EarthLink Means Business With 10 GigE Fiber

Most of us remember EarthLink from land rush days of the Internet when anyone and everyone just had to get on the net now, and dial-up 56K service was the best you could get. EarthLink is still a viable ISP for consumers with both dial-up and broadband access available. But there’s another side to this famous company. EarthLink Business is a facilities-based competitive carrier serving everything from SMB to enterprise needs with over 28,000 miles of fiber installed and more in the works. They’re in the process of installing two new 10 Gigabit Ethernet fiber rings in Ohio and Eastern Pennsylvania. There’s also a new high speed fiber route going in between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

What’s with all the new high-bandwidth construction by EarthLink and others? In case you haven’t heard, business is automating like crazy and heading to the cloud. The enduring slowdown in economic expansion has given corporations a chance to re-examine their operations and re-engineer for what they’ll need in the future. One thing they’ve found is that office automation can be as big an enabler of employee productivity as the factory automation of decades past. That means more computers, more processing and more communication between business sites, vendors, customers and remote employees. Any business that has outsourced overseas has found that a key to making this work efficiently is to tie together the far flung operations as if they were right next door. You can’t do that physically, of course, but you can do it virtually if you have the right networking.

The cloud is also seen as a game changer in a world where it’s hard to predict what resources you’ll need next season or even next month. Traditional in-house data center construction is a capital and time intensive approach. If what you are doing will run just as well in a remote data center, you gain the advantages of avoiding capital investments and buying what you need by the moment with the knowledge that additional resources are always available when you need to scale up. Scaling up is the expected path as a company grows over the years. Now you have the option to scale up and scale down as business fluctuates so you never have idle resources running up expenses.

The one thing that process automation, outsourcing and cloud operations have in common is that they are bandwidth intensive. That bandwidth was fairly easy to come by when everything was on your local network. Now you need the same big conduit going between cities, across the country and perhaps overseas.

SONET is the proven core network technology for fiber optic WAN networks. You can certainly run legacy OC3, OC12 and OC 48 fiber optic connections for your business connectivity. But today it’s Ethernet services that are hot. No problem. Ethernet runs over SONET just fine. In fact, many advertised Ethernet fiber optic networks are really running SONET at their core. OC-192 is a good match for 10 Gigabit Ethernet, with a special WAN-PHY protocol designed especially to transport 10 GigE on a OC-192 optical carrier.

EarthLink is expanding their nationwide fiber network and their suite of business telecom services that include MPLS networking, full and fractional DS3, EVDO 3G wireless, SIP trunking and Metro Fiber Ethernet. They added three new data centers in Rochester, NY, Marlborough, MA and Columbia, SC with 10 Gigabit fiber rings connecting each location to the network backbone. Such high bandwidth connections allows them to offer real time data replication and cloud services to interested companies.

Is your business re-engineering for higher productivity and more agile operations? If so, you may benefit from some of the new cloud services and high bandwidth network connections that have become recently available. Even your current operations can cut costs while retaining the same performance with competitive telecom services.

Types of VPN Connections

Virtual private networking is heavily used in business. In fact, you probably have used a VPN connection today without even realizing it. It’s not a belt and suspenders service anymore. VPN connections are absolutely essential to prevent being robbed blind.

First, let’s take a look at private vs virtually private networks. Your hardwired LAN is a private network. It would take some real effort and a lot of risk for someone to tap into your network wiring and install a device to capture traffic. The same is true if you establish a wide area network or WAN using point to point private lines. A PTP T1 line falls into that category. While it is not impossible to sneak into your wiring closet or even the telephone company and put a tap on the line, it is so difficult that only those with the most secure requirements will go to extremes to protect against this type of attack.

What distinguishes a private network is that 100% of the traffic is yours and yours alone. You are not sharing the lines with anyone else. The advantage to a private network is inherent security. The disadvantage is cost. You pay for all the construction, maintenance and monthly lease fees. It’s unlikely that your private network will be fully loaded at all times. Whatever capacity is unused goes to waste.

Contrast the private network with a public network like the Internet. They are polar opposites. The Internet allows anyone and everyone access by design. Traffic on the Internet is everybody in the pool. Your packets are intermingled with everyone else’s. Even so, a wired connection to the Internet isn’t the worst situation. That belongs to the unsecured wireless network. No need to plant malware in someone’s computer when everything they are doing is perfectly visible on any WiFi enabled computer within range. You are most vulnerable reading private unencrypted emails in a popular public hotspot. Anyone with a laptop computer and some easy to obtain spyware can be reading your messages right along with you.

It seems like such a crying shame that the one network that any employee can access at home or while traveling is such a security nightmare. That’s where the technique of encryption becomes valuable. It doesn’t matter if someone is monitoring your traffic if all they see is gibberish. You encrypt your message at one end and decrypt it at the other end and you have a created what is known as a secure tunnel through the Internet. The public network has now become a virtually private network. It’s not a private network because you are still sharing the transport with many others. It’s virtually private because no one can read your traffic and make any sense out of it.

There are two popular methods of creating Internet or IP VPNs. One is IPsec or Internet Protocol security. The other is SSL or Secure Socket Layers. IPsec is based on software installed in both the company server and the client computer. IPsec encrypts and decrypts each packet, so once you have it installed you have a virtually private line to the company no matter where you hooked to the Internet. Of course, you need to use the specific laptop or other computer set up to work with this system. You can’t just go to any computer and connect back to headquarters.

If you want to do that, you need SSL (Secure Socket Layer). The beauty of SSL is that the software is already built into Web browsers and some email programs. SSL has been popularized for ecommerce and online banking. When you go to a SSL enabled webpage, you’ll notice that the http:// has become https:// The “s” means secure page. To access it you need a user account ID and a password at a minimum. Some sites go further and ask personal challenge questions or display special graphics that give you confidence you are logged into the correct site.

For corporate wide area networks, an alternative to private lines is the MPLS network. These are multi-tenant networks that spread the cost of building and running the system among many users. MPLS networks are considered VPNs because they use a proprietary label switching protocol that isn’t compatible with IP tools. This unique protocol plus access controlled to a limited number of business clients and not the general public give MPLS networks an enhanced level of security.

Do you need private or virtually private network connects to conduct business? If so, compare VPN options and prices to help decide which mix of network techniques is right for your company.

Ethernet Service Providers Offer Cost Savings

One technological revolution quietly underway is the transition from circuit switched to packet switch WAN protocols. Many businesses first become aware that something is happening when they go to get price quotes for bandwidth upgrades or new line services. They expect to be buying a T1 line and find themselves ordering Ethernet over Copper instead. Why is this and what can you get for your bandwidth dollar these days?

The shifting ground of the telecom industry is being driven by a move to all-IP networks. The root cause is that computing devices, such as PCs, web servers, wireless access points, tablets, smartphones, telepresence, and IP PBX systems are generating network traffic that far exceeds traditional telephony. I included IP PBX in that group because an enterprise VoIP system with SIP phones connects via the LAN and uses Ethernet packets, not analog or proprietary digital signals. In most businesses, the common denominators are the LAN and the telephone network, with the phone network on the way out.

We’re now at a point where the crying need is to connect LANs together and to the Internet. We’ve been doing that with traditional telephone technologies such as T-Carrier and SONET for decades. If you were designing a comprehensive networking approach, would you pick one technology for the LAN and something completely different for metro and long haul networks? Wouldn’t you try to have a common protocol that runs everywhere for efficiency and ease of connection?

That’s what’s behind the rise of Carrier Ethernet. As more competitive carriers enter the market and older networks are upgraded, IP core networks are becoming more and more the rule. These are high speed fiber optic networks that have regional, national or even international service footprints. The last link in the chain is appropriately called the last mile connection. This is the wireline, fiber or wireless link that connects you to the service provider point of presence.

Ethernet services are available at every level of networking, from simple Internet access through international MPLS networks that link hundreds or thousands of sites. Most companies will want some type of dedicated Internet access. A 2x2 Mbps or 3x3 Mbps Ethernet over Copper line is a direct competitor to T1, at about the same price. It’s not uncommon to get twice the bandwidth for the same cost by choosing Ethernet rather than T-Carrier T1 or T3.

Ethernet is also more scalable than other telecom services. Typical bandwidth options include 2, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 50, 75 and 100 Mbps. Other increments between these levels may also be available, depending on the carrier. Those are just Ethernet over Copper offerings. Ethernet over Fiber takes you to 250, 500, 750 and 1,000 Mbps or up to 10 GigE.

You may want to install Ethernet Private Line or Ethernet Virtual Private Line service for a point to point connection between two business connections, like headquarters and a branch office. This replaces T1 or DS3 private line service at a better price.

One service that Ethernet offers, that you won’t find with traditional point to point connections is E-LAN or Ethernet LAN Service. It connects multiple LANs in a mesh topology at the layer 2 level. This lets you build one giant LAN that includes all of your remote location LANs.

Would you like to expand your service options and save 50% or more on line pricing compared to what you have now? Get instant online Ethernet service pricing up to 1 Gbps now. More complex multi-site networks need a bit of manual work, but will be quoted promptly.

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.

Advantage of Dedicated Cloud Connections

The capital investment and staff cost savings offered by cloud services are encouraging small, medium and large companies alike to move their telephone and IT resources to the cloud. It’s been assumed that a simple broadband Internet connection will suffice for access. That’s turning out to be a disappointment in some cases.

The notion that bandwidth is bandwidth is how we get in trouble specifying metro and wide area network connections. What makes the Internet attractive as a WAN service is that it is almost universally available and the cost is spread over millions, even billions of users. Savvy companies discovered long ago that you could get around the security issues by encrypting your data to create a VPN or Virtual Private Network. The VPN gives you a private tunnel through a public network.

VPNs work great to support remote workers and traveling employees who’s only way to connect with corporate headquarters is through a wired or wireless Internet service. They’re also good for linking multiple business locations, such as branch offices or franchises. With a VPN you can transfer sensitive financial and inventory files among dozens, hundreds or thousands of locations.

Note that we are talking about file transfers. The TCP/IP network protocol was made for this application. All you do is launch the transfer and TCP will ensure that all the packets that make up the file will get from point A to point B intact. If something goes awry and a packet is corrupted, it is automatically resent.

Remember that the Internet was designed for universal access and to be self-healing in the face of equipment failure or line breaks. While TCP/IP is making sure that files are being accurately transfered, the Internet itself is making sure that there is a path available from point A to point B no matter what. While you can expect to transfer data, voice or video files over the Internet, you can’t really expect that this is going to happen without hiccups or in any minimal amount of time. Packets may or may not be lost and require a resend. The path may change from packet to packet. The latency or time delay from source to destination can vary all over the place, or jitter.

The result of this is that real time performance of Internet connections is highly variable. This is no big deal for data file transfers. The time to transfer may vary by milliseconds or seconds for each file. Time sensitive data streams like audio and video need some extra help in the form of buffering. You compensate for unknowable transmission rate variations by filling up a buffer with packets and then clocking them out at a constant rate.

Buffering works great for one-way downloads, but creates havoc for real-time video or audio streams. That includes telephone calls and video conferencing. You can’t have much of a buffer or the latency increases to the point where you can’t talk and listen at the same time. There is a noticeable delay, fractions of a second or longer, that make two-way communication painful at best. Lost packets from iffy Internet connections add distortion that blurs your video and garbles your audio.

The same Internet that seems fast and responsive when searching for information on Google can be maddening when trying to calm down an angry customer on a VoIP phone call that is breaking up. Automated business processes that worked fine over the LAN when the data center was in-house all of a sudden become sluggish in the cloud. It’s not that the cloud isn’t just as good or better than local resources, it’s that you need a better connection.

What you want is a dedicated connection between you and your cloud provider. Level 3 Communications is now offering dedicated connections to Amazon Web Services (AWS) running in Equinix data centers to meet the demand from larger corporations. Dedicated connections include Ethernet Private Line, Ethernet MPLS and Wavelength services. T1 lines are also suitable for smaller companies, although Ethernet over Copper may be a lower cost option and offer more bandwidth for the money.

A dedicated connection ensures that you have steady guaranteed bandwidth plus low latency, jitter and packet loss. Security is also improved because access is limited, not publicly available. A well engineered dedicated connection is just like a very long LAN that includes your locations and your service provider.

Are you disappointed with the performance of your cloud services or concerned that quality will suffer if you move from a local data center to the cloud? All you may need to get things working to your satisfaction is a high quality dedicated cloud connection. Why put up with all that aggravation when dedicated connection prices are lower than they’ve ever been? Check prices and availability of dedicated cloud connection bandwidth you need to support your critical applications.

Low Latency WAN Options

Many companies have added low latency to their list of requirements for WAN (Wide Area Network) connections. Why has latency suddenly gained such importance and how do you get low latency?

Latency is the time it takes for packets to get from one place to another. The latency on your LAN probably isn’t a worry. The latency on your long haul WAN connections may well cause you big problems. For some specific applications, minimizing latency is the holy grail of networking.

Latency and bandwidth aren’t directly related. You can have low speed connections with very minor latency. You can also have screaming Gbps connections with horrible latency. What drives latency is distance, network architecture, and equipment design.

Here’s an example of a network setup where you can’t do much about latency. Consider television remote broadcasts. These are the ones where a van with a satellite dish on top parks at the scene of a news event. It really doesn’t matter where in the world the van and the studio are located. The TV signal is going to have a considerable latency or time delay. You see the effect all the time. If the anchor and the field reporter don’t wait a second before they respond to the conversation, they’ll talk right over the top of each other.

Why is this? It’s because the signal is being sent from the truck dish to a satellite in geosynchronous orbit at 22,236 miles above the Earth (mean sea level) and back down to another dish at the studio or network headquarters. That means the electromagnetic waves have to travel a minimum of 44,472 miles up and then back down. In practice, the distance is longer because the signal isn’t going straight up and down. Now, consider that the speed of all signals in space is 186,000 miles per second and you have at least a quarter second delay one way or a half second round trip. Any equipment in the path or additional landline connections only makes it worse.

This is why satellite broadband works great for one way TV broadcasts but terrible for VoIP conversations. One way streaming is unaffected by latency. Two way anything is definitely affected. Data file transfers aren’t terribly bothered by going through a satellite because the latency is often small compared to the transfer time. But video conferences can be awkward and real time gaming is an exercise in frustration.

The point is that if you worry about latency, stay off geosynchronous satellite connections. Even your landline and undersea connections are affected to the tune of at least a millisecond per 186 miles simply due to the speed of light. Actually, you’d never even get that minimum latency value because light slows down in copper wires and fiber optic cores. The electronics that switch and route your path will also each add a small amount of latency to the total.

So, what differentiates a low latency connection from one that doesn’t concern itself much with latency? What you want is short paths between locations and a minimum of equipment in between. That suggests private networks, not the Internet. The Internet is designed for universal access and self-healing in the event of problems. Latency is an afterthought at best.

Many of today’s top MPLS networks are engineered to minimize latency. There are relatively few label switches to route the traffic and the networks have sufficient bandwidth to prevent congestion that backs up data flow and makes latency worse. You’ll want a network that has fiber runs as direct to your locations as possible to minimize path length. If MPLS will do the job, it has definite cost advantages and can give you mesh network connections so that all sites can easily communicate.

If latency is your number one priority, you’ll do even better with direct private line connections especially designed to minimize latency. These fiber paths are as close to a straight line as you can get and there is little in the way of electronics to slow things down. The one hitch is that these connections are primarily found between major international destinations, especially those like London, Frankfurt, New York and Chicago that are financial trading centers. High speed financial trading is the number one application driving the deployment of ultra low latency fiber optic services.

Do you have a business need for lower latency connections or even a critical need to minimize latency on long haul links? If so, get availability and pricing on Low Latency Fiber Optic Networks to check your domestic and international options.

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.

Low Latency Fiber Network For Orange County

Businesses are demanding more bandwidth at lower latencies to support demanding applications such as financial trading, business process automation, cloud computing & storage and medical image transmission. This is creating an opportunity for new fiber buildout, like the one underway in the Los Angeles Metro area.

AboveNet, a major provider of fiber optic networking services in the US and Europe, is launching what they call a large “feeder ring” to connect office buildings, data centers, and carrier hotels to an existing fiber optic backbone that now serves the business districts of Irvine and Costa Mesa in Orange County, California.

Fiber optic connectivity has become the new battleground for competitive service providers as well as incumbent telcos. A major push has been the transition from legacy SONET/SDH to Gigabit Ethernet, 10 GigE and 40 GigE, MPLS networks, dark fiber and wavelength services. Networks are becoming more IP oriented, at the expense of traditional switched circuit TDM technologies. This plays well with the dominance of Ethernet networks in business and the move to converged voice, data and video networks.

Cloud services have opened up a further need for increased bandwidth. When companies had on-site data centers for their servers and storage, most traffic was contained within the building or campus LAN. Special links served overnight tape backup at offsite storage centers. Once computing and disk resources move to a colocation facility or a cloud services provider, there is a corresponding increase in WAN bandwidth requirements. With everything “out there,” a much higher portion of traffic leaves the company LAN.

AboveNet and other carriers are in a major push right now to expand their fiber optic network footprints in the US and abroad. Especially important are low latency networks to Europe and Asia to interconnect financial markets and major international businesses. Private networks require an enormous capital investment and the Internet is unsuitable for high performance, secure connections. That’s creating an opportunity for companies that specialize in metro and long haul fiber optic networks to jump in and fill the need.

Some services that are seeing more demand are IP transit to connect with the Internet backbone for companies that don’t have networks large enough to do their own peering, Ethernet Private Line and LAN services, global MPLS networking, and wavelength services that offer both very high bandwidth capacity along with flexibility of protocols.

Competitive pressures have also reduced the cost per Mbps for nearly all leased line services. This is true for even the ubiquitous T1 lines, but even more so for Ethernet connections of all types. Ethernet availability has expanded to such an extent that it is often far less expensive than T-Carrier or SONET in most metro areas. Gigabit Ethernet and 10 GigE WAN connections are now routinely ordered by larger business and organizations.

Is your company bandwidth starved or simply looking for better prices on existing network services? See if you can do better by checking prices and availability for fiber optic bandwidth.



Note: Orange County, CA photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

What Leased Line Service Providers Offer

Most businesses get their telecommunication services from leased line service providers. That includes telephone, Internet, and point to point line services. You probably have some of these contracts yourself. But do you know about the cost reductions and all of the new services that have become available recently?

The nature of telecommunications services has changed dramatically in recent years. The two biggest changes are cost savings that come from a flurry of new competitive service providers and the introduction of new technologies that offer additional services.

You can still get most of the telecom services that were available a decade or so ago. The most popular line service is T-carrier, especially the T1 line. T1 is a telephone company technology and comes in several flavors. The original use was a digital trunk to carry multiple phone calls between telco switching centers or into a multi-line business phone system. An upgraded version of the T1 telephone line is called T1 PRI or ISDN PRI. It gives you up to 23 outside phone lines plus a data channel for dialing, switching and Caller ID. Nearly every PBX phone system and many key telephone systems can be easily configured to use T1 PRI.

Another use for T1 lines is to provide point to point connectivity between two business locations. A point to point T1 line offers 1.5 Mbps in both directions simultaneously. If you need more bandwidth than this, you can get bonded T1 service that combines multiple T1 lines up to about 10 or 12 Mbps total.

A related service is the T1 access line. This is a last mile connection to a larger network. At one time, the larger network was called Frame Relay. Nowadays, MPLS networks have taken over this role of connecting business locations on a regional, national or international basis. MPLS networks have the advantages of nearly unlimited bandwidth that can transport just about any voice, data or video protocol.

T1 Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) is the choice for broadband Internet access for many smaller businesses. The cost is only a fraction of what it was a decade ago. As a professional grade telecom service, you enjoy a reliability and constant bandwidth not typical of consumer oriented services like DSL and Cable.

The new competition to T1 lines is coming from Carrier Ethernet services, including Metro Ethernet. Like T1, Ethernet is a wireline service. Also like T1, it is delivered on multiple twisted pair copper wiring for lower bandwidth services. That copper wiring is generally already installed for multi-line telephone service. Ethernet offers the same point to point and Internet connections you may be using with T1 lines now. But Ethernet can also give you layer 2 switched network service between several or more locations around town or over a wider area, including overseas offices.

Ethernet is gradually taking over from T1 in metropolitan areas where it is most available. A popular service is 3 Mbps Ethernet for about the same price as a 1.5 Mbps T1 line. For more demanding uses, 10 Mbps Ethernet is becoming a popular standard.

Once you get into the higher bandwidths, 45 Mbps and above, fiber optic cabling takes the place of twisted pair copper. DS3 is the T-carrier upgrade to T1. It is now delivered over SONET fiber optic services at 45 Mbps. The Ethernet equivalent is 50 Mbps Ethernet service, although Fast Ethernet at 100 Mbps is an industry standard and the speed of many local networks. Like copper-based Ethernet services Ethernet over Fiber tends to offer much lower costs per Mbps than equivalent traditional SONET telecom services.

You should also know that both T1 and Ethernet services have an option to get both telephone and Internet over the same line. Integrated T1 is the legacy wireline service. SIP trunking is the IP service that gives you VoIP telephony and broadband Internet access.

Have you been wondering if you are paying too much for the wireline services you’ve just kept renewing over the years? Find out by getting up to date quotes for both Ethernet and T1 or SONET wireline services from dozens of competitive service providers. The range of services and their current costs may astound you.



Note: Photo of multipair cable courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Even Lower Latency Connections To Chicago

If you’ve been wondering just how important network latency has become, note that AboveNet is installing shorter fiber optic routes just to link Chicago and its suburbs. That network will be in operation by mid-next year. Can other cities be far behind?

Latency is the new bandwidth. It’s the scarce resource when you need really, really high performance in your computing environment. Who needs such performance? The big driver has been financial companies that trade on the stock and commodity exchanges. That’s why Chicago, as a major financial center, is being targeted for the AboveNet buildout. New York is another hotbed of activity, with colocation near financial exchanges in high demand. Since we are in a global trading economy, low latency connections to Europe and Asia are also enjoying enormous growth.

Why the need for speed, and why doesn’t more bandwidth solve this problem? Latency and bandwidth are two different animals. Latency is how long it takes a packet to get from point A to point B if there is no interference from other traffic. Bandwidth is the sheer volume of traffic you can handle before packets start piling up at the choke points.

To someone with a too-small WAN network, it might seem that latency and bandwidth are the same thing. That’s because a bandwidth-limited system slows down transmission a lot more than the effect of latency. But once you have enough bandwidth to keep up with the amount of traffic you can actually send and receive, then the network is going as fast as it can. Increasing bandwidth won’t make those packets fly down the line any faster. They’re inherently limited by the speed of light and electrical delays within the circuitry.

You get a dramatic feel for the effect of latency when you watch those television interviews from locations thousands of miles away. They connect to the studio using microwave trucks that beam the signal to a geostationary satellite 22,236 miles above the equator. The signal goes from the truck 22,236 miles up to the satellite and then comes back down 22,236 miles to the television studio. That’s a quarter of a second delay one way or about half a second for a conversation at a minimum. You find it either comical or annoying to listen to the reporters at both locations tripping on each other.

How do you reduce that latency? Take as much equipment out of the path as possible and make the path as straight a line connection as possible. Not much you can do with a geosynchronous satellite. They only work at that altitude. Just don’t try to use one for VoIP telephony or any sort of interactive process or you’ll get frustrated quickly. Fiber optic cables are the high bandwidth connection of choice, but even they are not created equal. Some networks, like the Internet, may take a circuitous route to get packets from one location to another. The Internet was designed to get the packets delivered even under multiple fault conditions. It wasn’t designed to get them delivered particularly fast.

What’s better? Privately run fiber optic networks, like national and international MPLS networks, do a decent job. Even these are designed for normal business requirements and aren’t optimized for minimal latency. What you need are networks specifically designed to minimize latency. They feature very straight runs from location to location, very few switches or routers on the path, and termination as close to the users as possible.

High frequency trading has highlighted the need for low latency networks, but as business moves more and more into the cloud, other processes will drive their own needs for this level of performance. Disk mirroring and data replication are two applications that already benefit from lower latency connections. Cloud computing over multiple locations could easily have the same requirement.

Are your business processes latency sensitive? If so, you should seriously consider the newer low latency network services offered by AboveNet and other competitive carriers. There are microseconds, even milliseconds to be saved.

Smoothstone’s Converged IP Cloud Expanding To Europe

Smoothstone IP Communications, an innovator in the new field of cloud-based unified communications, is expanding its service portfolio to include European locations. Could this be the start of a cloud that covers the Earth?

You bet it is. Thanks to international MPLS connectivity, it is now feasible to port any IP service to anywhere on Earth. That’s the beauty of MPLS networks. They take whatever you’ve got and transport it anywhere users can connect to the network.

Well, it’s not quite that simple. There’s a matter of scaling involved. Servers that easily handle the load for a limited universe of users in a regional area can become quickly overloaded when a tsunami of new users joins the network from a global footprint. Likewise, the core network has to have the bandwidth needed to handle the increased traffic without degrading latency, jitter and packet loss characteristics.

Smoothstone has addressed these issues, partially by expanding their cloud-based applications platform into several European data centers. That removes a potential bottleneck that could form if all packets needed to be processed through a single U.S. data center. It also makes call termination to off-net European phones easier and less costly.

One of the advantages that Smoothstone touts for moving enterprise voice services to their IP cloud is that internal phone calls stay on the network even when those calls are transatlantic to the UK, France, Germany or Switzerland. It’s only when calls need to be terminated to the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) that connection costs are incurred. The more local the call termination, the cheaper it is. That argues for geographically diverse data centers and central office equipment to support telephony in the cloud.

What is also significant is that Smoothstone is not merely another VoIP service provider. The heart of their competitive portfolio is unified IP communications services. That means converged voice and data services to gain the cost advantages that come from deploying one network among business locations rather that separate telephone and data networks. Convergence can be a tricky proposition for time sensitive applications like network voice. If not done properly, VoIP calls can degrade into clipped and garbled conversations. Calls can even be dropped in extreme cases.

MPLS networking is especially suited to supporting converged voice and data. Not only are multiple protocols supported, but these privately owned and operated networks are carefully managed to ensure Quality of Service (QoS) at all times. For companies that want to unify their communications among multiple locations, it’s hard to argue against a solid MPLS core network. Now smoothstone is taking a leadership position to expand the very same converged services to include European cities. By the end of 2010, they expect to be providing applications and services across Europe.

Is your company still suffering from last century’s networking solutions? Have you been stymied by the process of creating unified communications that delivers the quality of service you require? What you need is the right provider with assets and resources to deliver the right solution for your size of operation and be able to seamlessly scale up as your business level increases. See how Smoothstone and other cloud networking services can provide the connectivity you need at a cost that makes sense.

NetWolves Leverages The Power Of The Pack

When you are looking for a comprehensive solution to all of your business voice and data needs, it’s pays to have a wolf doing your bidding. NetWolves is an aggressive service provider with an unusual flexibility to optimize the exact suite of services you need.

First and foremost, NetWolves is an FCC-licenced and tariffed carrier in all 50 states. But beyond that, they have strategic agreements with over 120 leading telecommunications carriers. By leveraging the power of the pack when it comes to telecom service providers, NetWolves can pick and choose from an enormous menu of available services to get exactly the right mix for your particular applications. Many carriers are working from a much shorter line card and need to fit your requirements into whatever they have available.

Most businesses, even the smallest, have a particular mix of needs that include telephone, Internet, security, offsite backup, remote workers, employees in the field, private data transfers, e-commerce, and perhaps multiple site connectivity. NetWolves takes all of this into consideration and custom designs an array of services tailored to your situation. They also offer consulting and management services as an adjunct to your IT team or as the IT support for companies that don’t have their own staff.

NetWolves can offer you a complete range of voice services including multi-carrier solutions on a single invoice. These voice services include switched outbound and inbound toll-free service plus intrastate, interstate and international calls over your existing business lines. Do you have your own PBX or IP PBX system? NetWolves can provide the ISDN PRI and VoIP services you need to support whatever phone system you have. That includes ANI (Automatic Number Identification) and DNIS (Dialed Number Identification Service).

Data services include private lines from 56K/DS0, DDS, T1/DS1 at 1.5 Mbps, on up to T3/DS3 lines running at 45 Mbps. For multiple locations, you can get MPLS network connections that create a VPN or Virtual Private Network. NetWolves also offers VPN security technology that includes IPSec VPN and SSL VPN. While IPSec VPN is ideal when transferring large amounts of data over a secure site to site connection, SSL VPN is an attractive solution to support business travelers and partners who need secure access only for email and small files.

NetWolves is capable of providing complete network management for your company. Their WolfPac security platforms act as network gatekeepers to control access into and out of a company’s network. Security services are scalable and include Stateful Inspection firewall, IPSec, SSL VPN, intrusion detection, congestion management, quality of service control, email virus protection, content filtering and other services with the ability to provide 24x7 monitoring.

Could your organization benefit from the capabilities of NetWolves or other highly competitive carriers anxious to bid for your business? If so, get price quotes tailored to your requirements for whatever level of service you need.

VPLS Is The Ethernet Cloud

We’re all familiar with the term cloud network. Various technologies are used to provide the infrastructure of the cloud and the services you can get through the cloud. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could have your own cloud that included all your business locations?

In a way, you can. While it’s generally not practical to create a completely proprietary cloud network, you can get very close with VPLS or Virtual Private LAN Service.

The “virtual” in VPLS means that you are sharing a privately operated multipoint network that you don’t own. The most popular network for this purpose is MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching. A characteristic of MPLS networks is that they can transport any type of traffic from point to point, point to multi-point or in a fully meshed network. That includes Ethernet traffic of most any bandwidth.

VPLS is an Ethernet based meshed network that is implemented using an MPLS cloud with Ethernet access connections. Pseudo-wires are used to create any-to-any Ethernet connectivity through the MPLS network. Using layer 2 pseudo-wires allows maintenance of a single bridged domain. This is what gives the perception that all of your sites are interconnected on your own Ethernet cloud. It is truly a virtual private LAN.

VPLS makes sense if you have multiple sites in a single metropolitan area but want the experience of having everyone working in a single large, indeed very large, office building. With VPLS the PC or printer in the next office is exactly as close on the network as the PC or printer ten miles away. But VPLS isn’t limited to metropolitan area networks. You can network many cities in the state or many cities in many states. The extent of your network is limited only by the service footprint of your service provider.

Actually, provider footprint is not even a limiting factor anymore, thanks to Ethernet Exchanges like Telx that interconnect participating carriers. It is even possible to include international locations in your VPLS cloud. AboveNet is a competitive carrier that offers international VPLS for the US and major cities in Europe.

Any company or organization with multiple point of presence should have a look at VPLS as a cost effective and seamless way to interconnect their voice, video and data networks. It is right for you? Find out with a quick inquiry for cost and availability of VPLS services serving your locations.

What Is Lowering Gigabit Ethernet Bandwidth Pricing?

If you have recently gone out for quotes on Gigabit Ethernet bandwidth, you may have been surprised by how much prices have dropped the last few years. That’s one pleasant surprise for organizations that need higher levels of business bandwidth for cloud computing access, e-commerce, medical image transmission, video distribution and the like. But is this for real and what is driving these prices lower?

Yes, it’s for real alright. In fact, bandwidth services across the board can be had for a fraction of what you may have paid when you signed your last service contract. That applies to everything from T1 lines to DS3 connections and on up through OCx SONET/SDH fiber optic bandwidth. It also includes competing services like Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gig E. Plus multi-location cloud networks like MPLS. They’ve all dropped in price. But the cost per Mbps is often most dramatic for Ethernet services.

What’s behind the lowered prices? Two factors can be credited. First is the move from traditional switched circuit transport technologies to packet switched IP networks and services. Second is new levels of competition.

Both legacy service providers, the telephone companies, and new competitive carriers have built-out extensive networks based on IP or a networking technology that embraces IP, such as MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching. You can thank the Internet for that. The enormous volume of equipment and services to support near-universal demand access to the Internet has decreased the price of Ethernet and IP networking to a fraction of what it costs for competing technologies. The entire world is going to packet switched networks based on Internet Protocol.

When every LAN is running Ethernet, it just makes sense that the most efficient way to connect all those local area networks is with an Ethernet connection. Ethernet over Copper lets you do this from typically 3 Mbps on up to around 50 Mbps. Ethernet over Fiber is good for 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, and even 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Gigabit Ethernet is becoming a requirement for medium and large companies depending heavily on high productivity enterprise software or distributing media content, such as video. At the very highest levels, even 10 GigE is no longer out of the question.

The move from legacy telco technologies to IP based fiber optic networks has brought new players into the marketplace for WAN networking services. These competitive carriers have built their own regional or national fiber optic networks and established colocation facilities and points of presence in most major cities, even some mid-size cities. They can often bring their own fiber into business locations and bypass the telephone companies completely. Now instead of one option for service, you may have several or more even at the Gigabit Ethernet level. That spells competition and competition leads to lowered prices.

Could your organization benefit from the recent cost reductions in high bandwidth networks services? Don’t shake your head no until you check current prices and availability for Gigabit Ethernet bandwidth services and other bandwidth offerings. At the very least, your next service lease could cost you less than the one you have now.

USA Digital Offers Comprehensive Call Center Services

Call centers and company contact centers have special requirements for the high volume telephony services they use. USA Digital serves this market with a suite of high performance cost effective telecom services.

USA Digital Communications Inc., often called USA Digital for short, is a licensed, certified carrier in all 50 states. Since founding in 1991, their business has been known for rapid growth and customer retention. Wouldn’t a lot of companies like to claim that? The secret to USA Digital’s success may be summed up as excellent customer service combined with an extensive range of services to support both voice and data needs.

Call center operations are a special focus for USA Digital. It starts with digital line services from T1 through OC12. T1 is a popular service and provided by many carriers. However, not all of those T1 services are optimized for cost on high volume calling. For instance, USA Digital offers initial six second billing minimum. That’s typical in the industry. But then USA Digital billing switches to one second increments. That alone can save you 30% in the cost of the minutes you use.

Another big saver is 4 digit versus 2 digit rounding. Those decimal points might seem arcane, but in high volume calling minor fractions of a second add up to big money. That’s especially true if 4 digital rounding is combined with low dedicated interstate rates on T1 service.

USA Digital has a service team experienced in provisioning voice lines, PRI’s, CO meet-point circuits, cross connects and SS7 links. That same experience is applied as you move up the circuit class to DS3 (T3) trunks and into the fiber optic services from OC3 to OC12. These OCx connections are truly business carrier class services needed by the largest call center operations and requiring the highest levels of expertise for support. An OC3 gives you the capacity of about 3 DS3’s and OC12 is the bandwidth of 4 OC3’s or 12 DS3’s. USA Digital can deliver OC3s in the form of 3 DS3’s that may be separated into individual T1 services.

In addition to bandwidth, dedicated outbound services are a specialty of USA Digital. They offer FTC telemarketing sale rule and do not call services to make sure you are in compliance with government regulations for outbound call centers. Their do not call services are capable of blocking 100% of calls registered to both state and national do-not-call lists. In addition, USA Digital provides customized Caller ID Service so that you can communicate appropriate caller information over your service lines.

USA Digital’s services are appropriate for in-house customer service contact centers up through major independent call centers and carriers, including ILEC, CLEC and wireless. Beyond traditional switched circuit voice trunks, they also support VoIP (SIP, H3223), point to point dedicated lines, and MPLS networks for linking multiple business locations.

Can you benefit from business telecom services like these? If so, you’ll want to get customized telecom service pricing and consultation for USA Digital and other competitive service providers as soon as possible. You could be looking a major cost savings.

From LAN to MAN to WAN

We’re in something of a network revolution right now. Computer networking has deployed many different protocols for communication. Some of these have been borrowed from the telephone industry. But there’s a consolidation underway that is moving toward a single IP networking standard. From LAN to MAN to WAN, it’s all headed toward IP.

The standardization really started in the LAN or Local Area Network. Nearly all LANs are now constructed using Ethernet network interfaces? It’s not that other network architectures don’t have merit. It’s simply economy of scale. Perhaps the PC, more than anything else, helped to settle the issue with 10/100 Mbps NICs (Network Interface Cards) being included as standard equipment. Today’s faster machines offer 10/100/1000 interfaces with RJ-45 as the standard connector. If you want anything else, you have to pay extra.

This economy of scale encompasses not only desktop computers, but laptops, network switches, routers, servers, cabling and various appliances. The higher the volume produced, the cheaper each interface circuit becomes. Until something very much better comes along, Ethernet is the low cost solution.

The situation has been quite different beyond the company premises. The telephone industry has about a 100 year lead on the computer industry. If you’ve wanted to connect two business locations together or join the Internet, you had to convert your Ethernet protocol to something the telephone system could understand. Remember dial-up modems? Today’s equivalent is the T1 line. It’s all digital and offers rock solid 1.5 Mbps connectivity, but it’s a telco standard service.

The LAN to MAN or WAN connection is most often made with an interface called a CSU/DSU. This can be a stand alone box or a card that plugs in an edge router. It provides the protocol and signal level conversion between Ethernet on the LAN and T1 line connecting through the central office.

More recently, the T1 connection and faster speed DS3 and OCx services have been challenged by the rise of Metro Ethernet services. With MetroE, you connect directly from your Ethernet LAN to an Ethernet MAN and back again at other locations around town. Since this is a Level 2 switched service, it’s like having a way to expand your LAN over a much larger area to include other offices, a factory, warehouses, and an offsite data center.

Metro Ethernet melds LAN and MAN with one common service protocol. But what about the WAN or wide area needs? WANs often encompass regional areas of the country or even the entire US. Very large WANs include locations around the world. These, too, can now be joined by Ethernet through MPLS networks. While MPLS has an IP core, it uses its own tag switching system instead of IP routing while on the network. But being a multi-protocol system, it can easily transport Ethernet. Some larger providers have national and international service footprints, making it easier than ever to connect from LAN to MAN to WAN.

Are you interested in maximizing the efficiency of your metropolitan and wide area network services while minimizing your costs? You should get a quick quote on MAN & WAN Network Bandwidth to see how much you could be saving.

Transparent LAN Service for WAN Bandwidth

As businesses increasingly move from having all of their activities in a single building or campus, the need for wide area connectivity is increasing. This is especially true of companies with nationwide branch offices, and medical centers spread out over regional areas. There have always been telecommunications services to tie multiple locations together, but now there are services that actually let your local area network span an entire metro area, even multiple states.

The service you may be looking for is called transparent LAN service. It’s pretty much what it sounds like. Instead of maintaining individual LANs for each location and then using legacy telecom services to transfer data between them, the transparent LAN makes all those separate LANs look like one big one.

Transparent LAN service is an Ethernet layer 2 switching service. It’s similar to bridging a number of smaller networks together as you would in-house. The difference is that this capability lets you bridge branch offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas, Seattle and elsewhere so that they are part of a unified whole.

One technology that is rapidly gaining popularity for implementing transparent LANs is VPLS or Virtual Private LAN Service. This is a standards based carrier service that uses IP / MPLS networks for core network. Some carriers have a nationwide footprint for their IP networks, so they can easily offer VPLS in many major cities.

Transparent LAN services run at native LAN speeds of 10, 100 and 1000 Mbps. Higher speeds of 10 Gbps are becoming increasingly available for enterprises with demands for high traffic levels and low latencies. Fully meshed multipoint-to-multipoint layer 2 services require special equipment at both the provider and customer edges. For that reason, a transparent LAN solution is a managed service between all locations. The carrier will install a CE (customer edge) interface and provide the last mile connection between each of your locations and their core network.

With transparent LAN service, a PC on the West Coast is located right next to the printer on the East Coast. You can converge your networks so that you have voice, video and data all running on the same Ethernet network from coast to coast. You don’t have to make all of these WAN connections work, your managed service provider will take care of that. Even a huge network can be managed as if it were right there in your office building.

Does this sound like a service that would benefit your enterprise? If so, get more details and pricing for Transparent LAN Service with a simple online inquiry.