The Coming Level 3 Global Crossing Juggernaut

If you believe that the future of business is high bandwidth connections to clouds, customers and suppliers worldwide, then the next step toward this future is the melding of Level 3 Communications and Global Crossing. Combine their assets and you have a network map that spans the world.

Level 3 Communications is actually purchasing Global Crossing for $2 billion. When this merger is complete, their combined fiber optic assets will reach 70 countries on 3 continents.

Level 3 has an extensive long haul network with metro fiber in many US cities. Their transatlantic undersea fiber connects to a European network to link the USA and major European cities with low latency fiber connections. Level 3 is a major player in the high speed financial trading space, as well as providing other high bandwidth fiber services for global business needs.

Another strength of Level 3 is video transport. Their Vyvx service carries both high definition and standard video programming for studios and networks. For the highest in transmission feed quality, Level 3 Vyvx offers uncompressed high definition video transport services between Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and New York City at 1.5 and 3.0 Gbps. The Level 3 Content Delivery Network (CDN) has 35 strategically placed cashing locations to keep the content as near the customer as possible.

What Global Crossing does is complement rather than compete with Level 3’s US/Europe network. Global Crossing has over 100,000 route miles of fiber optic cable installed around the world. This includes US and Europe network fiber that overlaps Level 3 to some extent. But it also brings trans-pacific undersea fiber and connections to Japan, China, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. Connected to its North America network is an extensive fiber optic networking serving the major cities in South America.

Global Crossing is true to its name. Their fiber really does span the world. Add Global Crossing’s network to the Level 3 network and you have extensive connectivity throughout North America, South America, Europe, Australia and Asia, with some facilities extending to the Middle East and Africa.

What does this mean for you, the business user? It certainly means more availability of converged IP network services worldwide and specialty services, such as low latency routes and video transport. Both Level 3 and Global Crossing have been serving major enterprise customers and carriers. They’ve got the expertise and facilities to accomplish whatever you will ever need in the way of connectivity.

Level 3, especially, also caters to smaller and medium businesses in the US. Their T1, bonded T1 and Ethernet over Copper solutions offer dedicated bandwidth at very reasonable prices. For companies that need to link multiple locations, Level 3 MPLS can create a company network that spans the country and extends to include offices, factories and warehouses worldwide.

Fiber optic networks are enjoying a new renaissance, as businesses move to cloud processes and automation that increases employee productivity. You see more fiber going into the ground in both major cities and rural areas. If you’ve been affiliated with Level 3 or Global Crossing, your connection capabilities are about to be increased significantly.

If you are looking to increase your connection speeds, you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised by the wide range of services available and the cost reductions that have come about in recent years from these and other competitive carriers. Don’t assume that you can’t get or afford higher bandwidth, even fiber, until you get prices and availability for business bandwidth services appropriate to your facility locations.



Note: Image of Earth from over the Atlantic Ocean courtesy of the U.S. Government on Wikimedia Commons

Telexplainer Expectations For 2011

Here we are at the start of new and hopeful year for both business and technology. Let’s see if we can divine some of the important trends for 2011 and how we can take advantage of them.

Bandwidth needs are going to grow this year. They do every year. The increase in business activity coming out of the Great Recession will almost certainly see more people generating more traffic in the process of doing their jobs. Look for BW demand to more than increase linearly with employment. In the process of dealing with the protracted downturn, companies have found that they really can get more done per person by investing scarce resources in computerized productivity tools. Many of these now require connectivity with the public Internet and private connections to other company facilities, suppliers and customers.

As more people come back to work, they’ll find that their jobs and tools have changed. While the connectivity has increased, there are new aspects to business such as social networking and increased use of video. Paper may not be disappearing, but it certainly isn’t increasing at the same rate as new data is generated. In fact, the need to print something can be seen as both inconvenient and quaint when your main business tool in the field is an iPad.

Clouds were a hot topic in 2010. The move to everything in the cloud is still in the early part of the learning curve. I think we’ll see more and more orientation toward cloud based services that include cloud computing and cloud-based storage. Just as the client-server model made dealing with hundreds or thousands of desktop computers and their associated software a manageable task, the cloud services model will eliminate purchased software packages and their updates completely. Also swept away will be many private data centers with their associated power consumption and HVAC requirements. Everything will be out there, somewhere.

Of course, just closing your eyes and trusting implicitly in the always-available cloud has its risks. What happens when the cloud is running just fine but you can’t get to it? It’s a little like locking your keys in a running car. For that reason, WAN connectivity will take on a new importance. Not only will you need more bandwidth as employees access cloud services rather that servers on your own LAN, but redundancy is going to be essential to ensuring connectivity. Not just bringing in a second line, mind you. You’ll need diverse connections that can’t be easily taken down by natural disaster or careless backhoe operation.

Mobile connectivity requirements are also on the rise. We’ve gotten so comfortable with 3G that there’s no going back to less than broadband wireless connections. In fact, the push for 4G will increase right along with the adoption of cloud services and tablet computers. Carriers are already sweating the lack of available backhaul bandwidth and both carriers and the FCC are sweating the limited amount of suitable wireless bandwidth. Look for a virtual treasure hunt to ensue, as everything that now uses spectrum will be scrutinized to see if it has more of a claim than the 4G juggernaut that needs all the BW it can get.

Telexplainer is primarily focused on telecom and networking, so it stands to reason that we have a keen eye on the bandwidth markets. Many businesses may be surprised to discover that they both need and can afford fiber optic connectivity this year. Chances are that this will be Carrier Ethernet from a competitive provider rather that traditional SONET/SDH services. For multi-site and international connectivity, MPLS networks have an extensive reach and prices lower than ever before.

How is your company set for doing business this year? Are you feeling a bit constrained by your network connections or concerned that you are still paying too much per Mbps? If so, now would be a perfect time to check prices and availability of WAN networks services. The sooner you get better service installed, the more capability you’ll have for the entire year.

Where Are T1 Lines Available?

You’ve had your fill of DSL and Cable broadband solutions for your business. The price is right, but the bandwidth is inconsistent and service may or may not be available when you need it most. How about moving up to a T1 line? Sound’s good, but just how available is T-1 and is the cost affordable?

The first thing you should know is that T1 is in a completely different class of service than either DSL or Cable broadband. T1 is a regulated, tariffed telecommunications service. The other two are unregulated information services offered primarily for residential users. In return for a lower cost, consumers are willing to put up with irregularities in the service. These include bandwidth that can slow to a crawl when usage is particularly heavy, a difference in upload and download speeds, and no guarantees on service availability.

For residential and home office users, one of the consumer grade services makes sense. It’s also probably all you are going to get. Most carriers will only install a regulated telecom service to a bona-fide business address, not a residential listing. There is also a credit check and a 1 to 3 year contract for services like T1.

Having said that, you should also know that T1 lines are available to just about any business location. It’s almost like a utility. If you can get electricity, water and telephone service, you can probably get T1 service. That’s above and beyond what you can expect from those consumer services. They are very localized to cities and suburbs. It’s not at all unusual for a business to be out of the area for DSL or Cable, yet have no trouble getting T1 service installed.

Why is this? It’s because T1 technology was developed by the telephone companies for their own use initially. It’s since become available for businesses. As a telco technology, T1 was designed to be provisioned on the same twisted pair copper wiring that is used for analog telephone service. Nearly every business has a multi-pair bundle installed when the building is constructed in order to get telephone service. The wires that aren’t being used for telephone lines are available for T1. It takes two pair to support T1 service. One pair is used for transmit, also known as upload. The other pair is for receive, also called download.

As you might suspect, having separate transmit and receive wires means that bandwidth on T1 lines is symmetrical. You get 1.5 Mbps download and 1.5 Mbps upload simultaneously. That arrangement is also known as full duplex. Check other bandwidth options and you’ll probably see that the download speed is much larger than the upload speed. It’s designed that way to save money and works just fine for casual Web browsing. However, if you regularly transfer files between locations or upload content to a remote Web server, having the same upload and download speeds can be a big advantage.

T1 service is available everywhere, even out in the boonies, because the system was designed for signal regeneration. Every mile or so there is a regenerator that takes the signal that normally degrades with distance and re-generates or reshapes back to an ideal waveform. This can be done multiple times so that you’ll get T1 service even 10 or 20 miles away from the nearest telephone company office.

Finally, you should know that T1 line prices have plunged in recent years due to deregulation, competition and heavy demand for the service. Could T1 give your business the bandwidth and reliability you need? Find out with a quick online search for T1 availability and prices now.

Managed Hosting PBX Gets You Out Of The Telephone Business

Many companies aren’t just in the business space they target. They’re also in some peripheral businesses simply because they can’t get out of them. For instance, how many companies wind up in the phone business because they need phones to do their job? It’s something that we may just shrug and accept, but it doesn’t have to be that way anymore.

What got businesses into the phone business was the need to manage anywhere from dozens to thousands of telephone sets within their organization. Why so many? Because the productivity that comes from each individual having their own telephone and phone number exceeds the cost of the equipment and service.

Back when most of us worked on the farm, one crank phone in the house was plenty. When we all became factory workers, a wall phone that you used on breaks served the need. Now that we’re in the information age, interpersonal communications is both necessary and frequent. We all need to talk to customers, suppliers and co-workers. The more efficiently we do this, the more profit the company makes.

This is how we got to telecom departments within companies. The telecom department manages the PBX, which is nothing more than a small version of a telephone company central office switch. All those handsets plug into the PBX and the PBX then connects them together like the phone company does. The PBX also manages outside lines for calls that enter and leave the company premises. In most cases, you dial outside with a one number access code just like you would call long distance anywhere else.

What the telecom department does is manage all those handsets. If one breaks, it has to be replaced. If someone changes desks, their phone number must be re-routed to their new location. That might even involve making some wiring changes. People are always coming and going, and their phone service needs to be accommodated too.

Some companies have two separate departments. One is just for telephones. The other is for computers and the company LAN. In a smaller company, one department might manage both networks. A very small company might outsource one or both functions to a contractor. But the cost of the activity is always there, no matter how you handle it.

The cost being in the phone business is both the cost of handling all those moves, adds and changes on a daily basis and the capital expense of all that equipment. The PBX system itself is an expensive piece of equipment. When it becomes too small to handle the number of extensions or too old to be easily maintained, you need to take out a loan and do what’s called a “fork lift upgrade” to haul out the old system and bring in the new one.

Now, what if there was an easy way to have all the communications ability you have now, and more, but not have to be in the phone business? There is such an option available and it’s called a hosted PBX. What “hosted” means is that someone else has the responsibility of managing the PBX equipment using their people at their facility. What you have is a big empty space where the PBX system used to sit and lots and lots of telephone sets.

When this is done right, an employee in your company won’t know or care where the PBX is. Their phone works just the same either way. In fact, it may work better because their old “dumb” phone has been replaced by a “smart” phone that connects to the computer network and has processing power built-in. The phone and the computer may work together or you may even have a “soft phone” as an application that runs on the computer.

It’s the ubiquity of the company computer network connected to every desk that makes the hosted PBX possible. By adapting telephones to transmit and receive Ethernet packets instead of analog voltages, they can piggyback on the broadband network that every company has anyway. That network invariably connects to the outside world or WAN, which can include a connection to a service provider hundreds or thousands of miles away. That service provider bears the capital cost and operating expense and performs the move/add/change function for you. They’re more efficient at doing this because that’s all they do, and they do it on a much larger scale than you did. In effect, we’re back to telephone as a service or, in today’s terms, voice as a service.

Are you reluctantly in the telephone business? If so, why not compare costs and features and see if a managed PBX hosting solution would be a better option for your company? There are more and better options available today than ever before.

How T1 and E1 Lines Compare

Two of the most popular digital line services for voice and data are T1 and E1. Depending on where you are located, you are probably familiar with one of these services but not the other. That’s because they are geographical standards. If your business crosses international borders, you’ll want to be familiar with both telecom standards.

T1 service is found in the United States, Canada, Japan and South Korea. E1 is used in Europe and most other areas of the world. I mention Europe, because that’s where the “E” in E1 comes from. The “T” in T1 means T-Carrier. It is a standard developed by Bell Labs right after WWII and used to provide trunking of multiple telephone calls between switching centers. Later, both T1 and E1 moved beyond their telephony heritage and became popular for digital data service to businesses and other organizations. Both are still highly popular today.

The reason to discuss T1 and E1 at the same time is that they are more alike than different. Both were based on digitizing telephone calls and transmitting them in channels of a time division multiplexed bitstream. Each channel is called a DS0 and is 64 Kbps in size. The physical interface is two pair of twisted pair copper telephone lines, the same type of lines that are used for home and business phone service. One pair is used for transmit and the other pair is for the receive channel. By keeping transmit and receive separate, you can talk and listen at the same time - a requirement for phone calls. This is often referred to as full duplex operation.

It’s no accident that T1 and E1 are so similar. The United States developed its standard first. Europe copied most aspects of T1, but added some improvements for their standard. The biggest difference is in the line speed or bandwidth. T1 lines run at 1.544 Mbps. Of that, 1.536 Mbps is used to transmit information called payload. The other 8 Kbps is for synchronization and maintenance functions. T1 lines have 24 time slots that carry 24 DS0 channels. Each channel can be one telephone call or all 24 time slots can be used to carry data at a bandwidth of 1.536 Mbps. This BW is often referred to as 1.5 Mbps.

E1 lines run at 2.048 Mbps. That bandwidth transports 32 time slots. Unlike T1 lines, E1 lines assign one time slot or channel specifically for synchronization and maintenance. Another time slot is generally reserved for signaling. Thus, an E1 line supports a user payload of 1.920 Mbps in 30 time slots or 1.984 Mbps in 31 time slots. This is often referred to as a bandwidth of 2 Mbps.

It should also be mentioned that while Japan uses the T1 line standard of 1.544 Mbps, there are differences in the use of the synchronization and maintenance bits. A T1 line in Japan is called a J1 line.

While there are numerous subtle differences between T1, E1 and J1, these are accommodated by the specific circuit design of the appropriate interface cards. At the switching centers, it is relatively simple to interface these lines due to their common heritage. You should have no problem connecting telephone calls or data transfers between any of your worldwide locations. It’s worth noting, however, that E1 lines accommodate more phone lines or data bandwidth per line than T1 lines.

Does your organization have a need for voice and data connectivity at any line speed required? It’s easy to have our expert Telarus consultants check bandwidth prices and availability for all of your locations worldwide and make recommendations to save you the most money on your telecom needs.

Broadview Networks OfficeSuite Brings The Cloud To SMB

As a small to medium size business, you’d like to embrace cost saving technologies like Enterprise VoIP, private IP networking and cloud services. But, oh, the investment to get into this game. You take another look at Internet-based services, but have serious concerns about quality and reliability of service. If only small to medium businesses without huge IT staffs could get the good stuff. But, wait, you can!

You can, indeed, upgrade to the latest in sophisticated telecommunications services without the big investment in dollars and staffing to do it all yourself. Broadview Networks has exactly the service you need in their OfficeSuite. It IS your office at one or many locations. You get the functionality of an enterprise-grade PBX or key telephone system. You get easy administration to add stations, sites and users through an ordinary Web browser. You get the ability to connect satellite and regional offices across the country with your main office using the same system and network. You get seamless communications with home-based employees and mobile professionals who have the same features and functionalities that are available on their office phones. You even get Internet access.

What you don’t get is grief and capital expenditures. OfficeSuite is a hosted VoIP system. That means that all the expensive and hard to maintain switching and server equipment is located in a Broadview Networks facility. They have the telecom talent to keep everything working 24/7 and enough resources to ensure that you can scale up your operation any time you want. What you have in your facility is telephones and computers connected to your 100 Mbps or 1 Gbps Ethernet LAN.

Now, be careful here. Not all hosted PBX solutions are the same. Some try to minimize costs by pressing the Internet into service as a telephone trunk line. Broadview Networks operates its own private network built on a redundant fiber-optic backbone. The difference between sending sensitive traffic, like telephone calls, over the wild and wooly Internet and sending them over a carefully controlled private network is the difference between take-what-you-get and dependable high quality performance. Broadview Networks can interconnect multiple locations through their converged MPLS network that maintains strict quality control on voice and data streams.

With advanced technology and quality networking, OfficeSuite offers not only the usual telephone features, but exciting extras that can improve your productivity. Hot Desking lets employees move around the office and between locations. They simply log in to a phone like they would log into an Internet account. Click to Dial lets you click on phone numbers in your Microsoft Outlook contact manager to immediately activate a speakerphone and call the contact selected. Get voicemail notifications and messages from any phone and receive messages through e-mail, even on your smartphone. Decide where to send calls if you can’t pick up. Inbound callers reach your Auto Attendant that prompts them to user extensions and company directories.

Are you ready for a more sophisticated phone system, or perhaps one that is easier to manage and doesn’t require you to run to the bank for a capital loan? Then get complementary consulting and quotes on OfficeSuite and other quality hosted PBX phone systems. You’ll likely find that trying to be your own phone company is more trouble that it is worth.

Ethernet Over Copper Can Be A Steal

We all like a good deal on anything telecommunications related. But some of these Ethernet prices can make you feel like you are getting away with something. Are you wondering just how good they can be? Go ahead, take a second and inquire about Ethernet prices for your business locations.



Why are Ethernet service prices so attractive right now? What’s happened is that technology has changed almost overnight. Yesterday the traditional telco services were all that you could get. Today, there are competitive options that change the whole value proposition.

Ethernet over Copper is a major game changer. You may have heard that Metro Ethernet service was available, but when you last checked you found that it was only available over fiber optic cable. That’s a big negative if your building isn’t already lit for fiber optic service. Construction costs can make Ethernet over Fiber prohibitively expensive.

Well, that was then and this is now. A couple of things have changed. First, that fiber you couldn’t afford to have installed a few years ago may be a lot less expensive now. Competitive carriers have been building POPs or points of presence in most major cities and suburban areas. More and more buildings have been lit for fiber optic service. What that means to you is that the nearest fiber connection may be closer than you think. It might even be next door.

But even if fiber isn’t available, you can get Metro Ethernet bandwidths of 10 to even 50 Mbps delivered over ordinary twisted pair copper wiring. That’s the same telco bundle that comes into your building now. That means little or no construction costs. The carrier will provide you with a router designed to interface with the Ethernet over Copper connections. You just plug-in with a RJ-45 cable and you’ve got higher bandwidth.

What’s more, Ethernet services are often dramatically less expensive than their legacy telco counterparts. You may find yourself saving half or more on your next telecom services lease. The higher the bandwidth, the better the savings.

Of course, location is still important. The range of available services and number of competing carriers depends on your business address. But you only need a minute or so to request a list of Ethernet services and prices for your location. You wouldn’t be the first to think that these prices are a steal.

PAETEC Adds Intrusion Detection For MPLS Networking

MPLS networks are on the ascendant as the preferred solution for linking multiple business locations. Now PAETEC is offering a new service to further enhance the security of its already secure MPLS network solutions by monitoring for network intrusions. What distinguishes this service is that operation and management is largely transparent to users.

Network security has become a hot topic in recent years. We’re all familiar with the constant barrage of viruses, phishing schemes, hacking and other criminal activities on the Internet. You don’t need a connection to the Internet to worry about electronic security. Any company or organization with a computer network is a target for those who think they can benefit from compromising it. No amount of physical security protects your network once it leaves your premises. But to do business today, you need connections to multiple office locations, factories, warehouses, customers and suppliers.

This is where PAETEC, a telecommunications company with a nationwide fiber optic footprint, steps in. Rather than trying to build a meshed network from dedicated point to point lines and then having to install and manage network security appliances and software, you can simply turn the job over to PAETEC. They provide each of your locations with access to their privately-run network cloud. You define how you want each location to communicate. Built-into the network is the new managed Network Intrusion Detection and Prevention System known as IDPS. You don’t need to buy any special on-site equipment or install and maintain any network security software. It’s all built into the PAETEC MPLS network.

How does this system work? It’s a network based firewall with two components. The intrusion detection part inspects all traffic entering and leaving the network to identify suspicious patterns. It notifies the enterprise system administrator with recommendations on how to respond to any threat it finds. The second part is an intrusion prevention system that looks for potential threats and makes recommendations on how to respond before an actual break-in occurs. PAETEC operates a 24/7 Security Operations Center that can handle alarm responses for customers who don’t have their own full time system administrators.

The addition of an IDPS to your WAN network is more than just a good idea. It’s a requirement for sensitive applications such as PCI for credit card transactions and HIPPA for medical records. Health care modernization initiatives are certain to increase the number of locations connected by high speed MPLS networks and in need of industry mandated security.

Are you interested in starting a secure multi-location WAN network or improving the security of the one you have now? Would you like to do that in a cost effective way? If so, you should take a look at the secure MPLS network options from PAETEC and other competitive network service providers.