fanfare these days. Does that mean that T1 is on its last legs? Or, is there a future for this proven telecom service?

Far from fading out, T1 is as popular as ever. New installations are being provisioned as you read this. The fact that T1 has been around for decades is one of its strongest features. That and the decline of T1 prices in tandem with competing Ethernet over Copper services are keeping T1 in the game.

So, who really needs T1? You do if you need professional grade dedicated bandwidth, secure point to point connections, or robust telephone trunking. That’s especially true if your business location is a bit off the beaten track. If you can’t get any wireline service other than plain old telephone, you probably can get a T1 line installed.

T1 has almost universal connectivity today. To understand how that can be when DSL and Cable rarely go past the city limits and Ethernet services are mostly found in business districts, we have to look back at why T1 was developed in the first place. We think of T1 lines as wide area network connections today, but in the beginning T1 was a telephone trunking system.

Prior to WWII, telephone companies connected to each other through analog lines on telephone poles or underground cables. Carrier telephony used a frequency division multiplexing scheme to load multiple conversations onto a single pair. In the 1950’s, Bell Labs developed digital multiplexing to replace the analog systems. The basic digital trunk was defined in the T-Carrier specifications. T-Carrier includes T1 and T3 lines.

The genius behind the design of T1 is that it runs on two pair of ordinary twisted pair copper. This is the subscriber loop connection that is installed in every business for telephone service. The wires are the same, but the signals on a T1 line are digital, not analog. While one copper pair can carry one business phone line, two copper pair can carry 24 phone lines or a digital bandwidth connection of 1.5 Mbps.

Another smart thing about the design of T1 is that provisions were made to boost the signal so that it can connect far flung locations. Not every business location is within a few thousand feet of a telco central office. Even analog signals fade out with distance. The much higher digital signal frequencies fade out much quicker. That’s why DSL is hard to come by. Unless you are close to the phone company CO, the DSL signal has little bandwidth capability left by the time it gets to your place.

The T1 support system was designed with a device called a regenerative repeater that can be installed in the line every mile or so to complete regenerate the signal. The noisy and faded input signal is boosted and reshaped so that at the output it looks like what comes out of the central office. Keep adding these repeaters and you can extend T1 service far out into the countryside.

If you have a business on the edge of town or in a remote location, you may still be able to get a T1 line for a reasonable price. The only real competition is two way satellite broadband. It works, but has very long latency times that make telephone service perform poorly, is subject to rain and snow outages, and has download limitations. If you exceed your quota, your speed will be reduced so that you don’t hog the limited resources of the satellite.

T1 has none of those problems. You get a rock solid 1.5 Mbps in both the upload and download direction. Load it full up with data transfers 24/7 or use what you need, the price is the same. Latency is negligible for most applications. In fact, T1 works great as a multi-telephone service or in the ISDN PRI configuration that supports most PBX telephone systems. You don’t have to get an Internet only data connections. T1 lines can be ordered between two business locations for a private line connection.

Is T1 the right service for your needs? Check T1 prices and availability instantly and compare with other options... if there are any that are suitable.

Using T1 Between Offices

T1 lines have many uses, including making connections between offices in the same city or across the country. Let’s take a look at how you would do this and what options are available.

The basic interoffice connection is the point to point T1 line. The term point to point means just what you think it does. This is a circuit that runs between two locations only. Actually, the connection is made from one business location to the nearest telco central office, then from central office to central office, and finally from the far end central office to the other location.

Why not just run wires directly between locations and avoid the routing through the central offices? You could do that, but unless the buildings are within sight of each other and you own the land or right of way in-between, it’s going to be prohibitively expensive. The reason that T1 lines are so affordable is because all the necessary elements needed to make the connection are already in place.

T1 lines are provisioned over common twisted pair copper telephone copper wiring found in multiple pair bundles called binder groups. This copper cable is run to nearly every business location during construction, since almost all business locations order landline telephone service. T1 service is delivered on 2 pair in the binder. Who owns the binder cable? It’s the incumbent local exchange carrier, the local phone company, that installed it. They actually make the service installation, although the lines may be leased and sold by a competitive service provider.

Those copper links to the central offices are often called the “first mile” or “last mile” connections. In between, the T1 signal may travel on copper or be multiplexed on a fiber optic service for long haul transmission. It might even be sent through a MPLS network owned by the competitive provider who has your T1 line contract. By the way, that MPLS service can be set up to connect 3 or more locations into a multipoint to multipoint network so they can all communicate with each other.

From a user standpoint, you can think of your T1 line as a dedicated digital “pipe” with a bandwidth of 1.5 Mbps. There are no usage limits. This is your line full time. You can send as much or as little data through that pipe between locations as will fit at 1.5 Mbps. It’s inherently more secure than sending files over the Internet because you are the only user of that particular connection. You can elect to encrypt your data during transmission to make the connection even more secure.

T1 lines can carry voice, data, video or some combination of these. Most often, T1 lines are used as digital data connections for sending files between locations. They can also be used to provide branch offices with access to central servers and databases at headquarters. If 1.5 Mbps isn’t enough bandwidth, you can order bonded T1 to increase that to 3, 4.5, 6, 7.5, 9 or more Mbps.

Another popular use for point to point T1 lines is to interconnect PBX telephone systems. Each office may have its own self-sufficient phone system. When you tie them together with a T1 or T1 PRI line, your offices can talk to each other without having to pay any toll charges to the phone company.

Do you have a need to connect two or more business locations? Check out prices and availability for point to point T1 lines and other appropriate telecom services.



Note: Photo of Empire State Building courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

IP VPN vs MPLS VPN

Security is an issue anytime you send data into a cloud network. One way to ensure that your data cannot be observed or tampered with is to build your own WAN network from point to point private lines. Another approach is to use a virtual private network that runs on resources that you don’t have exclusive use of. That’s what is meant by a VPN.

The beauty of using dedicated private line connections is that you are in control of both access and resource utilization. You need to manage bandwidth demand and packet priority. What you don’t have to worry about is someone else crowding you for resources. There is no one else. If you are really concerned about malicious parties tapping into your line surreptitiously, you can chose to encrypt the data while it traverses the WAN connection. That’s the ultimate in network security. It’s also the highest cost approach.

What’s attractive about VPN solutions is that they are much less expensive to lease and require fewer resources on your part. Both the cost and resource savings come from sharing the facilities with other parties. The Internet is a prime example of how massive utilization can drive down costs. If you want to really minimize costs, a shared access connection, such as DSL or Cable broadband, is the cheapest approach by far.

The same things that make the Internet cheap also make it insecure. Anybody and everybody worldwide can connect to the Internet for what you are paying or less. Perhaps they’re using a public library or WiFi hotspot network without paying a cent. Many of these networks make no effort to even verify user identity. It’s the perfect breeding ground for mischief makers and criminal activities.

Fortunately, there is a way to secure your data as it traverses the Internet. The trick is encryption. You encrypt your data packets using a key that only you know. Anyone else who has access to your data stream sees only gibberish. A popular standard for doing this is called IPsec for IP security. It requires hardware and/or software that you manage at each location for the encryption/decryption process.

IPsec lets you create a virtually private network out of the Internet, a completely public network. This is generally what is meant by the term IP VPN. One big advantage of this IP VPN approach is that laptop computers can be configured with this system to give corporate access to remote or home workers. All that’s needed is the VPN enabled computer and a broadband Internet connection.

While the Internet is cheap, it offers no guaranteed performance. You take your chances on network congestion, packet corruption, latency and jitter. File transfers generally work fine, but voice and video can degrade without warning. Many businesses want a more reliable network to connect their branch offices, warehouses, retail locations, and so on.

MPLS networks come to the rescue as an improved form of virtual private network. The MPLS network doesn’t have public access, but it is a shared resource. Your costs are reduced compared to dedicated private lines because the cost of regional, national or international connections are amortized across the total user base. What makes MPLS networks a VPN solution is that your data connections are essentially tunneled through the cloud wrapped in proprietary routing labels. You define your connections and the network operator instructs the MPLS network on how to route your packets.

MPLS networks are often referred to as MPLS VPN because they are inherently virtually private. Connections to the network tend to be through dedicated private lines, such as T1 or Ethernet. If you want an even higher level of privacy, you can choose to encrypt your data while it traverses the MPLS network. In addition to improved security compared to the Internet, MPLS networks offer performance guarantees for bandwidth, jitter, latency and packet loss. That makes MPLS VPN a popular choice for mission-critical business applications.

Do you have a need to connect multiple business locations? Which type of VPN makes the most sense for your needs? Is it IP VPN or MPLS VPN? One easy way to sort out the options is to get complimentary network consultation and price quotes through our Affordable VPN site. You may well be spending far more than you need to for the performance and security you desire.