SIP over MPLS for Enterprise VoIP

SIP Trunking is widely popular for smaller businesses who can save on their monthly telecom bill by getting both their telephone and Internet broadband services on a single integrated line. SIP Trunking is also a cost saver for large corporate headquarters or call centers that need many outside phone lines and already have converged voice and data LANs. But what about the organization with multiple locations?

The answer may well be SIP over MPLS. You may already have an MPLS network in place for sharing data files between branch offices and headquarters. Cost tradeoffs almost always give the advantage to an MPLS network over a suite of point to point data lines of equivalent bandwidth. With MPLS, you only need a last mile connection to each of your locations. As the name implies, these are point to point pipes measuring just thousands of feet to the nearest central office. The major distance spans are handled by the fiber optic core of the MPLS network.

There are also security advantages with MPLS versus IP networking, such as the Internet. MPLS uses proprietary labels to direct traffic, not the IP header information that is often the target of malicious activity. The network is privately operated and not accessible by the general public. You need to be a contracted customer with defined locations and connections between them that are managed by the network operator.

What you may not realize is that MPLS networks can handle voice traffic as well as data. The name MPLS actually stands for Multi-Protocol Label Switching. The network can handle nearly any protocol and is perfect for packet switched services of all types. For larger organizations, MPLS provides the WAN connections you need to link a few or many converged voice and data networks.

Do you currently have data connections between your sites but stand-alone analog or PRI telephone lines at each? That works, but you are probably paying toll charges to call between offices. There’s no economy of scale if each facility is relatively small and in a different city or state than the others. By consolidating your telephony, data lines and perhaps broadband connectivity with a single provider you can likely realize a considerable cost savings while maintaining call quality and network speed.

The MPLS labels or tags do their magic by not only specifying packet destinations, but also class of service. This keeps data file transfers from damaging the much more fragile real-time demands of voice and video. If you have company wide VoIP now and conversations get distorted or calls drop when the network gets congested, traffic engineering is what you need. MPLS networks are engineered with committed rates for your services, as well as those of other network customers. That ensures that you have the bandwidth you purchase regardless of what anyone else is doing. Contrast that commitment with the best-effort information services, such as the Internet, where performance is all over the map.

With SIP over MPLS, your telephone calls within the company stay on-net and off the public switched telephone network. You don’t pay toll charges for office calls that stay on your network regardless of whether they are from desks twenty feet apart or branch offices thousands of miles apart. It’s even possible to include international locations on the same MPLS network to truly integrate your company communications. When calls go off-net to outside landlines or mobile phones, those terminations are handled by your SIP Trunking service provider. Since the network is converged, there is no need for a separate telephone network and your support needs may also be reduced.

Does your organization have multiple locations that could be more efficiently run by a voice and data MPLS network? Get pricing for MPLS Network Services quickly and easily to compare with your current bills.

5x5 Mbps Ethernet over Copper Saves Money

Many companies wish they had more bandwidth, less telecom expense or both. There’s a new service called 5x5 Ethernet than may be just what you are looking for.

Ethernet services are fairly new on the scene. Prior to Ethernet becoming fairly common, your best bandwidth options were T1 lines and fractional DS3 bandwidth. Occasionally, fixed location wireless service has been available for locations with a nearby line of sight path to their service provider.

How do Ethernet services change the options mix? You can often get more bandwidth for less cost with Ethernet, including low bandwidth services over copper.

You’ll hear Ethernet services described as Metro Ethernet, Carrier Ethernet or by their bandwidth level. For instance, 5x5 Mbps Ethernet means a dedicated speed of 5 Mbps in both the upload and download directions. That symmetry is similar to what you get with other telecom services, but much different than the consumer oriented information services such as DSL and Cable broadband.

Symmetrical bandwidth is important if you expect to do file transfers between locations or backup your data to the cloud or a remote data center. Asymmetrical services with low upload speeds were designed for Web browsing. When you are requesting Web pages, there is a lot more data coming down than the few commands you are sending up to the server. That’s also true for video streaming, but not for video conferencing. In general, any two-way activity benefits from symmetrical bandwidth.

If you are currently using a T1 line or a few of T1 lines bonded together, sometimes called fractional DS3 bandwidth, you may well find that EoC or Ethernet over Copper is much more cost effective. You’ll get the same high quality of service that you expect from T1 or other telecom services. You’ll just pay less.

How much less? Let’s say that you want 5 Mbps symmetrical bandwidth to meet your need for file transfers, video conferencing, or dedicated Internet access. You could get close by bonding 3 T1 lines together to get 4.5 Mbps or 4 T1 lines for 6 Mbps. With T-carrier service, you need to move up in 1.5 Mbps increments.

The problem is that there is no economy of scale with T1 lines. Two lines cost twice as much as one line. Three lines, the number needed for 4.5 Mbps bandwidth, will cost you 3x the T1 line price. You also have to have new lines installed any time you want to increase bandwidth. There’s no cost savings in having extra capacity available.

Ethernet pricing is more than competitive with T1. You can often get 2 Mbps Ethernet for the same or less cost than a T1 line. Sometimes you can even get 3 Mbps for that price. Your 5x5 Mbps Ethernet will likely cost somewhere around twice the cost of T1 service but give you over 3 times the bandwidth. You might even do better. The reason these cost figures are vague is that pricing for both T1 and Ethernet is highly dependent on what services and competition are available for any particular business location.

Another thing you should know is that Ethernet over Copper uses the same twisted pair telco wiring that brings in T1 service. The technology uses multiple pair to increase bandwidth. That technology is also much more scalable than T-carrier services. What you want to do is install an Ethernet port capable of the bandwidth you expect to need for the foreseeable future. Then order the bandwidth you need right now. You should be able to quickly and easily increase your bandwidth at any time by simply contacting your service provider. No additional installation or construction delays should be necessary.

Are you ready to get some real numbers comparing Ethernet to T1 and DS3 services? Get pricing and availability for 5x5 Mbps Ethernet over Copper and other bandwidth services now.

Will You Save With Fractional Line Services?

If you need and want professional-grade telecom line services but don’t need the full line rates, can you save by ordering fractional rates? Conventional wisdom says yes. Reality may be different.

The idea behind fractional bandwidth is that it ought to be cheaper to buy less than the full line rated bandwidth. For instance, the smallest line service you can generally get with dedicated bandwidth and a service level agreement is the T1 line. These used to be very expensive and cost over $1,000 even in metro areas. At the same time, bandwidth demands in many smaller companies weren’t all that high. Something like 500 or 750 Kbps was plenty for email and text file transfers. Seemed a shame to have to pay for 1.5 Mbps and not make full use of it.

That’s where the idea of fractional T1 lines came from. If you don’t need and can’t afford 1.5 Mbps, then why not order a T1 line but only have it deliver a fraction of the full bandwidth? There should be a cost savings, since the service provider didn’t need as large a backbone network to serve many customers who are only running fractional T1 lines.

Well, yes and no. It’s true that Internet access has a port cost of so much per Mbps. But what about point to point dedicated lines? Is there really any savings to throttling back a line that’s used for only one customer? Plus there is the basic cost of the line itself. A T1 line runs synchronously at 1.544 Mbps whether it is carrying any traffic or not. That’s the basic technology. The pipe, if you will, has a certain diameter regardless of how much is flowing through it.

At any rate, many telecom service providers have offered fractional T1 lines and fractional DS3 service to accommodate customers who can’t pony up the cost of full line speed. This may have as much to do with marketing as anything else. The cost has never been scaled as much as the fraction of maximum rate. In other words, you can order a half-speed fractional T1 line but pay three-fourths or more of the price for a full T1 line.

Now it’s becoming more expensive in some areas to get fractional line speeds as it is to simply order a full T1 line. Why? It’s because a T1 line is a standard product and the fractional service is a special order that needs additional engineering. In that case, you might as well order the full T1 line and just not use all the capacity. It’s cheaper.

Traditional switched circuit telecom services such as T1 lines, DS3 connections, OC3 fiber optic service and the like never were very scalable. They were designed as a technology family with large standard increments between the service levels. But there is a newer service that may be just what you are look for in the way of bandwidth scalability. That’s Carrier Ethernet.

Carrier Ethernet, also called Metro Ethernet, was designed from the beginning to be highly scalable. There are standard network speeds, such as 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and 1000 Mbps, but there are a plethora of in-between bandwidth levels available. Popular Ethernet service levels are 2 Mbps, 5 Mbps, 10 Mbps, 20 Mbps, 50 Mbps, 100 Mbps and above.

What’s important with Ethernet is to have a port installed that can handle the maximum speed you expect to want. Then buy just the bandwidth you need right now and upgrade later. If you’ve got the right port in place, you can often upgrade your bandwidth quickly and easily with just a phone call to your service provider.

Are you looking to get just the bandwidth you need and not pay extra for unused capacity? Compare pricing for fractional T1, DS3 and OC3 services with Ethernet over Copper and Ethernet over Fiber and see what is most cost effective for your applications. Prices will vary with location, so you need a specific quote for your business address.



Note: Image of fraction dice courtesy of Arjan on Wikimedia Commons.