Extending Ethernet over MPLS Networks

Ethernet started out as a local area network protocol, but is quickly becoming the metropolitan area network protocol of choice. It offers easy interfacing to existing wired and wireless business networks, rapid bandwidth scaling without equipment changes, and a lower cost structure than traditional telecom services. If Ethernet is so great for the LAN and MAN, how about Ethernet for the WAN?

Ethernet WAN is enjoying a rising popularity, especially among companies with multiple business sites located across the United States and across international borders. You can get dedicated point to point wired Ethernet connections between any two locations, but a competing methodology that is gaining steam is Ethernet over MPLS.

Why use an MPLS network to transport your Ethernet traffic? The first reason is that MPLS networks are already in place and going where you want to send your traffic. Sure, you can custom engineer a dedicated private line service, but why re-invent the wheel? Ethernet is easily transported over MPLS networks using Pseudowire encapsulation that emulates the wireline it competes with. Which do you think is going to be less expensive? Paying for a custom point to point wireline connection or being one stream of traffic on a large MPLS network?

The way it tends to work out is that short haul Ethernet links have the cost advantage when implemented as dedicated lines. This is especially true if you are nowhere near an MPLS carrier node. Once you start looking at coast to coast transport or a situation where you want multiple Ethernet LANs connected in a transparent mesh network, MPLS networks gain the advantage. MPLS also has the edge when you want to cross international borders to include foreign sites on your corporate network.

Carriers may be muddying the water even further by offering Ethernet line services that consist of copper or fiber Ethernet access connections to their MPLS network core, where the long haul Ethernet transport really takes place.

There are several types of Ethernet services that are really popular right now. One is E-Line or Ethernet Private Line service. This is a standardized service specified by the MEF (Metro Ethernet Forum). It gives you a Carrier Ethernet connection that bridges two LANs. A variation is EVPL or Ethernet Virtual Private LIne. What EVPL does is let you use a single physical Ethernet port to connect to multiple Ethernet private lines going to out to geographically diverse locations. This is something you could use to replace a star network built on independent wireline connections to those same remote locations.

Another popular service is E-LAN or Ethernet LAN service, also called VPLS or Virtual Private LAN Service when implemented on an IP/MPLS network. While Ethernet Line Service replaces dedicated point to point telecom lines, Ethernet LAN is a meshed network service that interconnects multiple locations on an any-to-any basis. With VPLS, you bridge your multiple LANs so that they act as one giant LAN network. That’s true even if you have a hundred or thousand sites in the U.S. and and equal number spread out over the globe.

What carrier can offer this level of MPLS networking? Actually, there are several to choose from. If one can’t serve all your sites, multiple carriers can share traffic through a E-NNI or Ethernet Network to Network Interface to reach all locations with VPLS or E-Line connections. If you need this type of connectivity, you may be surprised by how affordable it has become recently. Get Ethernet over MPLS service prices now and see how far your network can really reach.

When More Bandwidth Doesn’t Help

You’re probably familiar with this scenario. You’ve had a T1 line or DS3 bandwidth circuit for years. Everything ran just fine until recently. Now, all of a sudden, the Internet just crawls and your new VoIP telephone system sounds like calls from the far side of the moon. Employees are peeved because they can’t get anything done. Customers are livid because they can’t even carry on a civil conversation over the phone. Management is getting hot under the collar. Better get more bandwidth on order, right?

Maybe. It’s entirely possible that you’ll call up your provider and double your dedicated Internet bandwidth only to find out that you still have the same problems and now you’re paying twice as much. Talk about adding insult to injury! What’s gone wrong here and what can you do to really fix it?

The problem is that we visualize broadband connections like water pipes. You can just see that traffic flowing smoothly through the pipe. Applications demand more capacity and the flow increases, just like opening a faucet wider. Obviously, the only way you’ll hit the limit on capacity is when you fully open all the faucets at once. Then each application, the lawn sprinkler, the shower, the dishwasher and the wash basin each get less than they would like.

The fix seems equally obvious. Just put in bigger pipes with higher capacity. The water meter will spin a lot faster, but now you can support a lot more users full-on and nobody will suffer a reduction in flow. The telecom equivalent of a bigger pipe is what is called in the industry a “bigger pipe.” That means a line with more Mbps or Gbps. The analogy is clear. Just order a bigger pipe and your troubles will be over. Or will they?

The snag in all of this is that network traffic isn’t homogenous like water. One water droplet may be just like the next. One Ethernet packet may be not at all like the next. Some applications, like file transfers, just brute force move packets from one place to another. Others, like video conferencing or VoIP telephony are highly sensitive to latency, jitter, lost packets and packets arriving out of sequence. If your network gets congested, the file transfer will work fine. It will just take a little longer. Get in the same situation with real-time applications and they’ll crumble in the battle for packet transfers.

So why not just increase bandwidth when business grows to the point where more users are trying to do more things simultaneously? It’s likely that at some point you’ll have to do just that. But also know that simply adding more capacity may not make a big difference. Why? It’s because some applications will take as much bandwidth as you give them regardless of what they really need. If you simply double the bandwidth, Web pages may load a little faster, files might move a little faster, but the telephone and video may still break up mid-conversation.

There probably is some line speed that is so fast that everything will work at the same time with no problems. That might be 10x or even 100x what you have now. You’ll pay a fortune just to have enough capacity at hand to support rare moments when everyone is on the phone and watching YouTube videos at the same time the system is doing full backups. Is that really necessary?

No. Not at all. What you really need is a way to prioritize traffic so that preference is given to real-time two-way streams that are extremely sensitive to network congestion. You need to establish CoS or Class of Service controls that carve out a certain capacity to meet the needs of your VoIP phone system and video conferencing system and then divvy up the rest among lower priority processes. You can go further to push time insensitive file transfers and backups into the background so that they won’t interfere with anyone working online.

That solution is called the converged network. It’s more than just plugging everything into the same LAN and WAN. You need Class of Service both on your LAN and on the WAN. Techniques for the LAN are well established. The WAN is another matter if you are using the Internet for access to your VoIP provider. The Internet strips off those CoS tags in the name of network neutrality. One solution is to use a SIP Trunk to connect to a single provider for VoIP and Internet broadband so that CoS can be maintained on that link. Another is to keep the broadband you have, but use a separate point to point connection to your VoIP provider.

MPLS networks can maintain CoS among multiple business locations. You may be using Internet VPN connections to make those multiple connections, but with limited success if voice or video are involved.

Another interesting option is the “intelligent bandwidth” approach being offered by Telnes, a major competitive carrier. They’ve developed a technique called IP Priority Class of Service to maintain CoS on an Internet circuit using managed routers. This recognizes that most of the congestion issues occur on the link between you and the core of the Internet. By cleaning up that connection, real time applications, such as hosted VoIP, can run much more smoothly that they will on uncontrolled Internet broadband services.

Are you suffering slowdowns, application breakage and poor telephone voice quality? You may need more bandwidth or you may just need better bandwidth management. Before you go out and spend a bundle to no avail, get a complementary telecom engineering consultation from Telnes and other competitive service providers and review your options. You may be able to get results for a fraction of what you thought you had to spend.

Fiber Optic Direct Connections To The Cloud

The Internet offers an extensive and cost effective means to access services in the cloud. What it doesn’t offer is consistent low latency, low jitter and high bandwidth performance. It was never intended to. The Internet’s claim to fame is universal connectivity. If your business processes in the cloud suffer from inconsistency or have become sluggish compared to when they were hosted onsite, you could benefit from a direct connection to the cloud.

One of the most popular cloud services is the Amazon AWS Cloud Computing Platform. Leveraging the enormous computing facilities owned by Amazon, users can pay as they go for application hosting, Web hosting, backup and storage, content delivery, enterprise IT applications and scalable database solutions. This nearly unlimited resource set can place a considerable load on typical bandwidth links used by corporations. It gets worse as you move more and more of your business processes to the cloud while leaving your employees in-place, often thousands of miles away.

The Internet works just fine for e-commerce, with thousands or millions of individual customers accessing centralized servers from their homes and offices. It’s also well suited for accessing company resources by remote workers and traveling employees. Where it starts to stumble is when you expect consistent real-time performance between the cloud and your data center or user base similar to what you get from hardwired connections in-house. The closest thing to your LAN is a high performance direct connection.

There are a couple of ways to achieve that direct connection. Amazon is currently offering direct connection to its cloud at Equinix’s Ashburn, VA and Silicon Valley, CA colocation facilities. Equinix provides colocation facilities for over 4,000 enterprises, cloud, content and financial companies through its network of colo centers. If you happen to have your equipment in their Ashburn or Silicon Valley facility, a simple cross connect is all that’s needed to hook your servers to Amazon’s.

If you are not collocated in an Equinix data center, you’ll need a WAN connection. AWS has two approved carriers that can make the connection. One is Level 3 Communications, a leading international fiber-based carrier with services to over 125 international markets. The other is AboveNet, Inc., another leading fiber optic carrier with 2.3 million metro fiber miles and connections in place to more than 450 data centers. AboveNet is offering connections to the AWS Direct Connect service at 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps.

AWS Direct Connect network service works withe the same AWS services that you would otherwise access over the Internet. These include Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), and Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC). You can use AWS Direct Connect to create multiple logical connections between your network and Amazon VPC. You can even establish multiple VPCs over this connection if you have enough bandwidth available.

AWS Direct Connect is flexible enough to scale your connectivity as your needs change. Each connection offers 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps connectivity and you can add multiple connections to increase capacity. Amazon suggests that this approach is better than using VPN hardware that frequently can’t support data transfer rates above 4 Gbps.

Have you already moved to the cloud or anticipate such a move and are concerned that your current connectivity can’t get the job done? Perhaps a direct connection can give you the performance that you need. Get pricing and bandwidth options for fiber optic cloud connections now.

WAN Computer Network Connections

Computer networks are often categorized as LAN, MAN and WAN. The LAN is your local network. You design and maintain it to meet your specifications. Or, you hire a contractor to do this. When you need to connect your LAN to another LAN across town or around the world, you enter the realm of the MAN and WAN. Here’s a quick look at what’s available in the way of metro and long haul connections.

The difference between the MAN and the WAN is largely a matter of degree. The MAN is a Metropolitan Area Network. As the name suggests, MAN services are limited to a particular city or city and suburbs. It’s the right connectivity for companies that have multiple offices in the same city, a main facility and a remote data center across town, a factory or warehouse in an industrial park plus some satellite offices. Hospitals and their associated medical centers are good candidates for MAN service, especially higher bandwidths for medical image transmission.

A difference between the LAN and MAN is that you own your LAN and buy services from the MAN. A Metropolitan Area Network is typically privately owned and offers services to numerous clients. The network operator manages bandwidth and security to ensure that every customer feels like they have the network all to themselves.

Most MANs are organized as SONET rings that encircle the metropolitan area. A SONET ring is actually two fibers with the same traffic running in opposite directions. One is the primary service and the other is the backup. This is done to ensure reliability. If one fiber or its associated equipment experiences a failure, service is automatically switched to the other fiber in the ring within 50 milliseconds. SONET has designated service levels at OC-3 (155 Mbps), OC-12 (622 Mbps), OC-24 (1.24 Gbps), OC-48 (2.49 Gbps), OC-192 (9.95 Gbps) or OC-768 (39.8 Gbps). You may also be able to get DS3 service multiplexed onto an OC-3 service for transport across town.

Newer metro networks may offer Carrier Ethernet instead of SONET. Ethernet is highly scalable from as low as 1 Mbps on up through 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Popular MAN service levels are 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps, and 1,000 Mbps or GigE. An advantage of Ethernet is that changes in service level can be accomplished faster than with traditional SONET. You can also get layer 2 Ethernet connectivity, such as E-Line and E-LAN, to connect your LANs at other locations into one large bridged network. The MAN itself may have an IP core or be running as Ethernet over SONET to use existing facilities.

Think of the WAN as a very large MAN and you probably won’t be far off. WAN networks may also have SONET rings or IP core networks. They are certainly fiber optic based and often with so many strands that you can lease wavelengths or even dark fibers. Many WAN networks are structured as MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching networks for flexibility. A MPLS network has inherent security due to a propriety routing technology that is not IP. MPLS networks can transport any protocol by encapsulating the packets within the switching labels.

WAN networks may have a regional, national or international footprint. Some are designed with low latency paths that are especially important for financial trading. WAN networks may also peer with other networks of similar size to share traffic. The newest wrinkle is the Ethernet Exchange that exchanges Ethernet traffic without having to first convert it to SONET.

How do you connect to a WAN network? Often you can pick the connection that is both readily available and lowest in cost for your particular application. These range from T1 lines to Ethernet over Copper, Ethernet over Fiber, and SONET last mile connections. In some cases, fixed wireless access is also available. The mix of copper, fiber and wireless access should accommodate just about any need.

Do you have a need to connect your LAN to another facility across town, or to locations in other states or countries? Compare prices and availability of various MAN and WAN connectivity options to meet your requirements.

IP T1 Line Service

T1 line service has been available for decades. It originated as a proprietary telephone company technology designed as a trunk for transporting multiple phone calls between switching centers. Later, T1 was made available for businesses to support their PBX phone systems. When the Internet came along, T1 lines were pressed into service as dedicated Internet connections. But now we live in an IP world. Can T1 also act as an IP connection?

Yes, it can. That may seem counterintuitive to those who understand the origins and technology behind T1 service. The T-Carrier specifications, of which T1 is the most popular line service, describe a system organized as multiplexed channels 64 Kbps wide. That channel size was optimized to transport a single independent digitized telephone call using PCM (Pulse Code Modulation). Clearly, T1 is oriented toward the switched circuit based public telephone network.

That’s true, but the important thing to remember about digital network technologies is that a bit is a bit. It’s either true or false, one or zero, regardless of the particular physical layer or higher level protocols involved. That means that a time division multiplexing technology like T1 can be used to transport a packet oriented technology like IP or Ethernet with a little protocol conversion.

That’s essentially what’s being done when T1 lines are used for data transmission. It’s been a long time since anything but Ethernet has been the standard for local area networks. Ethernet is an IP technology, based on packet switching. Those packets can be queued up and loaded into T1 frames for transmission through T1 lines and even multiplexed into T3 and SONET frames for longer haul transmission. At the far end, the packets are offloaded and sent on their way through an IP edge router connected to the T1 CPE (Customer Premises Equipment.)

If you want to connect your Ethernet networks over metropolitan and wide area networks, one technology you’ll be interested in is called Ethernet over T1 or EoT1. This is also called EoDS1 for Ethernet over DS1.

DS1 is simply the data service or protocol that runs on T1 lines. The reason there are two designations is that T1 describes a physical line consisting of two twisted pair copper telco loops running at 1.5 Mbps. The DS1 is all the bits formated for transmission just before loading into the actual T1 line. You can take that same DS1 and feed it into an add/drop multiplexer and transport it along with many others on a T3 circuit or a fiber optic service like OC-3. At the other end, the DS1 can be demultiplexed from the other services on the same line and delivered separately.

In practice T1 and DS1 refer to the same thing to the actual user. What’s important is that Carrier Ethernet service can be delivered on a T1 line, albeit bandwidth limited to 1.5 Mbps. Who would want service that slow? Lots of companies need connectivity between locations, but don’t require high speeds. They may be using the service for retail credit card verification, communication with corporate headquarters, or to upload files to their web server. The big advantage they have with T1 lines is that they are almost universally available. If you can get business phone service, chances are that you can also get a T1 line installed. They are connected over the same telco wiring.

The competing service to Ethernet over T1 is Ethernet over Copper. That may seem like a fine line of distinction, but it is important. Ethernet over Copper (EoC) also uses twisted pair copper but a different modulation scheme that offers higher bandwidths but with distance limitations. If you are within a mile or two of the central office that has Ethernet over Copper equipment, you may be able to get 10 Mbps, 20 Mbps or even higher bandwidths from EoC. Some installations are transporting in excess of 100 Mbps over multiple copper pair.

Ethernet over T1 bandwidth can also be improved by adding more copper pair. The process of combining the bandwidths of several T1 lines into one larger bandwidth is called bonding. EoT1 bonding can deliver up to 10 or 12 Mbps to both metropolitan and rural areas, providing the equipment is available.

Are you interested in an IP connection for your computer or converged voice and data networks? If so, get pricing and availability for Ethernet over T1 or Copper now to see how much bandwidth is available for your business locations.

Fast Ethernet over Copper

Fast Ethernet has been a networking standard for many years. You may know it as 100 Mbps Ethernet speed. Nearly every computer, router and switch now has a Network Interface Card (NIC) rated at 10/100 Mbps or 10/100/1000 Mbps. Many smaller networks find 100 Mbps more than adequate. Larger networks use 1000 Mbps or Gigabit Ethernet (GigE). The largest corporate and other high performance networks have at least part of their infrastructure running at 10,000 Mbps or 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GigE). Its when you leave the LAN and connect to metro or long distance networks that things slow to a crawl.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have the same network speed regardless of distance? That way it wouldn’t matter where you were transferring files to or from. The time to transfer would be independent of distance. This is especially important to companies with multiple business locations. The illusion of everyone being on the same network is shattered when it takes ten or a hundred times as long to get information from the remote site as it does within your own building.

What has stood in the way of upgrading network connections to a common speed is cost and availability. Fast Ethernet for MAN and WAN connections have been cost prohibitive for smaller companies. If your location isn’t on a fiber path, getting bandwidth above 10 Mbps or so has been out of the question. Well, not any more.

PAETEC, a major network services provider, is blazing new ground by deploying Fast Ethernet connections over copper as well as fiber. If your buildings are within the service footprint of this new technology you can avoid the budget breaking costs of fiber construction completely. PAETEC uses multiple bonded copper pairs within the same telco conduit to provide bandwidths as high as 200 Mbps.

Chances are that the multi-pair copper conduit is already installed in your building for multi-line telephone and lower speed services like T1. The beauty of T1 lines are that they use standard twisted pair copper telco wire. The major limitation is that the bandwidth is fixed at 1.5 Mbps. You can bond T1s together to get higher bandwidths, up to about 10 or 12 Mbps. Technically this works just fine, but it gets pricey because the cost is the price of a T1 line times the number of lines needed.

Ethernet over Copper (EoC) is much more cost effective. First, the advanced modulation techniques support higher bandwidths per pair of wire used. Second, the cost does not multiply as fast at bonding T1 lines. Third, you can now get Fast Ethernet bandwidth using EoC.

The one limitation of Ethernet over Copper technology is distance. The higher bandwidths require you to be near the central office that connects to your copper bundle. That’s perfect for businesses with metropolitan locations, especially in major business districts. If you are located out in the boonies, you’ll have fewer options.

Do you need cost effective Fast Ethernet connections to support your business processes? Check Fast Ethernet over Copper availability and pricing now. Fiber and wireless may also be available at lower prices than you imagine. Sorry, no residential service available.

Cheaper Connections To The Cloud

Companies often smack their lips as they compare the cost of cloud services to the capital investment and operating expenses of running their own data centers. Then they take another look and see a big gotcha. Oops! What is it going to cost for all this cloud connectivity?

What you pay for bandwidth now depends a lot on your mix of LAN, MAN and WAN traffic. Companies with data centers in the same building as most of their employees can expect that the lion’s share of their business applications traffic stays on the LAN. Certainly you need a dedicated broadband Internet connection to stay connected with the outside world. But if all you are doing is sending email and accessing Web sites for information, a modest line speed can support a lot of users.

E-commerce is another matter. If most of your traffic is from customers and other users via the Internet, you need a high bandwidth connection for your public facing servers. Your WAN traffic may even be larger than your LAN traffic.

Offsite, but in-town, data centers also require high bandwidth connections even if they are used primarily for disaster backup and recovery or data mirroring. In this case, the majority of your bandwidth may be over the MAN rather than the LAN or the WAN.

Now, here’s how things change when you move to the cloud. You public servers are now rented, not owned, and your bandwidth costs are part of the service fee. You may not need a MAN connection at all if you are buying storage in the cloud. What you will need is a much bigger pipe between your office building or buildings and your cloud service provider.

Companies that kept everything in-house can get some sticker shock when they find out that the cloud savings is offset by the increased cost of higher bandwidth private line services between their location and the cloud. Other companies that now have most of their bandwidth chewed up by Internet accesses may breath a big sigh of relief that the cloud provider is also supplying bandwidth to the Internet. It is well worth your while to build a quick chart that compares LAN, MAN and WAN bandwidth needs between your current setup and what you’ll have when you go to the cloud.

Regardless of how the mix works out, you’ll want to get the most bandwidth you can for your IT dollar. Fortunately, you have much more in the way of options now than even just a few years ago. One reason is heavy competition for higher bandwidth circuits. The other is new technology that adds to the option list.

The newest technology that you may not have investigated yet is EoC or Ethernet over Copper. EoC is a direct competitor for traditional T1 lines and higher bandwidth T1 lines. In some cases it can even be a substitute for fiber optic services.

Ethernet over Copper uses multiple twisted pair copper telco wiring, just like T1. It’s a more efficient modulation scheme, however, and offers higher bandwidths than are generally practical by bonding together T1 lines. Unlike T1, EoC is distance sensitive and requires you to be within 2 or 3 miles of the nearest telco office. For companies located in cities and their suburbs this generally works out fine. Out in the country, you won’t find much service.

Popular Ethernet over Copper bandwidth options include 2, 3, 5, 10 and 20 Mbps. Service equal to 45 Mbps DS3 is available in many metro locations. Some companies even offer 100 Mbps bandwidth using copper instead of fiber.

Even more exciting is the pricing for EoC services. You can often get 2 or 3 Mbps Ethernet service for the price of a T1 line. It’s not unheard of to pay half or less for the higher bandwidth Ethernet services than what you are used to paying for traditional telecom line services.

Are you contemplating a move to the cloud and need to know your bandwidth costs or just want to save money on the line services you have now? You may be pleasantly surprised by what you find when you check pricing and availability of EoC and other bandwidth services for your particular business locations.

Gigabit Ethernet vs SONET

With the expansion of video content and moves to cloud services, business bandwidth now easily pushes the Gigabit per second level. This certainly means a move from copper to fiber optic services. But did you know that there are two types of fiber optic bandwidth to choose from? They are SONET and Gigabit Ethernet.

SONET is the original fiber protocol developed by the telephone companies to transport large numbers of simultaneous telephone calls between switching centers and internationally. SONET stands for Synchronous Optical NETwork. There is an international version of this protocol called SDH for Synchronous Digital Hierarchy. Together they are often referred to a SONET/SDH.

SONET’s origins go back to the initial development of digitized telephone conversations and the transmission of these a groups using trunks known as T1 lines. The larger T3 lines can carry the equivalent of 28 T1 lines or a data bandwidth of 45 Mbps. There are no faster copper telco standards. The next step up is OC-3 at 155 Mbps. That’s enough to transport 3 DS3 circuits and, indeed, the protocol is designed to easily multiplex and demultiplex lower level services. When you order a DS3 today, it will be transported most if not all of the way multiplexed into a OC service. A device called an ADM or Add-Drop Multiplexer gets the service on and off the optical network.

You’ve probably guessed that OC stands for Optical Carrier. There are a number of optical carrier levels that include OC-3 at 155 Mbps, OC-12 at 622 Mbps, OC-24 at 1.24 Gbps, OC-48 at 2.49 Gbps, OC-192 at 9.95 Gbps and OC-768 at 39.8 Gbps. When you hear about 10 Gbps SONET, it is an OC-192 service. The 40 Gbps that many carriers use for long haul transmission is OC-768.

What about intermediate rates? Not all levels between 1 and 768 are defined. Others, such as OC-9, OC-18, OC-36 and OC-96 are standardized but not generally offered in service.

SONET/SDH is set up in ring arrangements with two separate fiber strands for each ring. They are redundant circuits, so if one fails the other can pick up the load within 50 mSec.

Ethernet is a completely different protocol developed by the computer industry rather than the telephone companies. It is based on packets rather than telephone channels. Most LAN connected devices have a NIC or Network Interface Card that supports 10/100/1000 Ethernet. That means the device can run at 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps or 1,000 Mbps (1 Gbps). Corporate LANs may now run at 1 Gbps with some parts of the network using 10 Gbps or 10 GigE.

The equivalent of Ethernet in the LAN for local networks is Ethernet WAN or Wide Area Network. Switched Ethernet used for WAN applications is also called Carrier Ethernet. If the service is local to a particular city or metro area, it is often called Metro Ethernet or Metropolitan Ethernet and the network is referred to as a MAN or Metro Area Network.

Like telco services, Ethernet may be delivered over copper or fiber. Twisted pair copper telephone line can be used up to 100 Mbps. That speed is also available over coaxial copper cable through Cable systems. Beyond that, fiber optic connections can deliver 1 Gbps or 10 Gbps for business applications.

Ethernet is designed to be far more scalable than SONET. Instead of ordering a particular service level, such as OC-24, you order an Ethernet port capable of handling a maximum speed, say 1 Gbps. With the port in place, you can pay for Gigabit Ethernet if you need that much, or you can order 250 Mbps or 500 Mbps Ethernet and upgrade quickly and easily when the need arises.

Which fiber optic service should you order? In general, Ethernet is less expensive per Mbps than SONET. Sometimes the price savings can be dramatic. The one sticking point is that you need to have the service installed in your building. You may have one or the other services now or nothing at all. The cost of construction to bring in the right fiber from the right carrier can outweigh the monthly lease costs. You should know, though, that Ethernet can often be carried on SONET and that competitive carriers are hungry to get new buildings on their networks. These factors can affect the availability and pricing of fiber optic services to your building.

Fiber optic build-outs are progressing rapidly and the demand for high speed bandwidth increases. Even if you went out for bids a year ago, the situation may have changed for the better since then. The best thing to do is get new prices and availability for fiber optic bandwidth services for your particular business location.



Note: Photo of data center servers courtesy of WikimediaCommons

FastE Is The New DS3

Companies that have outgrown their T1 line capacity have traditionally moved up to DS3 bandwidth. Now there’s a faster and cheaper alternative available. It’s Fast Ethernet or FastE.

Even if you are unaware of Fast Ethernet as a Metro or Carrier bandwidth service, you are no doubt familiar with the term. Fast Ethernet is the name given to 100 Mbps Ethernet. It is one of the standard LAN speeds, along with 10 Mbps Ethernet and 1,000 Mbps Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet. The abbreviation for Gigabit Ethernet is GigE. The next step up is 10 Gigabit Ethernet or 10 GigE.

Nearly all network devices, including PCs, printers, Ethernet switches, routers and servers have NICs (Network Interface Cards) that support Fast Ethernet. In fact, many smaller business LANs run at the Fast Ethernet speed of 100 Mbps. So, why do our WAN (Wide Area Network) connections run at some lower speed?

One reason is cost. WAN network services have tended to be seen as expensive. Part of that is because these are leased line services that are billed by the month, every month. LAN networks have a capital cost of purchase and installation. After that, most smaller networks need relatively little maintenance.

Another reason why we use lower bandwidths on the WAN than the LAN is usage. Most traffic within a company network stays on the LAN. A lot of it is between PCs & servers and for interoffice file transfers. Traffic that leaves the building is mostly Internet access for both websites and email. Companies with multiple business locations often have dedicated lines between them or use an MPLS network to interconnect 3 or more locations. These links get higher traffic, because they are functioning as in-house LAN connections.

A couple of forces are at work to change this situation. First of all, WAN bandwidth is going up simply because files are larger and video is becoming used more in business. A much larger effect is the move from in-house IT services to hosted services, including cloud services. This effectively moves the bulk of the traffic from LAN to WAN. Line speeds have to increase to accommodate this traffic increase, or access will slow to a crawl. Slow access spells lowered productivity in any business process.

Medium and larger companies outgrew their T1 lines long ago. Their upgrade path has been to T3 service, more popularly known as DS3. With DS3, you get 45 Mbps of bandwidth versus 1.5 Mbps over a T1 line. Your lease costs also goes up from hundreds to thousands of dollars a month.

DS3 has been essential for video streaming, ecommerce, large office Internet access, medical image transmissions and other bandwidth intensive operations. As a digital telecom service it has been readily available with costs that have come down over the years. So why not stick with DS3?

The reason, as usual, involves cost and bandwidth. The competing service is now Fast Ethernet at 100 Mbps vs DS3’s 45 Mbps. That’s over twice the bandwidth, but not twice the cost. In fact, you may well be able to get FastE for the same or less than you are paying for a DS3 connection. Consider that Fast Ethernet more closely mirrors the protocol run on the LAN and that both DS3 and FastE are delivered over fiber optic lines, and it’s hard to see why sticking with DS3 makes good business sense.

The one reason that DS3 may still be the right service for your company is that Carrier Ethernet services have not been deployed everywhere just yet. However, competitive carriers are aggressively building out their metro fiber networks and vying for business customers with lowered bandwidth prices.

Are you a DS3 user interested in getting more money for your bandwidth dollar? Or, do you need new installation of high speed line services and want to make sure you are getting the best deal? If so, check out Fast Ethernet vs DS3 pricing and availability now. Once you have the competitive options, you can choose what type and level of service makes the most sense for your operation.

Ethernet Services over Copper

Ethernet seems like the logical way to connect networks, but it is only recently that we’ve had the ability to do that beyond the building or campus. Now Ethernet over Copper connection services are proliferating and the costs are often lower than alternative solutions. Just what is Ethernet over Copper and what can you do with it?

Ethernet over Copper (EoC) is a technology that delivers standard Ethernet services over twisted pair copper telco wiring. This is somewhat different than simply wiring your facilities with Cat 5E or Cat 6 wiring. Yes, those are also twisted pair copper circuits. What’s different about EoC is that it is designed to run on copper infrastructure that was never designed to support the Ethernet protocol.

Ethernet over Copper in the MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) and WAN (Wide Area Network) needs to use the same copper that’s been in place for decades. That’s the beauty of copper to the premises. The costs of construction have already been paid. In fact, at least some of the many copper pair are probably already in use for multi-line telephone service and T1 broadband connections.

How is this compatibility accomplished? Each twisted pair of small gauge copper wire is simply an electrical connection from your building to the nearest telephone company office. Before they are put into service, these are known as dry copper pair. Dry because they have no electrical signals imposed on them. A dry pair can be used as an analog telephone line, one leg of a T1 line, or for a security alarm circuit. It depends on what you wire it to. Take several dry pair and connect them to EoC terminal equipment and you have a high speed Ethernet over Copper link from your location to the telco office. From there it can be connected, usually by fiber optic line, to just about anywhere in the country.

Ethernet services have been standardized like other telecom services. The two most popular are E-Line and E-LAN. E-Line is Ethernet Line service, a point to point connection that ties two LANs together across town or even on other sides of the world. E-LAN is Ethernet LAN service. As the name implies, this is a multipoint service that connects three or more locations in a meshed network. E-LAN can join multiple branch offices with headquarters as if they were all on the same LAN.

Ethernet over Copper bandwidth varies from 1 Mbps on the low side on up to at least 20 Mbps. Some carriers claim 50 Mbps or higher capability over copper. What you need to know, however, is that EoC is a distance limited technology. At the lower speeds you can be up to 12,000 feet away from the carrier’s nearest point of presence. Higher speeds will limit you to less than a mile. This is why Ethernet over Copper is known as a metropolitan service and isn’t generally found in rural areas.

Ethernet is designed to be much more scalable than T-Carrier or SONET services. You can have a 20 Mbps Ethernet port installed but only order 5 Mbps x 5 Mbps service. When your needs exceed 5 Mbps, you’ll be able to call your service provider and request a step up on bandwidth. This may be accomplished in as little as an hour. Compare that to waiting weeks for a truck roll on other services.

Ethernet over Copper is highly cost effective and is starting to displace traditional T1 lines. For about the same money, you often get twice the bandwidth when you choose EoC. That’s 3 Mbps versus 1.5 Mbps. Plus, higher speeds are generally available at reasonable costs over copper Ethernet connections.

Now that you know what it is, could you benefit from an increase in bandwidth or a better bandwidth price? If so, check prices and availability of Ethernet Service over Copper or Fiber.

Broadband Ethernet Connections

When we think of Ethernet, it’s probably in regard to the protocol that runs on our LANs. Broadband? That’s something else entirely. Or is it?

Ethernet has moved from the LAN to the MAN to the WAN. That gives companies the opportunity to extend their networks across town, across the country and even internationally. But what about the Internet? What does Ethernet have to do with the Internet?

Ethernet and the Internet have been closely coupled from the beginning. The Internet is based on IP routing, not legacy telco circuit switching. But the Internet would have gone nowhere without telco technologies such as T1, DS3, and SONET/SDH (OC3, OC12, OC48, etc.) That’s because the telephone companies owned the digital lines and their mature technologies. The sensible and cost effective approach has been to do what is necessary to use these existing services to transport IP packets as well as other voice and data traffic.

That brings us to access. What do you have to connect with the Internet? It’s likely a T1 line, DS3 connection or a fiber optic service based on SONET. Very small businesses may be using DSL, Cable broadband, two-satellite or 3G & 4G cellular wireless. Why not use Ethernet as your last mile connection?

That’s a good question. In fact, it makes more sense now to install a broadband Ethernet connection to the Internet than ever before. The technology is proven and already deployed to most major cities and suburbs. What’s more, it will probably save you money.

The most popular and lowest cost Ethernet broadband services use Ethernet over Copper or EoC technology. This appears to be similar to T1 technology in that it is based on using twisted pair copper wires to bring the service into your building. Chances are that you have the wiring in place already for multi-line telephone service and perhaps a T1 line or two.

Ethernet over Copper offers dedicated Internet access, just like T1, where you have a committed bandwidth level that does not vary and is not shared with other users. The technologies are a bit different in that the EoC interface to your LAN is a simple Ethernet connector. If you are already using a managed T1 router, that may not be important because the interface is already handled by the service provider and you simply connect your edge router to the T1 router.

You’ll notice a difference in bandwidth scalability. T1 lines are designed around a fixed bandwidth of 1.5 Mbps. If you want more, you bond additional T1 lines in 1.5 Mbps increments. This is practical up to around 10 Mbps before it become too expensive for most applications. Ethernet over Copper bandwidth typically starts at 2 Mbps, with 3 Mbps a popular speed for about the same price as a single 1.5 Mbps T1 line. But EoC can easily deliver 5 Mbps, 10 Mbps, 15 Mbps and even 20 Mbps. If you order a port with enough capacity, you can often just call your service provider and have them increase your Ethernet bandwidth at will.

What about higher bandwidths? Above 20 Mbps, perhaps as high as 50 Mbps, you’ll need to switch to a fiber optic connection that offers almost unlimited bandwidth expansion. Once again, Ethernet over Fiber is as scalable as Ethernet over Copper. A Fast Ethernet speed of 100 Mbps is very popular because it is also a standard LAN speed. Larger organizations or more demanding applications will want 1 Gbps or Gigabit Ethernet speed. If you need it, 10 Gbps and even 40 Gbps or more is available.

Broadband Ethernet is not available for residential or home office users. For businesses with their own business addresses, you can get pricing and availability on broadband Ethernet services for whatever bandwidths you are interested in. Costs are very attractive, although Ethernet is a metro service and not readily available in rural areas. For those locations, you’ll need to stick with T1 and bonded T1 solutions.

Metropolitan Area Networks

We’re all familiar with LANs. Those are the local area networks used in nearly every business to interconnect computers, centralized storage, printers, wireless access points, WiFi hotspots, scanners and, increasingly, telephones and video equipment. When we want to connect to the outside world, we might think of a long haul or WAN connection to the Internet or distant business location. But there is another important type of network in-between the LAN and the WAN. That’s the MAN or Metropolitan Area Network.

The Metropolitan Area Network is an important service in its own right. For many companies, the only long-haul connections they may need are a dedicated broadband Internet and long distance telephone services. Most all of their traffic stays local. Not local as on the LAN, but geographically local. That means within the bounds of a city, suburbs and nearby locations.

This is where the term Metropolitan Area Network got its name. It’s a network that spans a given metropolitan area and not much further. You don’t find MAN services out in the countryside. Not that there aren’t important customers beyond the city limits, mind you. It’s just that MAN networks tend to be build upon fiber optic networks and very little fiber exits out in the boonies right now.

As you might suspect, the greatest concentration of MAN services will be found in business districts of major cities. That’s simply because the greatest population density and number of businesses are also found downtown and in the business districts of adjoining suburbs. Fiber optic cable construction and equipment are expensive. Service providers need lots of traffic from lots of customers to justify the expense of building out a MAN.

It’s possible to construct your own private MAN by ordering point to point lines between each of the locations you want to connect, or by establishing a star network with corporate headquarters at the center. Many companies buy MAN services instead because the costs are lower for a given bandwidth level. That makes sense, since the network infrastructure cost can be amortized over a large user base. A properly run MAN will give you the performance and security you require at a savings over creating your own private network.

How do service providers build a MAN? A classic approach is to construct a fiber optic SONET ring around the city, linking all the important office buildings, industrial parks, data centers and carrier hotels. SONET is the Synchronous Optical NETwork standard for legacy switched circuit telecom services. It features two lit fiber strands sending traffic in opposite directions for redundancy. If one fiber fails, the other picks up the load within 50 mSec.

Newer MAN services are build upon Carrier Ethernet or Metro Ethernet. The core network may still be running SONET or it may be an IP core network. Either way, the customer only sees an Ethernet interface. It may be an E-Line point to point connection or an E-LAN multipoint to multipoint connection. MPLS networks implemented as a MAN have the advantage of being able to handle nearly any type of traffic.

Downtown, you may also have the option of using a wireless MAN. These are based on fixed wireless transmissions between a carrier’s tower and radio equipment at each location served. These are short range services and require line of sight between buildings. If it happens to work out for you, wireless has the advantage of fast installation and low construction cost compared to bringing in fiber to locations not already lit.

Does your business need to communicate between two or more locations in town? If so, Metropolitan Area Networks are what you are looking for. Get prices and availability for now.



Note: Photo of New York City courtesy of I, Laslovarga on Wikimedia Commons.

What is Metro Ethernet?

We’re all familiar with Ethernet, the packet switched network standard that runs on our LANs. But what is Metro Ethernet and how does it differ from Carrier Ethernet? Is Metro Ethernet the same protocol running on local networks but just going longer distances?

From a users standpoint, Metro Ethernet really is just like local Ethernet. In fact, the connection to the Metro Ethernet Network is a standard Ethernet connector. There are no special interface modules needed to convert protocols or establish signal levels. You simply plug one network into the local Metro Ethernet connection and another network into the Metro Ethernet connection across town and they are connected together.

Actually, it has taken quite a bit of effort to make Metro Ethernet so simple. That work has been done by the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF), a industry standards group. The beauty of standards is that both providers and users know exactly what they are dealing with. There aren’t the ugly surprises that come from trying to engineer basically incompatible products and services.

The terms Metro Ethernet and Carrier Ethernet tend to be used interchangeably. Carrier Ethernet is meant to describe standard switched Ethernet adapted for use over much longer spans than within a building or corporate campus. Carrier Ethernet can be deployed on IP core networks, over SONET/SDH, or over MPLS networks. The end user isn’t generally aware of the transport mechanism. From the customer’s standpoint, it’s just Ethernet ports at each location.

Metro Ethernet is the term that is used to refer to Ethernet services limited to a particular city or metropolitan area of city and suburbs. It’s a popular service for companies that have two or more separate business locations locally. Medical groups consisting of several hospitals, diagnostic centers and clinics are also find Metro Ethernet attractive because of its high bandwidths, ease of connection and lower costs compared to traditional telecom line services.

The customer service connection is made at a User-Network Interface (UNI) installed by the service provider. On one side is the Customer Equipment (CE) and on the other side is the Metro Ethernet Network (MEN). The path between UNIs is made through an Ethernet Virtual Connection (EVC). The EVC maintains the Ethernet MAC address and frame contents unaltered, so it is possible to establish Layer 2 connectivity between locations. It also ensures that traffic goes between the proper UNIs and nowhere else. Think of an EVC as similar in function to a “wired” network connection between two locations.

There are two Metro Ethernet services you’ll be interested in. One is Ethernet Line or E-Line service. This is the equivalent of point to point private line service using T1 or DS3. The other is Ethernet LAN or E-LAN service. This is a multipoint to multipoint service that can be used in place of private proprietary networks, Frame Relay, or MPLS networks to connect multiple locations in a mesh network. Both of these services are suitable for linking offices, factories, warehouses, data centers and other sites within a metropolitan area.

Could your organization benefit from Metro Ethernet? If you have need to connect two or more locations within a city or small geographical area, you may be able to get more bandwidth for less money than you can with other connectivity solutions. To find out, check Metro Ethernet Network availability and pricing for your business locations.

Metro Ethernet MPLS Combo

Two of the hottest networking technologies now are Metro Ethernet and MPLS networks. We normally think of using one or the other. But what advantages are gained when you combine the two?

Metro Ethernet is the familiar Ethernet protocol that we’ve come to know and love on our LAN networks. It’s not exactly the same, because it needs to be adapted to work over longer distances than typical building and campus runs.

This, and other service enhancements, have been standardized by the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF), an industry group comprised of over 170 companies and more than 75 service providers. The MEF has defined five attributes that distinguish what they call Carrier Ethernet from the familiar LAN based Ethernet. These are standardized services, scalability, reliability, service management and quality of service.

What carriers get is a set of certified network elements that work to connect users on a local or worldwide basis. They also have services that can be transported over whatever physical networks they have available, including legacy TDM networks originally designed for telephony.

Metro Ethernet is Carrier Ethernet implemented within a city or metropolitan area. Two of the popular standardized services are Ethernet Line Service, a point to point connection, and Ethernet LAN Service, a multipoint connection. Companies use Metro Ethernet to link branch office buildings, factories, warehouses, data centers and other locations in the area.

Ethernet can also be used as a last mile access connection to larger private networks or the public Internet. These links have traditionally been T1 lines, DS3 connections, or SONET/SDH fiber optic services. Ethernet is growing in popularity as a network access service because it is lower in cost and more scalable than legacy telecom services.

At the same time that Carrier Ethernet has soared in popularity, MPLS networks have seen a similar growth in demand. Most networks have a defined protocol that they run. This can be TDM, IP, Frame Relay, or something else. The beauty of MPLS networks is that they are designed to support all protocols. Hence, the name Multi-Protocol Label Switching. The label switching part has to do with a tagging system that is used to encapsulate and route packets while they are on the network. Since the MPLS network doesn’t need to use the internal packet structure for routing, it doesn’t matter what those labels are attached to.

Most new large scale networks are based on MPLS. It doesn’t matter what’s running as the core network. It might be IP. It might be SONET. What the user sees is a privately run network that can securely transport voice, data, video or converged network traffic within a city, between cities or around the world. MPLS networks have all but completely replaced the older Frame Relay networks that were once used to link computers over wide areas.

What you probably have guessed is that Ethernet and MPLS are very compatible. Many carriers have nationwide or international MPLS network service footprints. You can combine Ethernet access with a large MPLS network and create a very cost effective way to link your geographically diverse business locations.

Large scale Carrier Ethernet networks are also on the ascendency. A new interconnection standard called ENNI or Ethernet Network to Network Interface connects Carrier Ethernet service providers so they can share traffic and effectively increase their service footprints. The underlying transport networks may or may not be MPLS networks themselves.

What’s combination of Ethernet and MPLS offers the highest performance at the lowest cost for your applications? There are network consultants available right now to provide you with Metro Ethernet and MPLS service options and pricing at no charge for serious business and organizational users.

WAN Network Design Options

It’s commonly assumed that the LAN (Local Area Network) and the WAN (Wide Area Network) are completely different animals. You need completely different network design philosophies for each... or do you?

The abyss between WAN and LAN became established by they way they came into being. LAN networks are owned by individuals, businesses and organizations and are based on packet switching. At one time, there were competing topographies such as ring, star and buss. Now it’s all Ethernet on the LAN, with some specialized networks used for such things as disk storage. Most networks are based on twisted pair copper, fiber optic cable, or some combination of the two.

WAN standards grew out of the telephone industry, which has a monopoly on twisted pair telco lines used for both voice and data. Until recently fiber optic networks were also primarily owned by or at least developed to telephone company SONET/SDH standards.

Clearly, there was a technological disconnect between packet switched LAN technology and circuit switched WAN technology. That’s not so much the case anymore, but it is true that you need to do a protocol conversion to connect point to point or to the Internet using telco services such as T1 lines, DS3 bandwidth or OC3 fiber optic connections. Both the circuitry and software needed for WAN network interface are off the shelf items. You simply by a T1 interface card for your router if you want to plug in a T1 line.

What this means is that you can generally mix and match WAN network technologies as long as you have the proper interfaces. T1 line prices have plunged in recent years, making them the entry level WAN option of choice. A T1 line can be used to provide a dedicated broadband connection to the Internet or a direct point to point connection between two business locations. Some companies build customized WAN networks by connecting each branch office back to headquarters using T1 lines to form a star network. The router at headquarters manages traffic between all locations.

What’s new in WAN networking is the rise of Carrier Ethernet and MPLS networks. These are very compatible technologies and can be used together or separately. Carrier Ethernet is a native packet switched technology that avoids LAN/WAN interface issues. You can replace point to point T1 lines with Ethernet line services. Ethernet can also be used to provide a last mile connection to the Internet. Unlike T1, there is an Ethernet LAN service that can be used to connect multiple locations together in a mesh network. Ethernet LAN is a direct replacement for private WAN networks based on T1 lines or higher bandwidth services.

MPLS networks provide a many to many WAN networking solution. MPLS is a protocol that can transport nearly any other protocol in a cloud network. You see T1 lines being used for network access. Ethernet service is also used for last mile network access to the same MPLS networks.

What Carrier Ethernet and MPLS networks offer compared to their telco WAN predecessors is a cost savings and the ability to get out from having to manage the WAN yourself. You can treat Ethernet LAN or MPLS network services as a true cloud that provides the bandwidth, latency and class of service controls you need for converged network operations. Competitive carriers own their core networks completely independent of the telephone companies. In major metropolitan areas, they also provide fiber optic access connections at considerable cost savings over legacy solutions.

What are the best WAN network design options for your company? Why not compare several competing architectures and see which offers the best cost savings for the performance required? Check WAN network solution prices and availability now.



Note: Photo of telecom equipment racks courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Metro E Prices Reduced

Metro Ethernet prices have been reduced for business users across the country. Just in time, too, as the economy is poised to start picking up steam in a big way. No need to settle for less bandwidth or lower quality digital services. Metro E is affordable and available the configuration you need.

If you are currently using a limited bandwidth service, you may well benefit from an upgrade to Metro Ethernet. What’s that going cost and what can you get? How about twice the bandwidth for the same money you are spending now?

I don’t blame you for raising an eyebrow. The entire bandwidth game has changed in the last few years. Just as T1 lines became the de-facto digital telecom service for small to medium businesses, Carrier Ethernet was standardized and deployed for metropolitan and long haul networks. Ethernet services are now spreading like wildfire in support of all size businesses.

In a sense, what we have is a changing of the guard. The digital telecom services we’re most familiar with, T1, DS3 and OC3, are actually telephone technologies that have been adapted to carry data packets rather than digitized phone calls. However, what’s deployed on just about every computer network is the Ethernet protocol. It only makes sense to extend that Ethernet protocol into the wide area networks as well.

This is what Metro E is all about. It’s Ethernet that connects your LAN at one location to your LAN at another location across town. If you like, you can set this up for strictly point to point service, called Ethernet Line, or as a multipoint service called Ethernet LAN.

Metro E networks are designed from the ground up for ease of bandwidth provisioning. With T1 lines, for instance, you generally have to settle for increments of 1.5 Mbps and wait for entire new lines to be installed to increase your bandwidth. With Ethernet, you order an Ethernet Port that is capable of a maximum speed. Then you are free to order the level of bandwidth you need for your current applications. If you need to increase your network capacity to meet an increased need, a simple phone call to your service provider is often all you need to have your Ethernet line speed turned up.

Metro Ethernet offers bandwidth options from 1 Mbps on up to 10 Gbps. Popular speeds are 3 Mbps, 10 Mbps, 50 Mbps, 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps. Of course, you can order speeds in-between these levels so you only need pay for what you need. The lower bandwidth options up to 45 Mbps are provisioned on twisted copper pair and called Ethernet over Copper or EoC. High speed Ethernet services are provisioned over fiber optic cable. These range from 45 Mbps on up to 10 Gbps.

Metro E is also popular as an access connection to larger networks. Ethernet dedicated Internet access provides rock-solid bandwidth to the public Internet. MPLS networks and Ethernet are highly compatible. Worldwide Ethernet service using Metro E connected to a large MPLS networks is now readily available.

Don’t forget the price savings. In most situations, your least cost per Mbps or Gbps will be an Ethernet service. Currently, 3 Mbps Ethernet is going for about the same price as 1.5 Mbps T1. Even larger savings are available as bandwidths increase. How much can you save? Find out by checking Metro E prices and availability now.



Note: Photo of city lights courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

Moving on From SONET To Ethernet

Technology change is something we’re all familiar with. Every year, there’s a new bevy of cell phone models that make the old ones look tired and obsolete. Tablets are moving into to take over from netbooks even before netbooks completed taking over from laptop computers. It’s only in the staid world of telecommunications that technology time stands still... or does it?

Actually, there’s been a revolution brewing in telecom for decades. It’s all about move from circuit switching to packet switching technologies. Circuit switching got established from the days of Alexander Graham Bell and only became more entrenched as capital investment in central office switches and digital transmission equipment accumulated.

So, what’s wrong with circuit switching? Technically, nothing. It’s a mature technology honed by a century of refinement. So what’s the motivation to move away from a sure thing?

It’s all about computer networks and especially the Internet. While once there were many architectures and protocols, now the lion’s share is Ethernet. Except for a few special situations that still benefit from non-IP network designs, everything is supporting Ethernet. The economy of scale in manufacturing has operated as a positive feedback loop to ensure that you need a very good reason and deep pockets to select anything but off-the-shelf Ethernet interfaces.

The battlefront is at the interface between LANs and the outside world. It’s Ethernet inside and something else outside. That something else is telecom standardized circuit switched wireline and fiber optics. The need to succeed has made the two compatible through specialized interface hardware and software. But how long will this standoff continue?

Not much longer by the looks of things. Competitive carriers have build their new networks with IP cores rather than adapting traditional SONET fiber optic switched circuit services to transport their Ethernet offerings. SONET/SDH is the high end of circuit switching development and likely the end of the line for this technology path. It has a maturity level and deployment that far exceeds the upstart Carrier Ethernet. Ethernet is the future, SONET is the present and, more and more, the past. At some point, the momentum will switch and the Ethernet takeover will ensue en-masse.

That point may be sooner than any of us think. As evidence, a major competitive carrier, XO Communications, has announced that they are not planning to buy any more SONET moving forward. That’s especially significant since XO is rolling out a major network upgrade over the next few years. This should put a smile on the face of product managers in charge of Ethernet switches, routers, multiplexers and the like. It should have the opposite effect on those planning development and production of SONET equipment. If more carriers follow suit, you’ll see Ethernet lines becoming more robust and SONET heading for end-of-life management.

You can see the handwriting on the wall by comparing Carrier Ethernet line services with their SONET equivalents. On a Mbps and Gbps basis, Ethernet is getting cheaper faster than SONET in most areas. As the price gap widens, IT managers will need more and more justification for choosing SONET over Ethernet. Even if there’s capital investment involved in switching over to all-Ethernet networking, it will increasingly be seen as a smart move.

How about your high bandwidth connections? Could you be benefiting from Carrier Ethernet right now and not realize it? Time is money, so don’t wait any longer to find out. Get Carrier Ethernet service prices and availability now. You, too, may become part of the stampede from SONET to Ethernet.



Note: Fisheye photo of data center courtesy of Wikimedia Commons