Redundant Internet Connections Keep You Online

By: John Shepler

The Internet has become so ubiquitous that we take it for granted. It’s a utility, like gas, water and electricity. It’s always there quietly and efficiently running in the background… until it isn’t.

The Danger of Single Point Failure
Any time we’re dependent on one key element, we’re subject to what is called “single point failure.” Your entire business could be running like a well oiled machine, with orders being fulfilled and customers pouring in. It’s high efficiency and high profits. Then, the connection goes down and stays down. Computers do nothing. Point of sale terminals are frozen. Business grinds to a halt.

Somewhere, somehow the Internet has stopped cold. But it’s designed not to do that, right? Indeed it is. The technology behind the Internet was designed by the military to keep functioning during a nuclear attack when whole areas were vaporized. No one cable or router can stop the data flow. It simply re-routes to paths that are still functional. Well, except for that last connection. You, know. The one that hooks your business to your Internet service provider. How many lines is that? That’s right… ONE. What happens when that gets cut? Right again. Service to and from the Internet stops cold.

The Value of Redundancy
Redundancy is what protects you from single point failure. For things that are so critical you can can’t do business without them, you need a backup. When you have a primary connection and a backup you have redundancy

A simple example of redundant connections is found with many home based businesses. As a solopreneur, you probably can’t justify having a second fiber optic or cable service just in case one goes down. But you likely do have redundancy. Your desktop computer is connected through the router and modem to the ISP. Rarely do you lose service, but it does happen. What then? No need to call up and order another service, you already have one on your phone. Simply use the personal hotspot feature with your phone to supply cellular broadband to your computer and you’re back in business.

There are a couple of fine points here. First, you wan’t to get back to your primary service as quickly and you can or you may get overage charges on your cell phone bill. You typically get only so may GBs per month before they start tacking on extra fees. Second, is your primary Internet service a Fixed Wireless Access from the same provider as your phone service. That might be a great money saver but likely not a redundant connection. If the tower you are accessing is off the air, your phone goes dead and your FWA goes dead at the same time. What’s left to do? Pack up the laptop and head for a hotspot. Hopefully that coffee shop has a different ISP and is still Internet ready. Best to check before you settle in and order.

Robust Business Redundancy
Most businesses don’t have the option to flee the office or store and head out for a break to get reconnected at the nearest hotspot. It makes a lot more sense to have redundant service connections with enough speed to keep running no matter what. Also in most offices it isn’t practical to have everyone pair their PC with their smartphone, although that can work for a short period in some cases. It’s better to have a second redundant service available for the network you already use.

What are some things to think about when setting up this redundant connection? Ideally, you want at least automatic failover. That means when one line goes down, the other picks up the load automatically. This is similar to the way a battery backup power supply works. When the line drops, the battery powers an inverter and the computer doesn’t even blink.

Even better than automatic failover is having a dual or multi-port router that can automatically share the load or pick and choose what route to send each packet for best performance. That’s SDN (Software Defined Networking) or SD-WAN (Software Defined Wide Area Network). The beauty of this approach is that instead of one line sitting idle until it is needed, you can make use of all the available bandwidth all the time. Only when one connection goes down does the total bandwidth available get reduced for the duration of the outage.

A good SDN supplier will ensure that you have truly redundant services, but here are a few guidelines if you are going to set this up yourself. First, don’t just have a pair of lines going from your location to your iSP using the same route. Chances are they run in the same bundle. If a backhoe cuts the bundle, you lose all your connectivity at once. Instead, use diverse pathways so that no one disaster can take out all your lines.

You may also want to have different providers for each service. They can be fiber, cable, wireline, fixed wireless, or satellite. At least use two different providers and you may want to consider two different technologies that are unlikely to be affected by a particular outage… be that wire cut, storm, or power loss. It’s valuable to have battery, generator, or solar power backup for your own equipment as well as redundant Internet.

Have you experienced Internet outages or concerned that a sudden loss of service could damage your business? If so, speak with a technology expert and see what redundant Internet options are available for your situation.

Upgrade your ISP to GigE and 10GigE

By: John Shepler

Regardless of whether your business is strictly e-commerce or a traditional bricks and mortar operation, Internet access is essential to conducting business these days. One thing we never seem to have enough of is bandwidth. This is the right time to upgrade your broadband connection to handle the throughput you really need to efficiently get the job done. Surprisingly, it may be more affordable than you think.

How Much Do You Need?
Small businesses, including home offices, single person professional offices, small retail stores and the like, may find that 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet service is plenty. You might even get by with less than that… for now. For every other situation, you’ll want to look at bandwidth fast enough to be transparent. Transparent means you don’t even know it is there. There’s always enough that you won’t get slowed down no matter what you are doing. That’s the gigabit range. Consider Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) and 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GigE).

Why speeds so much higher than you’ve expected over the years? Today’s business is different. Much of what we call content is high consumption video versus email messaging. Images are much larger, if not in physical size then in Mbps. Databases are huge. They don’t call it “big data” for no reason. On top of all this, most processing has moved or is moving to the cloud. Those high speed Ethernet cables that connected you in-house have to be replicated between you and your cloud provider.

Really Fast Connections Readily Available
Fortunately, the networking industry is keeping pace. The incentives of greater business demand, 4G and 5G wireless, and consumer cord cutting has pushed providers to expand their networks and lower the cost per Mbps and Gbps. You likely have multiple options to get the bandwidth you need at a price you can afford.

You should know that Internet Server Provider (ISP) bandwidth comes in multiple flavors, each with its own characteristics and pricing. There’s a reason why they don’t all cost the same. The first reason is provider competition. The more options that are available in a particular area, the more competitive pricing will be, especially on the higher end business connections.

Another reason is whether you can live with shared bandwidth or need to have exclusive use. Your lower cost options, of which cable is the biggest provider by far, have the bandwidth multiplexed or shared among many users. You’ll notice that your bandwidth is “up to 1 Gbps” rather than guaranteed to be that speed at all times. The idea is that not everyone is using the line to full capacity at all times. In fact, that’s highly unlikely. So, while you are reading something online, somebody else is downloading a file… and vice versa.

If you are running a server or running business critical software in the cloud that needs to hesitate as little as possible, you’ll want Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) at a minimum. In fact, you may even need to upgrade to a direct connection between you and your cloud provider to get the performance you desire. That gets you off the Internet and its vagaries completely. Dedicated Internet Access keeps you on the Internet, but you don’t share your “last mile” bandwidth. That’s where most of the congestion occurs anyway.

Another consideration is whether you need symmetrical bandwidth or not. Most Internet services that offer shared bandwidth are also asymmetrical. That means the download speed is much higher, sometimes 10x higher, than the upload speed. It makes sense if you are mostly accessing web sites or downloading videos, like most consumers. However, if you run cloud processes where you upload as much as you download or do large backups to remote storage, you’ll want symmetrical bandwidth options.

Your ISP Bandwidth Options
So, what’s available? Cable broadband using DOCSIS 3.0 or 3.1 standards will get you 100 to 1000 Mbps shared bandwidth Internet access, usually asymmetrical. It’s quite reliable these days and you can’t beat the price.

If you are out in the boonies where there is no cable, you might get by with 4G or 5G wireless broadband. Yes, it’s the same broadband that runs your smartphone, but with a special modem that connects an office network. Another option is satellite business broadband. This will work just about anywhere and offers decent bandwidth. Latency can be an issue, especially for VoIP telephony and video conferencing, but otherwise may be just the ticket. Note that both of these wireless options have limited resources so that you may run into usage limits.

Fiber optic bandwidth is the gold standard these days. It’s more available than ever before and you can generally get as much bandwidth as you care to. This is where you find DIA and symmetrical options. You'll also find the services to directly connect you to your cloud provider or other business locations.

Fixed Wireless Access used to be very limited and only in major downtown metro areas. It’s expanded quite a bit recently and can often function as fiber optic without the fiber. That works to your advantage when fiber construction costs are high or you can’t wait long for service installation.

Should you upgrade your ISP to GigE or 10 GigE? Perhaps even 100 GigE? If your current Internet service is stifling your business you really can’t afford not to. Check high speed business Internet and direct connection prices and availability now to see what is available for your business locations.

Why Choose Dedicated Internet Access

By: John Shepler

The Internet has evolved from a curiosity to a utility. You would no sooner give up your Internet connection than you would turn off your electricity or heating. Yet, the Internet remains a frustration. The business advantages in using it are immense. If only that link was more stable and reliable. Well, it can be. Let’s see how.

Internet vs Internet
The Internet isn’t the same for everyone. Is that shocking, considering all the recent debate over net neutrality? We keep hearing that every Internet connection is just like every other one. So, how can it be that some users get better performance than others?

The highest performance of the Internet, which really is neutral, occurs on the network backbones. This is the extensive web of fiber optic cables that span the globe. These links feature high bandwidth with low latency.

Your connection up and down to the Internet backbone is another matter. One company’s traffic may not get prioritized over another’s, but there’s no law that says everybody has to get as much as they need whenever they need it. There are Internet connections and then there are Internet connections. They are definitely not all the same.

Cost vs Performance In The Last Mile
“The Last Mile” is the name of your connection to your Internet Service Provider. Note that you are connecting to a provider and not the Internet directly. Only the highest level of network operators, called Tier 1 networks, actually have direct connections with the Internet backbone. They also have arrangements called “peering” that mean they share traffic with each other on a no cost basis. Everybody else pays to get to the Internet.

What you are paying for is the cost of the actual fiber, copper wireline or wireless link from the ISP to your location plus another fee for access to the Internet. There is a huge variation in both price and performance in those last mile connections. As you might suspect, the least expensive options have compromises that might affect your operations.

What Affects Connection Performance?
There are various factors that come into play in the last mile. First is the nature of the link itself. It can be traditional twisted pair copper used for DSL or T1 lines, coaxial copper used by Cable companies, fiber optic strands, two-way satellite, point to point microwave, or 3G or 4G cellular.

Bandwidth is limited on copper infrastructure because the lines can only handle so much speed over distance. Cable has more available on coax. Any wireless technology is bandwidth limited, although the point to point microwave links can rival fiber if you have a direct line of sight between the provider and your building. Satellite and cellular are quite limited and generally have a monthly usage limit that you don’t see on wireline and fiber.

Satellite has a special issue regarding latency. The “bird” is parked in geosynchronous orbit and radio waves can only get up there and back down so fast. That results in hundreds of milliseconds of delay or latency that you can’t do anything to improve.

Another major effect comes from the way the line is used. It can either be for exclusive use, called dedicated, or it can be multiplexed among many users, called shared.

The Most Important Key to Better Internet Performance
You might think that dedicated vs shared is almost a moot point because the backbone of the Internet is inherently shared. That’s true and the reason why the highest performance option is to get off the Internet completely and use a dedicated point to point link between two locations. A direct connection to your cloud provider is an example. Another is a dedicated line between your own data centers.

What about connecting to other companies or the general public? That’s where the Internet is a must. In practice, you can make this work quite well with a judicious tradeoff of cost vs performance.

As long as you have enough bandwidth, you’ll see the most benefit by choosing dedicated over shared connections. The lower priced services are that way because they are shared. What the ISP does is buy a dedicated Internet connection and then use a multiplexer to allow dozens or hundreds of customers to access that connection at will. The cost of the ISP's dedicated connection is spread out among many users to offer a lower price.

Consumers aren’t going to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars a month on their own dedicated connections no matter what the performance improvement. Businesses have a choice. If you mostly use the Internet for email, browsing websites, and maybe backing up your PC to a cloud service, and low cost is critical to your budget, then something like business cable broadband can be your best compromise. This is especially true if what you are doing isn’t all that time critical.

Should You Go Dedicated?
Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) is generally the best tradeoff for most businesses between the high cost of a private line and the performance limitations of the Internet. You treat it like any other business expense. There is a value to be gained as well as a price to be paid. DIA minimizes the limitations of the last mile connection. DIA is even better if you can connect with a Tier 1 or Tier 2 Internet Service Provider. T1 lines work well in rural areas, Ethernet over Copper gives you more bandwidth in-town, and fiber is best of all.

Which type of Private Line or Internet Access is best for your business? Compare prices and performance from a number of service providers and get expert consultation now.

How Your Internet Connectivity Works

How much do you know about the technical inner workings of the Internet? We tend to think of it as a very, very large cloud… and it is. Let’s take a peek inside, courtesy of this fascinating Internet Infographic from Telex:

What Connectivity Do You Need?
To take full advantage of what the Internet can actually do, you need a solid connection from your business location to the backbone of the Internet. This is what a Tier 1 service provider can give you. You can’t afford to make that direct connection, but a large carrier can. What you order is called “dedicated Internet access”. That’s bandwidth that is assigned to your operation and no one else. With DIA, you’ll get the most consistent bandwidth along with the lowest latency, jitter and packet loss available. It the next best thing to a private network or a direct point to point line service.

Hosted Exchange Email Service Advantages

POP3 is the email service we love to hate. Both businesses and individuals are so entrenched with POP3 email that switching to something else seems like a major and unnecessary upset. Here’s why you should consider just such a move and the benefits you’ll enjoy if you do.

Just what is POP3 anyway? POP stands for Post Office Protocol. It’s a longstanding Internet standard offered by nearly all Internet Service Providers (ISPs). POP3 refers to the 3rd version of this standard, which is the current version.

POP email is based on a client-server model. The email server is provided by your ISP, email service provider, employer data center or Web hosting company. The client is installed on your PC. When your PC mail is active, the client checks periodically, say every 5 minutes, with the server to see if there is new mail. If so, the client downloads it to the PC. Most people have it set up to delete downloaded email messages from the server, but you can leave them up there if you wish. The only problem with this is that messages pile up and you can run out of your assigned storage quickly.

What’s a client? Microsoft Outlook, Mac Mail and Eudora are examples of POP email clients. What they have in common is that they are installed on a particular computer, store your messages locally on that computer, and communicate with a POP3 server over the Internet.

An advantage of POP3 is that once the mail is downloaded, you don’t have to be online to read your messages. You know that if you are using Webmail and lose your Internet connection, you’ve lost your link to your email account. With POP3, you can read your stack of messages, put them in particular files for storage, and search your computer to find an old email message.

That’s the good part. The bad part is that if you lose your computer, say a laptop, or your hard drive crashes, you can lose years of valuable email messages in an instant. Unless you’ve backed them up somewhere they are gone for good. If you trade up to a new computer, you have to transfer all those messages, too, or you won’t be able to get to them. Also, any messages that came into your desktop computer and were deleted from the server won’t be accessible on your laptop computer when you are out and about. The reverse is also true.

Then there’s the really bad part. That’s the spam and viruses that we’re constantly fending off. Many of us have far more spam messages come in than legitimate ones. Email clients have the ability to detect spam to some extent and sent it to a separate spam file. You may have a separate spam and virus program to protect your PC. Today, many service providers have a first line of defense spam and virus protection on their email servers. That helps, but a lot of junk still gets through.

Companies that want control of their corporate email run their own email servers, either in their own data centers or space rented from colocation data centers. One of the most popular server programs is Microsoft Exchange. Exchange expands pure vanilla POP email to support voice mail storage, calendar, contact organizing, faxes, and public folders for sharing information among employees. All of this is protected by secure transfers and anti-virus and anti-spam filtering in the server itself.

Microsoft Exchange is great for large corporate IT departments that have the staff and data center resources to run their own Exchange servers. Small and medium size companies may find this too much to deal with and revert to consumer grade email services or Web mail accounts just to have some way to send and receive messages. There is another option available for just these companies. It’s called Hosted Exchange.

Hosted Exchange gives you all the advantages of Microsoft Exchange without the headache of running your own server. The hosting is done by a hosting or cloud services company. They provide you with your own instance of Microsoft Exchange running on their servers. You connect via the Internet or dedicated telecom line.

With Hosted Exchange service, you not only lose the server disadvantage, but you gain the advantages of having your service in the cloud. Those include routine automatic backups so you won’t lose data. You can access your messages from your desktop, laptop, smartphone or tablet from wherever you happen to be. If you accidentally delete an important email, you can generally recover your messages or entire mailboxes even weeks later. Your private mail will stay private, too. All communication with the Hosted Exchange server is done using SSL encryption just like you’d use for online shopping or banking.

Is it time you made the move to a more modern and capable email system? If so, consider Hosted Exchange email service options in the cloud. It can handle as many users and as much data as you need and offers considerable cost savings over doing it yourself.

Symmetrical Internet Providers

Most people who use the Internet are consumers, not producers of content. The mix of content has migrated from largely text to largely images and streaming video over the last couple of decades. Even so, the connection arrangement for broadband Internet access has remained asymmetrical with bandwidth in the downward direction 5 to 10 times that provided in the upload direction.

Why is that the setup? Think about how you access the Web on a PC, tablet or smartphone. It almost always involves selecting some content to read or view. The selection process is a matter of mouse clicks or keyboard entry. Those are pretty low bandwidth activities. The viewing of the results or the acquisition of a file is just the opposite. A server assembles those results and delivers fairly large pages consisting of text, graphics, photo images and perhaps video. All of that material comprises a lot of bytes and needs a considerable bandwidth to deliver in any reasonable time.

Since bandwidth is a scarce commodity, relatively speaking, there is a noticeable cost involved in providing the wireline or wireless channel for transport. There is no point in provisioning a fast upload link if it is only going to be lightly used. It’s download that customers value and demand as much as they can get for their broadband dollar.

Social media is changing the mix of upload and download requirements. When most of us were web page readers, the low bandwidth upload and high bandwidth download channels were the obvious setup. Today, many more users are creators as well as consumers of content. They post to blogs and Facebook. They upload photos and videos as well as download them. New applications like VoIP telephony and video conferencing consume equal amounts of bandwidth in both directions. The pressure on service providers is for more upload bandwidth as well as download bandwidth.

Businesses have had the symmetrical bandwidth requirement for a long time. It’s the businesses that run those servers that provide content to their customers. Large files going to the server need lots of bandwidth. There may be more email flowing out of a business than into it. Some businesses are providing streaming video content to the Internet and consume more bandwidth in the upload direction than the download direction. Cloud services have heavy traffic moving in both directions.

Right now, your choices in Internet bandwidth services can be divided into symmetrical and asymmetrical categories. Symmetrical means that upload and download speeds are the same. Asymmetrical means one direction is much faster than the other. That’s almost always the download stream.

Traditional telecom services are symmetrical. They were developed by the telephone industry and later adapted for transporting data. Telephone is inherently two-way with no difference in the amount of traffic flowing in one direction versus the other. If you order a T1 line, Ethernet over Copper, DS3 connection or OC-3 fiber optic service, you will get symmetrical bandwidth by default.

Symmetrical bandwidth services also tend to be dedicated Internet services, abbreviated DIA for Dedicated Internet Access. What does dedicated mean? It means that the bandwidth is assigned exclusively for your use. A 10 Mbps EoC Internet service gives you 10 Mbps in both directions, called 10 x 10 Mbps, anytime you want to use it. Any bandwidth you don’t need at the moment sits idle until you do.

Symmetrical bandwidth services are often covered by Service Level Agreements or SLAs. These agreements spell out the technical characteristics of the line, such as bandwidth, jitter, latency and packet loss. They also define such things as MTTR or Mean TIme To Repair for any outages that might occur. There are generally remedies available, like refunds on your bill, if the service provider can’t deliver to the terms of the SLA.

Asymmetrical bandwidth services are generally targeted toward consumers where price is far more important than performance. The bandwidth is shared among multiple users, not dedicated to you alone. That means that your download and upload speeds will vary depending on how many others are trying to use the service at the same time. Instead of SLAs, asymmetrical services are provided on a “best effort” basis that lacks any guarantees.

There’s quite a difference in price and performance between symmetrical and asymmetrical bandwidth services. Which is right for your business? Get prices and features from business broadband Internet providers to compare options and select the best match for your company needs.

T1 or Better Internet Service

Have you been running “business” grade DSL or Cable broadband and find yourself dissatisfied with the results? Let’s take a look at why that may be and what the options are for higher performance business broadband connections.

First of all, there’s nothing inherently bad about DSL and Cable Internet services. Millions of people are quite happy with the performance of their services, especially for the price they pay. Therein lies the dilemma. Companies salivate at the low cost of these broadband options but are disappointed when the telecom-grade performance isn’t there. The more you think that broadband-is-broadband, the more likely you are to think that it’s all a vast conspiracy to deny you the performance that the technology is capable of.

The truth is that bandwidth is a scarce resource. Like electricity, water, gasoline and other commodities, pricing is set by the cost of acquisition and the forces of supply and demand. Where does broadband come from? The Internet isn’t one big pipe somewhere. It’s a collection of thousands upon thousands of networks. These days, most of those networks have fiber optic cores. If you’ve ever watched a utility crew slowly trenching conduit and big rolls of fiber cable underground, you can understand why there is considerable investment in metropolitan and national fiber networks.

We get lots of inquiries from residential users and home office businesses who think that business broadband services like T1, DS3 or Ethernet over Copper are going to be priced incrementally higher than the consumer broadband they have now. It always comes as a shock for them to see the quotes at 10x or more what they expect to pay. There is no gouging involved. Business telecom services are priced lower today than they’ve been in recent memory and an order of magnitude below what they were when most Internet access service was through dial-up modems. You just aren’t going to get dedicated access connections with consumer grade pricing.

What’s the difference if the Internet is the Internet at its core? There’s no difference between the price that businesses pay for a high performance Internet connection and what your Internet Service Provider (ISP) pays. It’s exactly the same line service. The problem is that nobody but businesses who generate revenue through their Internet connection can afford the cost of this service.

So, here’s what happens. The ISP buys their bandwidth at wholesale rates at the going price for 1 Gbps, 10 Gbps or more. Then they divvy up that bandwidth among hundreds or thousands of their customers. Each customer pays a small amount, say $20 to $60 a month, for their slice of the bandwidth pie. All together, the revenue collected from all those subscribers more than pays for the cost of the ISP’s Internet connection.

That’s right. As a consumer you don’t have an assigned direct pipe to the Internet. What you are doing is sharing a pool of bandwidth provided by your ISP. How fast your service runs depends on how many of your neighbors are in the pool at the same time. If every teenager in the neighborhood is streaming vampire flicks in high def, your line will slow to a crawl. In the wee hours of the night, you may be zipping along at high speed. There will be a maximum you can’t exceed even if nobody else is on. The ISP limits your speed to the service tier you are paying for. But... there’s no lower limit. You could be getting dial-up speeds if everyone absolutely, positively has to be online at once. The reason most customers remain satisfied is that only some customers are actually sitting at their computers at any given time. Anyone not home or doing something offline is effectively donating their share of bandwidth to their neighbors.

Businesses struggle with this kind of service. They all tend to work the same business hours, so every business is a heavy user for 8 hours or so a day and very little after hours. You can’t have your activities come to a halt because the company across the street is hogging all the bandwidth. This is why businesses who don’t like the performance of shared bandwidth services go with dedicated bandwidth. Dedicated bandwidth means that you are assigned a certain guaranteed line speed that doesn’t vary. If you buy 10 Mbps, you’ve got 10 Mbps all day every day whether you use it or not. It doesn’t go into any pool at night. It just sits there waiting for someone to come to work and download files.

You pay higher rates for dedicated line services but you gain important benefits. First, that bandwidth is always available. Second, it is the same bandwidth in both the upload and download directions. Consumer services and business services based on the consumer model have much higher download than upload speeds. That matches the way most personal users access the Internet. However, if you are running a server or upload large files a lot of the time, you’ll run out of bandwidth more often than not.

The third difference involves Service Level Agreements or SLAs. These are guarantees by the ISP as to how quickly they’ll hop to it and repair an outage and what parameters like bandwidth, latency and jitter you can depend on. Don’t know about these? They’re unheard of in consumer circles. Unless you have an SLA, you are dependent on the good intentions of your ISP. They all mean well, but as their ads say, “you get up to so many Mbps of bandwidth.” That means you can’t get more but you can surely get less.

What dedicated Internet services are available for business? These include T1 lines at 1.5 Mbps, bonded T1 from 3 to 12 Mbps, Ethernet over Copper (EoC) from 2 to 45 Mbps, DS3 at 45 Mbps and fiber optic services up to 10 Gbps. The higher your bandwidth, the lower your cost per Mbps but the higher your payments each month. In case you are thinking that you might pony up for one of these in your home office, forget it. It’s rare that any telecom providers will install dedicated services to a residence. You need your own business address.

Do you have such a business address and a burning desire for more dependable and higher performing Internet access? If so, then check prices and availability for dedicated business Internet solutions in your area.

Internet Service Without The Outages

The Internet is an amazing place for finding out just about anything related to anything. The sum total of human knowledge is migrating online. Even old books and papers are being scanned and loaded onto webpages and data bases. Combine that with real-time access to shopping, financial services, music and video and you are pretty much attached to the Internet at the hip... or at least the brain. The one major aggravation of Internet everything is when you just can’t get to it.

Internet outages are almost always local events now. The network is so large and so robust that the entire Internet just doesn’t go down. It only seems that way. Perhaps it’s your favorite site or application that is temporarily offline. Perhaps you just can’t get to anything at all.

I’ve felt this pain to varying degrees over the years. As a night owl, I know that the wee hours are the time that network administrators target to do their maintenance. That means my ISP can go offline for an hour or two without warning. It also means that any given online service my be down for maintenance with little or no notice.

Then there are the unplanned and uncontrolled outages. Construction work is famous for taking down telecom services. It’s so prevalent it has a name. They call it “backhoe fade.” It’s pretty much what it sounds like. Someone with a backhoe digs in the wrong place and chops through a wire. A year or two ago, they chopped through a fiber optic cable. There were over 100 strands in that cable and my service was on one of the last to be fused back together. No Internet for two days.

Well, not exactly. The cable modem was dead for two days. I was getting things done at any restaurant where they had free WiFi that wasn’t affected. Inconvenient? Yes, but it got me through.

I’m tied to the Internet for my livelihood, but a local outage isn’t the kiss of death. It’s just a major inconvenience. The reason for this is that all of my hosting, dozens of domains worth, is done elsewhere. In fact, I insist on having multiple hosting services located in different data centers in different cities. That way a local disaster won’t take everything down at once. This happened about 8 years back. Remember the 4 hurricanes that hit Florida in 2004? One of them flooded the building my web host was in. Even though they were on a higher floor, the communications lines were affected so no data was going in or out.

This hints at the first thing you can do to protect your business from Internet outages. Don’t put all of your eggs or servers in one basket. You have more protection when the services you use are divvied out geographically. Disasters rarely affect more than a limited area. This is true for cloud services too. Your cloud provider needs to have diverse backup solutions or you need more than one cloud. Nowadays, that also means you need more than one way to get to the cloud.

Backhoe fade is a fact of Internet access, although there are more and less risky solutions. All in all, you are better off with dedicated Internet access that has an SLA or Service Level Agreement. The really cheap Internet services, DSL and Cable, are shared and not dedicated to you alone. They are also treated as “information services” not telecom services, meaning that the providers don’t jump nearly as high or as fast when something goes wrong. T1 lines, Ethernet over Copper, Ethernet over Fiber and SONET perform better, have faster mean times to repair and cost more... as you would expect.

It’s good to have diversity in your connectivity. Two T1 lines are better than one. Ethernet over Copper using multiple pairs is more reliable than anything coming in on a single pair. Even better is copper backup for fiber services, even thought it may be slower. There is no one cable that has both the copper wires and fiber strands in it. A cable broadband service can be an inexpensive backup service to your dedicated lines since it doesn’t use telco wiring. Wireless broadband is an excellent backup that also doesn’t have to be that costly. Your smartphone gives you a level of redundancy when your desktop PC goes down. There are fixed wireless services designed for business backup running on 3G and 4G cellular networks. You can set these up for automatic failover so that service won’t be interrupted if you lose a landline.

How much you need to concern yourself with redundancy and disaster recovery depends on what happens when you lose your connection to the Internet. Is it a minor inconvenience or does everything come to a screeching halt? If that’s the case, make sure you have at least two ways of connecting and getting your work done. They don’t have to be the same bandwidth or guaranteed availability. Just make sure that there is no single point of failure that will knock them both out at the same time. There are lots of different services available. Check prices and features so you can get the best mix of business bandwidth services available for your particular location.

Internet Wholesale Bandwidth Options

There are two types of organizations that buy Internet bandwidth. Most are end users. They want the access for their employees. The others are resellers. They take large Internet connections and divvy up the bandwidth to hundreds or thousands of individuals and businesses. These are Internet Service Providers (ISPs) looking to buy at wholesale and sell at retail.

The largest networks in the world, called Tier 1, don’t purchase Internet access. They are part of the core network itself. Those major world wide networks exchange traffic on basis of equals called peering. Each network gets as much traffic as it sends to the others, so all benefit and no money is exchanged.

Everyone else has to get to the Internet by accessing one of these Tier 1 networks. The next level down, the Tier 2 networks, are also very large Internet service providers. Since they don’t have the enormous global traffic to participate in peering, they purchase what is called IP Transit. This is Internet access sold on a per Megabit per second per month basis.

Smaller Tier 3 networks can purchase IP Transit from Tier 2 networks, if they are large enough to have an assigned AS or Autonomous System number (ASN) to identify them as part of the Internet. Large scale ISPs fall into this category as well as some large corporations and other organizations.

Local and regional Internet Service Providers, including WISPs (Wireless Internet Service Providers), buy DIA or Dedicated Internet Access. DIA connections are like point to point private lines, except that one end connects to the Internet. Other private line characteristics still apply. The bandwidth provided is completely dedicated to the ISP and not shared with anyone else. There are generally SLAs or Service Level Agreements that spell out characteristics such as maximum latency, jitter and packet loss as well as time to respond to outages and time to make repairs.

Dedicated also means that there are no extra charges for heavily loading the line. You can use the entire capacity of the circuit in both directions or only some of it. The price is the same.

The smallest DIA service is usually a T1 line running at 1.5 Mbps. This is a symmetrical service, meaning 1.5 Mbps upload and 1.5 Mbps download. Usually the download path is much heavier loaded than the upload path for typical Internet access. If fact most consumer Internet access is sold with 5x to 10x higher speeds on download than upload. For business users, upload speeds can be important when transferring large files to remote backup sites and servers within colocation centers.

Obviously, T1 lines can’t serve a large user base but they work great for WiFi hotspots and rural or subdivision WISP service where signed-up customers number in the dozens, not hundreds. A nice feature of T1 lines is that they can be bonded by adding more lines to double, triple and quadruple bandwidth up to about 10 or 12 Mbps. The other nice feature of T1 lines is that they are available where other line services don’t reach. If you can get business telephone system into a facility, you can probably get T1 DIA service.

The next increment in traditional telecom bandwidth is DS3, also called T3 lines. This service runs at 45 Mbps which is large enough for a good size service provider to offer competitive bandwidth. Beyond that, SONET fiber optic services include OC3 at 155 Mbps, OC12 at 622 Mbps and OC48 at 2.5 Gbps are very popular.

A strong competitor to T-Carrier and SONET bandwidth is Carrier Ethernet. It comes in two flavors, Ethernet over Copper (EoC) typically from 1 to 50 Mbps and Ethernet over Fiber (EoF) from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps. In a some metropolitan areas, you can also get EoFW or Ethernet over Fixed Wireless at DS3 and Fast Ethernet speeds. Where available, Carrier Ethernet tends to have considerably better pricing than other services.

Do you resell Internet access to other ISPs or end users? If so, see if you can get better wholesale pricing on Dedicated Internet Access and IP Transit services.

Telecom Providers Build Their Own Clouds

Just as cloud companies are beginning to mature as businesses, Internet service providers and other carriers have decided to build out their own cloud offerings. Now, how does a harried IT manager or small business owner sort through all the various opportunities?

It’s important to remember that we are in the early days of the cloud. Like all new technologies, this one has a maturity or learning curve. We are on the early part of the upward slope. What that means is a lot of activity from a lot of players. You can expect new companies with new services to be popping up all the time. It also makes sense that current players in the computer and networking space will want to corral as much of this business for themselves as possible. If not, they may be justifiably concerned that they could be relegated to sidelines.

Windstream, a major competitive carrier for T1 lines, MPLS networks, dedicated Ethernet Internet and enterprise VoIP, saw the handwriting on the wall when they acquired Hosted Solutions last year. Adding the assets of Hosted Solutions to Windstream’s existing data centers, has given them the critical mass to get into cloud services for existing customers. Such services include such things as cloud storage, Infrastructure as a Service and private, public, and hybrid clouds. Other carriers, such as Level 3 Communications, also have cloud services available.

Most carriers have large data centers for their own use. They often leverage these assets by offering colocation services within their secure and highly reliable facilities. Colocation is something of a forerunner of the cloud. The provider offers racks and cages where you can move your servers and network appliances. They provide the electricity with backup, environmental control and security. Another big draw of colocation is the proximity to large amounts of bandwidth. Many companies either can’t get or can’t afford the cost of constructing fiber optic connections to their own facilities. At a colocation center, the carrier is right down the hall and a mere cross-connect away. It’s the best deal on bandwidth you can get.

More recently, colocation centers have begun to offer contracted technical support and even leased servers for those who don’t want to buy their own. In essence, the colo becomes your data center and you don’t need the capital expense, operational expense or staffing to run your own. That being the case, what’s different about cloud services?

The primary difference between colocation and the cloud likes in both outsourcing and virtualization. The cloud infrastructure consists of massive computing power and storage, all virtualized so that it can be sliced and diced as users require. While in the cloud, you are unaware that you are not the only one using the facilities. The same bank of servers that run your applications can be running dozens or hundreds of others simultaneously. The magic of virtualization creates the illusion that you have one or more physical servers all to yourself.

A good cloud is much more than that. Not only do you rent rather than buy, but you rent by the minute or hour times the number of servers you are using. You can add or subtract virtual servers at will and only pay for the ones you are reserving. The same is true for storage. You don’t worry about buying a new disk when you fill up the one you have. You simply increase or decrease storage as needed and pay by the byte.

The ability to increase and decrease resources almost instantly is a feature unique to the cloud. This scalability is highly desirable for companies with varying loads or ones that are rapidly growing. There is no need to be constantly buying and upgrading equipment when you can simply log into your cloud account and add resources at will.

What carriers bring to the table is one stop shopping. They already provide last mile access, multi-site connectivity, and converged voice, video and data networks. By adding cloud services, you have one bill to pay and a single point of contact for resolving issues such as latency or availability. Independent cloud service providers will need to be on their toes to stay ahead of the carriers, by offering more advanced services and lower pricing to stay in the game long term.

Are you ready for the cloud? The range of services and competitive pricing makes cloud computing and storage, colocation and managed services more cost effective than they’ve ever been. Inquire about availability and pricing for the networking and computing services you need for your particular applications.

IP Transit vs Peering vs DIA

We live in a world of networks and networks of networks. The Internet is the ultimate example of networks upon networks upon networks. All of these networks need some way to communicate. For that, you have the choice of IP transit or peering.

Network to network communication would be unnecessary if the Internet was constructed the way most people envision it. When we think of the Internet, we think of one giant network that links everyone to everyone. It generally works that way for the end user, but the notion of a monolithic universal network is an illusion. Look inside the Internet and you’ll find it to be a collection of large, medium and small networks that all work together to get packets from one point to another. Let’s see what that takes.

At the top of the heap are Tier 1 networks. These are huge international IP networks that have points of presence in key locations around the world. Tier 1 networks are indeed the superhighways of the Internet. But like all highway systems, they don’t go everywhere. In order to create an Internet, you need to connect these superhighways together.

The connection process is called peering. The name suggests that this is a connection between equals or peers. That’s exactly right. Huge networks have huge amounts of traffic. If two of these networks peer to exchange traffic on an equal basis, then each network effectively doubles its reach. Network A has access to all the customers on Network B and vice versa.

Tier 1 networks peer on a settlement free basis. In other words, the networks are interconnected via high capacity routers and the traffic flows back and forth at will. Settlement free means that there are no toll booths at the border. Neither network pays the other because they are getting equal value through peering.

Not all networks are the same size. Smaller networks, called Tier 2, have less capacity and less reach than Tier 1 networks. Tier 1 networks aren’t about to peer with Tier 2 networks at no charge because the smaller network would be getting a lot more value from the arrangement than the larger one. What Tier 2 networks can do is ban together and peer among themselves to create a much larger entity that can compete with those Tier 1 networks. If they want access to the Tier 1 networks, they can pay a settlement charge based on the traffic imbalance. That charge is called IP transit.

Internet Service Providers have a choice when it comes to accessing the Internet. They can spend the capital and maintenance cost to build out their networks to the point where they can peer with other large networks, or they can just purchase IP transit services from a large network and avoid the investment in equipment and personnel.

Very small networks or medium size companies with their own internal networks will choose to buy Dedicated Internet Access rather than IP transit. You need to be a network operator with an assigned AS or Autonomous System number (ASN) that identifies each network on the Internet in order to qualify for IP Transit services. Some large organizations with connections to multiple networks may fit this definition, as well as large scale ISPs.

Everyone else, from local WISPs (Wireless Internet Service Providers) to SMBs (Small to Medium Size Businesses) simply purchases Dedicated Internet Access by the Mbps or Gbps of bandwidth. Operation of the Internet is left to those networks who specialize in that service.

What type of Internet connectivity makes the most sense for your business? It depends on whether you are a large ISP, a content delivery network, a large corporation with international locations, or a network of retail stores. Why not compare pricing options for IP Transit, Peering, or Dedicated Internet Access, as appropriate? Complementary consulting services are available to help you sort through the possibilities.

Gaining Ethernet Internet Access

You’ve no doubt heard by now that access to the Internet for business locations offers cost and bandwidth advantages over traditional telecom connections. So, how do you gain Ethernet Internet access? That’s easy. Just use this handy Ethernet Internet Finder.



You’ll likely find that there are a number of options for Ethernet Internet service, although not all of them are available at every business address. Note that this is a business service only. If you need residential or home office broadband, try “Can I Get DSL?” for DSL, cable, satellite, wireless 4G, and fiber to the home.

Your least expensive option for Ethernet Internet access is probably Ethernet over Copper, where available. That’s generally in metropolitan and suburban areas with dense populations. EoC, as it is called, offers bandwidths typically from 3 to 20 Mbps. You’ll pay about as much for a 3 Mbps Ethernet connection as you’d pay for a 1.5 Mbps T1 line. A very popular service is 10 Mbps Ethernet access, which is the standard Ethernet network speed.

Of course, local area network bandwidth has increased dramatically since Ethernet was first introduced. Most LANs are now operating at the Fast Ethernet speed of 100 Mbps or Gigabit Ethernet at 1000 Mbps. Would you be surprised to know that Ethernet WAN connections are also available at 100 and 1000 Mbps? That includes dedicated broadband Internet access with Ethernet in the first mile. These services require a fiber optic connection over SONET or native IP network.

Even if your business is located a bit beyond the service footprint for EoC or fiber optic delivery, it may still be possible for you to get Ethernet over DS1. Bonding T1 lines together may give you the Ethernet bandwidth you need at a reasonable price.

Does Ethernet Internet Access offer advantages for your business? Use the Ethernet Internet Finder to run a quick check and see.

Fiber Optic ISP

Not so long ago, Internet service came through the telephone as a collection of audible beeps and squeaks. That evolved into dedicated landline and wireless broadband. The next step has already been taken by the largest companies. Now, medium size businesses are also looking for a fiber optic Internet service provider.

Fiber optic Internet service for residential users is the domain of Verizon’s FiOS. Google will soon enter the market on a test basis with a new benchmark of performance: 1 Gbps. But business broadband connections have moved past the Gbps upper limit, with 10 Gbps service becoming more common for major organizations. The technology is proven. The question is how much bandwidth do you need and where do you need it?

The key to fiber optic levels of telecom service is the “lit” building. That’s a location where fiber optic cable has been pulled into the facility and connected to terminal equipment. Once the fiber is lit by a service provider, the building is considered to be “on net” and able to select from a wide variety of service options. This facility can also be a jumping off point to provide fiber optic service to other nearby buildings. The most expensive and time consuming aspect of fiber optic service is the initial fiber construction.

What types of fiber optic bandwidth services are available? They typically fall into two categories. The first is traditional SONET / SDH telecom services. These are the original telco standards for voice and data over fiber optic strands. The most basic service is OC-3 or Optical Carrier, level 3. This is a 155 Mbps bandwidth service based on the same TDM or Time Division Multiplexing technology as copper based T1 and T3 lines. In fact, DS3 bandwidth at 45 Mbps is most often delivered as part of an OC-3 signal that can transport 3 of these DS3 services.

The SONET standard fiber optic services include OC-12 at 622 Mbps, OC-48 at 2.5 Gbps, OC-192 at 10 Gbps and OC-768 at 40 Gbps. This highest levels are most often used by carriers, themselves, as their backbone networks.

The other category of fiber optic service is Carrier Ethernet or Metro Ethernet. Ethernet services are standardized at the same levels seen in LAN networks. These are 10 Mbps standard Ethernet, 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, 1000 Mbps GigE, and 10 Gbps or 10 GigE service. Intermediate service levels are generally available, as Ethernet is readily scalable.

How do you decide between SONET and Ethernet Internet connections? Both are reliable, proven technologies that can deliver the bandwidth you desire. What often differs is availability and price. The best approach is to get a complete selection of fiber optic service quotes from a telecom broker and compare pricing on the services available for your business location. You may be surprised at how affordable the higher bandwidths have become.

Ethernet Internet Is a Reality

Internet access has come a long way since the days of 300 baud modems. But regardless of speed, Internet connectivity has always been through a conversion process from some protocol to the Ethernet that runs on company LANs and PC network cards. If only one could get to the Internet via Ethernet itself. Well, now you can.

Last mile access via Ethernet is rapidly gaining popularity in metropolitan areas. Why? Primarily because of the cost savings, although ease of network interfacing is also a consideration.

An Ethernet access connection is often called Metro Ethernet service because it is intended primarily for use within city or downtown portion of a city. A more generic term is Carrier Ethernet. As a core networking technology, Ethernet for WAN (Wide Area Networks) provides a direct extension of your company network across town, across the country, or to other networks such as the Internet.

DIA or Dedicated Internet Access is the gold standard for business connections to the Internet. Dedicated means that you have exclusive use of the line and it's bandwidth back to the Internet. Consumer grade services, such as DSL, WiFi, and Cable broadband, are all shared services. With shared services, the quality of your service is highly dependent on what your neighbors are doing online. With dedicated access, any contention for service will be limited to your own company.

T1 lines are standard for DIA service at 1.5 Mbps. They can be bonded up to 10 or 12 Mbps. Beyond that you need fiber optic services, such as OC3 or DS3 over SONET. These can be pricey services, especially when the local telephone company is involved in providing the complete service or last mile access.

Ethernet access connections are something new. Many competitive carriers have their own fiber optic networks and will directly connect you for 10, 100, or 1000 Mbps Ethernet service. You'll get a better price because they do not share facilities with the telcos.

Another option is EoC or Ethernet over Copper. You can get up to 45 Mbps Ethernet service, including dedicated Internet access, if you are located nearby a carrier point of presence. Service is delivered over multiple twisted copper pair using an advanced modulation scheme.

I mentioned ease of network Interface. With Metro Ethernet service your access connection is a standard RJ-45 jack, just like the ones you'd expect to find on a switch or router. What's coming into that jack is the same Ethernet protocol that you are running on your LAN.

Is your location eligible for Metro Ethernet service over copper or fiber optic cable? Find out how close the nearest Ethernet connection point is to your location. Then get a quote and see how much Ethernet access can save you over your current Internet or point to point network service.

Dude, Where's My Site?

Is the Internet open for business today or is it taking a little time off? Sometimes you gotta wonder. You enter a domain in your browser or click on a link and... nothing. To paraphrase the famous Dr. McCoy, "It's dead, Jim."

Or is it?

Can you really be sure that a website is down and that the problem isn't just your connection? Well, now you can. There's a new free online tool to do just that. It's called, appropriately enough, DownForEveryoneOrJustMe.com.

It's the brainchild of Twitter engineer Alex Payne, who heard the phrase "is it down for everyone or just me" so often that he decided to give people a way to find out. You just enter the URL of the site you're concerned about and click the "or just me" link or hit return. You'll find out immediately if it's you or them. Alex has pre-filled the entry box with Google.com in case you just want to bash your enter key and see if anything is running.

This all presupposes that you can get to the Internet at all. Seems like if you could get to DownForEveryoneOrJustMe.com that you could go to just about any website, anywhere. After all, it is the WORLD Wide Web.

Logical, yes. But wrong. The Internet Superhighway may be wide open and ready to take you anywhere you want to go. But it's to no avail if half the road signs are blank.

The culprit is DNS or the Domain Name System. This is the core service on the Web that equates domain names with IP addresses. Without DNS, you'd have to type a series of numbers into your browser to access a Web site. DNS service is normally invisible. But when it goes down, your browser has no idea where to go for the site you want. So it sits and spins until you get an error message.

Who runs this DNS service? Each Internet Service Provider or ISP has a DNS nameserver that works like a phone book to look up the IP addresses for domain names, as browsers request them. These nameservers are connected in a hierarchy of other nameservers that eventually lead back to a root name server that holds the master database of domains and addresses.

If your ISP's nameserver goes down for maintenance or just an electrical glitch reboot, you've got no access until it comes back. That's even if your broadband connection is working fine. A weird situation is when you try to access the DNS while the nameserver is coming back online. Some sites will work fine. Others are unreachable. That makes you think the entire Internet is down when it really is only you. That's you and your neighbors on the same ISP.

Another common situation is when you register a new domain name or switch hosting services. Your entry or change in the DNS doesn't happen instantly. It takes time for all those nameservers around the world to get the updates. This process, called propagation, can take up to 48 hours. Usually it's a lot faster. But if you happen to have an ISP with a slowpoke DNS nameserver, you'll just have to wait to see your new Web site or work on it.

I found a workaround to the situation by using a third-party service to check my new domain names and hosting to see if they were ready yet. AnyBrowser.com is a free online tool intended to let you see how your site looks in various browsers. But AnyBrowser.com has a different and generally much faster updating DNS than my ISP. Like DownForEveryoneOrJustMe.com, it will give you another means of verifying if your site is up or down. But AnyBrowser.com tools will also show you what your site looks like and whether you've entered your Meta tags correctly.

Another approach is to get yourself set up with two different broadband services, DSL and Satellite or Cable and T1. If they are completely unrelated, at least one should be running no matter what. If you can afford this arrangement, then you can say with confidence: ThatSiteIsDownBecauseItCouldNotPossiblyBeMe.

Tired of Flaky Internet Connections?

It's hard to do business when your tools are intermittent and unreliable. You'd expect that advancements in technology would really improve things, but often the opposite is true. The more sophisticated and interconnected processes become, the flakier they seem to get. A simple cash box transaction turns into an e-commerce disaster. Why can't things just work right all the time?

All the time might be a bit much to ask. Anything technical is going to hiccup occasionally. But most of the time, the vast majority of the time, your business systems should run like clockwork. If they don't, you need to find the weak link in the chain. For many small businesses it comes down to a flaky Internet connection.

When the Internet was a novelty, it was pretty much a world of students, researchers, entrepreneurs and the generally curious. Now it's a utility. Nearly every business demands an Internet connection or an equivalent way to transfer electronic data. The Internet tends to be the network of choice because it is universally available and connects to practically everyone, everywhere. But the Internet is the flakiest, most insecure, unreliable, congested public resource there is. Isn't it? It doesn't have to be.

A lot of what makes the Internet feel like such a flaky medium is what's called the "last mile" connection. That Internet jack on the wall never goes directly to the backbone of the Internet. Not unless you're a major ISP or Internet Service Provider. A Tier 1 ISP is part of the inner workings of the Internet and peers with all other T1 networks. Other ISPs buy their access from these networks and, eventually, one of them sells service to you via a last mile connection. The high speed fiber optic core of the Internet is blazing fast and highly reliable. What you get may be something quite different.

It generally comes down to cost and availability. In major metropolitan networks, you may have a dozen or more ISPs vying for your business. Out in the boonies, you have fewer choices. There is also a huge difference in price vs performance among various connections. The lowest priced service is generally DSL or Cable Modem. These are shared access "information services" rather than dedicated telecommunications services. What's the difference besides price?

An information service isn't regulated the way a telecommunication service is. It is offered on an "as available" basis with no guarantee as to availability or time to repair when failure occurs. Even when the connection is working, bandwidth can vary all over the place. That's because the service is oversubscribed to keep the cost down. Just like getting bumped when the airlines sell more seats than they have on a plane, your connection can slow to a crawl because the ISP sold more connections than they have the bandwidth to support. They assume that only some of the subscribers are online at any time. When too many show up at once, they have to share what is available.

What's better? Dedicated Internet service improves your experience dramatically. If you order T1 dedicated Internet access, what you get is 1.5 Mbps of bandwidth for both upload and download. It's consistently available at all times. On rare occasions when line breaks or equipment failure take down the circuit, these telecom services get fast attention and are usually restored in a few hours or less. The dedicated designation means that you don't share the available bandwidth. It's there for your use whenever you need it.

Other dedicated connections include bonded T1 lines for faster access in increments of 1.5 Mbps. That's 3, 4.5 ,6, 7.5, and 9 Mbps typically. Ethernet services start at 10 Mbps and go up to 100 Mbps and, in some areas, 1000 Mbps. Ethernet is available in metro areas. T1 service is available just about anywhere.

If you are being driven crazy by flaky Internet service, you'll breathe a lot easier and your business operations will perform better by moving up to dedicated Internet access. The price differential is probably less than you think. Find out now by checking prices and availability for dedicated Internet access at your business location.

Dial-Up is Alive and Kicking

In this enlightened age of broadband, why even bring up the subject of dial-up Internet service? Isn't that technology from the last century? The buggy whip of technology?

Don't be so quick to dismiss dial-up Internet access as yesterday's news. Millions of your friends and neighbors gladly endure the shriek of the connecting modem as they prepare to surf the Web or check their email. One person's shrill electronic scream is the sweet sound of money to another.

Saving money is a prime benefit that comes with using dial-up Internet access rather than DSL or Cable broadband. Where else can you get unlimited access just about anywhere you live or are staying for a mere $9.95 a month? There's only one thing that competes at this price level and that's free Internet service.

Free? Sure, assuming that you have a laptop or notebook computer. Lots of restaurants offer free WiFi service. Most every portable computer built recently has WiFi access capability. With an older computer you can get a plug-in card that acts as a WiFi modem for $20 or less if you watch for the sales. Just do all your Internet work while you are having lunch and you pay nothing for service. Well, you have to pay for food or a coffee. But I assume you need to eat anyway.

But what if running to your local bistro every time you want to check your email messages isn't convenient? What if you live in a rural area where it's a good drive to get anywhere that has WiFi? What if you travel a lot and not all of the hotels you stay in have WiFi? Or, what if you want to work in peace late at night when everything is closed? Then what?

You, my friend, are a prime candidate for dial-up Internet service. Just like every laptop computer has WiFi capability, nearly every laptop and desk top computer has a dial-up modem built-in. The new super-thin Apple Air doesn't, but there's an accessory modem you can buy. For everyone else, if there is a phone jack on the back of your computer, you've got a modem inside. It's likely built to the 56K V.90 or V.92 standards that pretty much max out the speed capacity of an analog telephone line.

What's 56 Kbps service good for? If you've been on broadband for awhile, you'd be surprised by how well you can use standard Web browsers on sites that are mostly text and graphics. In fact, with some sites being slow to load anyway, you might forget you've even on dial-up.

I had this experience a year ago when my Cable Internet provider decided to do a major upgrade and bit off more than they could chew. It took a month for normal service to resume. In the mean time, I used a dial-up service that hosts my original Web site plus occasional forays to Panera Bread for lunch. I got by just fine. Not so for the broadband only users who went to WiFi hotspots and spent all their time griping on various forums about this service outrage.

That's another good use for dial-up. It's a handy backup service when your broadband goes down. They pretty much all go down sooner or later. Some providers offer you a limited number of free dial-up minutes on their own backup services. Most leave you to your own devices.

If you are a dial-up user now or would like the comfort of having this service available, you should take a look at World Verge Dial-Up Internet for $9.95 a month. You get unlimited access, a huge choice of local numbers, a downloadable dialer that has all the numbers built-in for travel use, spam and virus filter, 5 email accounts, 5 Mb of personal Web space, compatibility with both Windows and Macintosh computers, and free 24/7 tech support.

If you want to surf the Web faster, an additional $2.95 a month gets you an accelerator that will speed Web page loading by 5X. It does this using compression techniques, so it doesn't do anything to speed music or video downloads. But if you mostly cruise the Web, you may find that the accelerator gives you a virtual broadband experience.

Why You Need Dedicated Bandwidth

You might think that broadband is broadband and one high speed connection to the Internet should be as good as another. But that's an illusion. Sadly, business users might not learn the truth without losing sales opportunities and valued clients.

The backbone structure of the Internet is pretty robust. Packet loss, latency, and bandwidth seldom pose a limitation for all the most time critical applications. The biggest difference among Internet access services is experienced in the last mile connection. That's the link between your router and the service provider.

Broadband connections can be divided into two major categories: shared and dedicated. Shared Internet connections include the popular DSL and Cable broadband connections. Dedicated connections are provided by T1, DS3, and Ethernet business services. Notice the term "business". Shared Internet services originated to make broadband affordable for residential and home office users. Medium to larger size businesses have always used dedicated connections for their voice and data circuits. But smaller businesses, including quick service restaurants, professional sales offices, and owner-operated shops may opt for shared connections being sold as business versions of consumer Internet services.

In the bigger picture, the entire Internet is a shared bandwidth resource. So what's the difference if your connection is shared or dedicated? The primary difference is something called "oversubscription." Oversubscription for Internet service providers is similar to overbooking for airlines. The idea is that not everyone is going to show up at the same time, even if they've paid for a ticket, or Internet service. Rather than allow those airline seats to go unfilled or that bandwidth capacity to go unused, service providers will deliberately sell more capacity than they have available. It's not really a problem until every customer really does want service at the same time.

Say your ISP (Internet Service Provider) has an OC3 backbone connection to the Internet. That a dedicated fiber optic link with 155 Mbps of capacity. Now they divvy that out to 100 customers. If they wanted to provided dedicated access, each customer would be limited to 1.5 Mbps. That way if all users were running at their maximum rate, the capacity of the OC3 connection still would not be exceeded. But chances are they'll offer each customer "up to" 10 Mbps. If only 15 customers are running their connections flat out downloading big files or video, there is still plenty of capacity for everyone. But what if all 100 want to download a video simultaneously? There's only 155 Mbps available, so each user get throttled at 1.55 Mbps.

This explains why your broadband connection seems to work faster some times and slower at others. The slow times tend to be when the most users are online and running high bandwidth applications. Even more dramatically, some ISPs might try to spread that OC3 backbone over 1,000 users, not 100. During periods of very high usage, your share of the bandwidth could be as low as 150 Kbps. Remember, the service provider is offering "up to" 10 Mbps, not any particular speed at any particular time.

As your connection speed decreases, download times increase and some applications may start to sputter. VoIP telephone calls and video feeds, including video conferencing, are particularly sensitive to bandwidth congestion. Shared bandwidth services are generally offered on a "best effort" basis, with no guarantee of performance, packet loss, latency or even availability.

With a dedicated connection, your bandwidth is set aside by the service provider and always available for your use. If you are streaming audio or video, this could be critical. Even larger grocery stores or retailers with dozens of credit card terminals need bandwidth always at the ready. In fact, any business that depends upon online access to make client presentations, manage inventory or enter orders needs a solid, dedicated Internet connection.

Dedicated Internet bandwidth and secure, private point to point connections cost less now than ever before. Don't settle for a limited service that only appears inexpensive, until you check prices on dedicated bandwidth for business locations.

Oh, My Aching Internet Backbone

Bandwidth expansion is a sign of good business. As an Internet service provider or content provider, you see that once generous T1 pipe getting full to the limit. Now what? You wince a bit because revenues may not be accelerating at the same rate as bandwidth demand. Is there a way to ensure a solid dedicated connection to the Internet without going broke?

Today you have more cost competitive options than ever before. The standard upgrade path for ISPs and others with Internet backbone connections has been from T1 line to T3 line or DS3 over fiber, then OC3 SONET optical fiber, OC12, and on upward to OC48 bandwidth. You can still get all of these services at prices lower than ever before. But you now also have the options of Ethernet, Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet for your dedicated Internet connection. Let's take a look at what's currently available.

The most basic professional grade Internet connection is the T1 line at 1.5 Mbps. Some providers of free WiFi hotspots, such as restaurants, may get by with business DSL or a Cable Modem connection since the service is being offered on an "as available" basis at no charge to the patron. For everybody else, a T1 data line configured for dedicated Internet service is the opening ante.

If you fill up your T1 bandwidth, an incremental upgrade is to bond-in a second T1 to double the bandwidth. This process can be continued for 3x, 4x, 5x, and even 6x the original bandwidth. If you have a WISP (Wireless Internet Service Provider) tower in a rural area, T1 service over copper lines might be your only reasonable option. In metropolitan areas, you have a choice of staying with copper or moving up to fiber optic service.

T3 Internet runs at 45 Mbps and was originally designed for a coaxial cable physical layer. Today the same service is DS3 running on SONET metro fiber. T1, bonded T1, T3, and SONET fiber optic services are all based on TDM or Time Division Multiplexing. A protocol conversion is used to transport IP packets on TDM trunk lines. The last mile connection, or local loop, is almost always provided by the Incumbent Local Phone Company regardless of who supplies your Internet service port.

The native Ethernet connection is something fairly new. It is has come about primarily from competitive carriers with their own nationwide networks based on IP and not TDM, direct peering connections to the Internet, and local points of presence in metropolitan areas. XO communications is an example of a carrier that "lights" buildings for Ethernet fiber optic service in metro areas, bypassing the local phone companies completely. Check for Ethernet Lit Buildings in your area.

If you can get Ethernet, the cost savings can be substantial. A Fast Ethernet connection at 100 Mbps an easily be half the cost of a DS3 connection at 45 Mbps. The savings gets even better when you compare OC3, OC12, or OC48 to Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet.

What if you really need or want the cost savings of Ethernet but are nowhere near a carrier Point of Presence? Consider moving your equipment to "carrier hotel" or colocation facility. There you'll find multiple carriers offering a wide variety of standard and non-standard bandwidths at highly competitive prices. The construction costs are nil or minimal since you are in the same facility as the carrier's POP.

How much bandwidth can you get for the money? The answer depends on where you are located, where you might be willing to collocate, and how much of a bandwidth level and contract length you are willing to commit to. Don't spend a lot of time trying to run down these deals yourself. Let our team of expert bandwidth consultants review your needs and provide you with a suite of competitive options.