GigE and FastE Bandwidth Services

Bandwidth upgrades are a matter of course these days. Many companies are moving from T1 line speeds at 1.5 Mbps up to 3x3 Mbps or 10x10 Mbps Ethernet. Often there is little or no additional cost involved in doing so. But what if these bandwidth levels are still to low for your needs? Are there any opportunities at the 100 to 1000 Mbps level?

Carrier Ethernet is now the service to pursue at medium and high bandwidth speeds. These service levels have been dominated by DS3 or T3 lines at 45 Mbps and SONET OCx for higher line speeds over fiber optic cable. Ethernet bandwidth has a cost advantage for this need and also provisioning flexibility.

It’s common knowledge that low and mid-band Ethernet services are readily available over twisted pair copper wiring. In other words, the same telco wires that you currently use for analog business phone lines and T1 lines can also be used to transport Ethernet protocol. The service requires specialized equipment at each end and multiple copper pairs. This is Ethernet over Copper. Bandwidth levels vary from 1 Mbps on up 100 Mbps and beyond. A 200 Mbps service is available in some areas and a new 400 Mbps asymmetrical Internet access is being rolled out.

Most companies opt for Ethernet as a last mile connection to the Internet, metro or wide area MPLS network with bandwidth up to 50 Mbps. This is a direct replacement for their existing copper wire T1, bonded T1 or DS3 connections. By moving up the speed range to 100 Mbps to 400 Mbps, Ethernet can directly replace such fiber optic services as OC-3 at 155 Mbps and perhaps OC-12 at 622 Mbps.

All of this is done over up to 8 bonded copper pair at distances that don’t exceed a few thousand feet to a few miles from the telco central office. This is no problem in densely populated business districts, but as you move out into the burbs, small cities and rural areas, service becomes less available. Ethernet over Copper has a definite distance limitation.

Fast Ethernet at 100 Mbps may be available over copper, but Ethernet over Fiber is a better bet. The beauty of fiber is that once you have it installed and your building is “lit”, just about any bandwidth is possible. That includes FastE, of course, at 100 Mbps, GigE or Gigabit Ethernet at 1,000 Mbps and 10 GigE or 10 Gigabit Ethernet at 10,000 Mbps.

Ethernet over Fiber is available from traditional telephone companies, but it is also available from competitive carriers who have built their own IP-core regional and national networks with Ethernet as a standard service. These companies can bring Ethernet right to your building without having to lease any telephone company facilities. This gives them the ability to offer more bandwidth for less money. You may save half or more for equivalent service levels at the higher bandwidths.

A new wrinkle is Ethernet over Fiber offered by Cable MSOs. This fiber was bought and paid for by the Cable Television industry, but has so much extra bandwidth available that these companies are offering access to their fiber optic networks to businesses and other organizations that need anywhere from 10 to 1000 Gbps. That includes Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet at prices that are up to half the cost of other fiber providers.

The options are many and the prices are very attractive right now. There is lots of bandwidth to go around, which may not be true when the economy takes off again. If you need to speed up your networks, you can lock in some excellent deals. Check prices and availability for GigE and FastE bandwidth services appropriate for your business location.

Ethernet over Copper vs Bonded T1

T1 lines have been the gold standard for small and medium business connectivity. Their popularity has grown as pricing has plunged in recent years. Now there’s a newer technology service that gives you even more bandwidth for less money and is even easier to interface. That service is Ethernet over Copper.

Ethernet over Copper, or EoC, leverages one of the primary attributes of T1 lines. That’s their ability to be provisioned over ordinary twisted pair telephone wiring. A T1 lines comes into your facility in the same bundle of installed telephone wire that brings in multi-line telephone service. Because it is ordinary telco wire, most every business location in the country is already wired for service and enabled for T1.

T1 lines use two twisted pair versus one pair for an analog telephone line. One pair is used for the upstream connection. The other is used for the downstream connection. This gives you 1.5 Mbps in both directions at the same time, also called full duplex operation. T1 line prices have come down to several hundred dollars per month, although that number varies with location.

For about the same money you can get Ethernet over Copper bandwidth. But your Ethernet link will be running at 3 Mbps rather than 1.5 Mbps. Why the difference? It’s a matter of more efficient modulation technology. T1 was designed by the phone companies right after WWII to transport telephone calls digitally. Thus, it was designed as a synchronized system subdivided into 24 precise channels. It’s a great match for loading phone lines onto a digital trunk, but bears no resemblance to today’s network protocols. Ethernet is based on packets, not channels, and doesn’t need the T1 system for transport. In fact, it takes a protocol conversion to go back and forth from T1 to Ethernet.

T1 lines can compete with Ethernet over Copper by using more lines to increase bandwidth. Add another 2 pair for an additional T1 line and you can double your bandwidth from 1.5 Mbps to 3 Mbps. The process used to couple multiple T1 lines to create one effectively larger line is called bonding. As you might expect, Ethernet over Copper lines can also be bonded to create a larger bandwidth connection. T1 line bonding is practical up to 10 or 12 Mbps. EoC bonding can deliver bandwidths as high as 100 Mbps over very short distances. Standard Ethernet network speed of 10 Mbps is readily available. You can also get 15 or 20 Mbps service without too much trouble. Once bandwidth gets above 45 to 50 Mbps, it generally makes sense to move up to fiber optic connections.

The one rub with Ethernet over Copper technology is that it is distance limited. That’s why EoC is often called a Metro Ethernet service. You’ll find it readily available in major metropolitan areas, but not farther out in sparsely populated areas. EoC delivery is generally limited to a few miles from the central office where the termination equipment is installed. For higher bandwidths, it’s only a matter of blocks away from the nearest point of presence. Downtown that’s no concern because of the concentration of both users and service provider facilities.

T1, on the other hand, has no distance limitation. It was designed from the beginning to have regenerators placed every mile or so in the line to restore the signal to a perfect wave shape. Longer spans require more engineering and construction effort, so cost goes up. Even so, you can get T1 service from coast to coast if you like. Actually, the T1 line is only carried by copper to the nearest telco central office. From there it rides on a fiber optic network to the central office nearest the far location and is then delivered on copper wiring.

Business bandwidth demands are increasing faster than fiber is being trenched to every business. That doesn’t mean you are stuck with a basic 1.5 Mbps of service when you really need 10 or 20 Mbps. Find out what’s available for your business location and compare prices for Ethernet over Copper vs Bonded T1 services now.