Business High Speed Solutions

Business High Speed Data Solutions Explained

Broadband data solutions for businesses come in many different flavors in terms of the physical interface used to transport the data, the data speed available to you and of course the cost.

In this section we explain the different types of broadband data services available to you today to help you determine the most optimum data package for your particular business needs. At this point simply request a quote using this broadband data quote form and we will find the best provider(s) based on your requirements and location.

Digital Subscriber Line (DSL)

DSL service is a technology for bringing high-bandwidth broadband data service to Small Office, Home Offices (SOHO) and Small to Medium sized Businesses (SMB) over ordinary copper telephone lines. What does this mean? It means that you can get high speed internet access over your traditional phone line. DSL service is known as an "always-on" internet service. This means that when your computer is on you are always connected to the internet. Unlike dial-up service there is no logging on with user name and passwords required. With DSL service all you need to do is plug your PCs into your DSL modem and then from your modem to your normal telephone jack.

With DSL service you can get a broadband speed up to 7.1Mbps (Megabits per second). More typically though, individual connections will provide an internet speed of some where between 768Kbps (Kilobits per second) to 3.0Mbps on the downlink (downloading from the internet to your PC) and anywhere from 128Kbps to 768Kbps on the uplink (uploading from your PC to the internet). Your DSL service broadband speed will depend on the distance that you are from the telephone company Central Office (CO) with a maximum distance of 18,000 feet.

Cable

Cable internet is a technology for bringing high-bandwidth broadband data service to homes and small businesses over your cable TV line. What does this mean? It means that you can get high speed internet access over your existing cable TV connection. Cable is known as an "always-on" internet service. With Cable internet service all you need to do is plug your PC into your Cable Modem and your Cable Modem into your normal cable television outlet on the wall.

Cable internet service is typically offered by the same companies that provide cable TV. The high speed internet access works over the same coaxial cable that the TV signal comes into your home on, but does not effect or interfere with your TV signal. Therefore you can use your internet service and watch TV at the same time without any problems. Typically, for businesses, cable internet service provides you with a maximum of 1.5Mbps to 7Mbps (Megabits per second) of bandwidth (internet speed) on the system for downlink and up to 768Kbps for uplink traffic.

T1

The T1 carrier is the most commonly used digital transmission line for Small to Medium-sized Businesses (SMB) in the United States. The bandwidth of a T1 line is 1.544Mbps in each direction. In other words you will get this full dedicated bandwidth in both your uplink and downlink directions. This is significantly higher than DSL or Cable for uplink communication. It is for this reason that it is often used for Data and VoIP traffic. VoIP traffic typically needs around 90Kbps per voice call due to the voice codec so it is easy to see that this can be an area of concern for SMBs considering DSL or cable - it limits the amount of simultaneous calls they can make. In Europe the equivalent transmission is known as E1. This is very similar to T1 except it can run at 2.048Mbps.

One reason many SMBs choose T1 is that they are usually leased from large Telecomm companies and built into the Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a well defined Quality of Service (QoS) guaranteeing that minimal downtime will occur during the lease of the T1. However, as you would expect, a premium is paid for this type of data service.

There are many other forms of T1 that you may come across. Fractional T1 is, as you would expect, a fraction of a full T1. A T1 can be thought of as 24 unique timeslots so when you lease a full T1, you have the ability to use all 24 timeslots (also referred to as DS0s). A fractional T1 gives you access to a specific number of DS0s. The most common rates are 256Kbps and 384Kbps. Obviously you pay a fraction of the cost of a full T1. Yes the speed may be less than DSL or Cable but the QoS is in place. Frame Relay T1 is another form of T1 and uses a packet switched protocol to transfer data across Local Area Networks (LAN) and Wide Area Networks (WAN). Instead of being allocated a fixed amount of bandwidth, Frame-Relay services offer a CIR (Committed Information Rate) at which data is transmitted, in other words an absolute minimum connection speed. Point-to-point T1 offers the best QoS for transmission over a T1. The SLA guarantees maximum throughput at all times and is typically leased by companies who transfer a lot of private files or for corporate Virtual Private Networks (VPN) and WANs.

One final point to note for T1. If you need additional bandwidth simply add more T1 leased lines. Likewise if you decide to add VoIP simply add another T1 line and all of your packetized voice traffic can be delivered over this additional T1 line.

T3

A T3 line is equivalent to 28 T1 lines (see above) at a speed of 45Mbps. Typically you would see large businesses, universities and web hosting companies lease a T3 line due to the large amount of users requiring access to the internet and Wide Area Networks (WAN). The physical medium for a T3 line tends to be fiber-optic cable. Note that T3 lines are high enough speed that it is feasible to pass full screen, full motion video over this interface.

Similar to the T1 carrier, a T3 line can also be sub-divided and is known as fractional-T3. Basically one would lease a fraction of the 45Mbps bandwidth available with a T3 line, obviously at a lower cost.

OC-3 / OC-12 / OC-48

Optical Carrier level 1 (OC-1) is the designation for a Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) with transmission rates of 51.84 Mbps, using fiber optics as the transmission medium. However the most typical SONET rates found in optical networks today are OC-3 (155Mbps), OC-12 (622Mbps) and OC-48 (2.5Gbps). OC-48 will often be used as the long-haul backbone for internet traffic containing everything from regular data and VoIP to streaming video.

Ethernet

Ethernet (IEEE Standard 802.3) tends to be the protocol of choice for LANs inside a business, using twisted pair cables to connect computers in a workplace to the local network and to the internet. These interfaces usually run at either 10Mbps or 100Mbps (referred to as Fast Ethernet).

However fairly recently there has been a push for what is referred to as Metropolitan Area Networks (MAN) which provides carrier-class Ethernet between a business and the Internet Service Provider (ISP) over Ethernet. The interface speed for such interfaces is usually one Gigabit (1000Mbps) hence the term Gigabit Ethernet. A point of demarcation is required between the ISP and end user in order to provide end-to-end Service Level Agreements (SLA). This broadband data connection is becoming very popular for businesses in metropolitan areas.

ISDN

Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) is a technology that is offered by most telephone carriers. It combines voice and digital traffic in a single medium making it possible to offer customers digital data services as well as voice connections through a single "wire" (copper pair) running at a speed of up to 128Kbps. At one time this was very popular for SMBs but with DSL, Cable and T1 services offering higher speed broadband access for voice and data traffic ISDN popularity has been steadily declining over recent years.

Satellite

At one time high speed broadband access by satellite required access to a phone line for uplink data (e.g. requesting a web page) and then the fast path would be over the air for downlink data. This worked well since usually downlink was where you needed the high speed traffic. However this only really applied to home users and very small offices. SMBs and larger businesses would not consider such a service as they need faster uplink data paths too for transferring data to other offices over their WAN.

Recently technology breakthroughs allowed satellite dishes on the ground to actually transmit to satellites orbiting the earth, providing high speed uplink traffic as well as downlink traffic. When you surf to a Web page the Southern-facing satellite dish mounted on your home sends a signal to an orbiting satellite. This signal is bounced off the satellite and back down to a central operating center which then finds your requested data on the Internet and sends it back to the orbiting satellite which in turn sends it to the house's satellite receiver. This is performed at a speed comparable to DSL.

A word of caution on satellite broadband access. If you plan to pass voice over this type of medium you are likely to be very disappointed. The latencies involved are such that the delay in your speech will be very apparent!

Hosted IP PBX

This is VoIP related but since the voice calls are packetized and sent over DSL/Cable/T1/T3/OCx interfaces it is worth mentioning.

A hosted IP PBX is an IP-based management service located at your VoIP service providers network operations center. The functions associated with a hosted IP PBX service are similar to those of hardware PBX systems installed at your business site. The main difference is that your company is not responsible for buying, installing, or maintaining any of the PBX equipment. It is all maintained and upgraded by the service provider thus saving your business significant money in terms of capital expenditure and of course administration costs since you do not need to pay an IT person to maintain your own PBX.

What are some of the advantages of a hosted IP PBX?
- It is scalable so your business can expand or contract at any time.
- The PBX is configurable so you can easily add users and modify features through a secure internet site.
- The equipment is usually made by high caliber companies like Cisco Systems and is therefore very reliable.
- It has many productivity enhancing features such as the ability to listen to voicemails from a PC, call forwarding, individual fax numbers for each user and many more.