Ethernet or Oc3 Bandwidth - What Do You Choose?

Is Ethernet or OC3 bandwidth the right choice for a network solution for your business? How would you make that decision?

If you are talking about a network operator / service provider and assuming your links are above 1 Gbps .... most likely you will need both OCx/EoS and Ethernet. After all you need to interconnect with other networks. If you have links below 1 Gbps at the access or core sides of the network then you would have to use OCx, most likely. Although some people tend to say that for a new network you can do whatever you want, reality is another thing.

OCx/STM-N are known for their reliability and predictability and still have quite a good precense in long haul. These are migrating to EoS (VCAT, LCAS, GFP) and OTN but they won't satrt to become "pure" Ethernet until 43G and supposedly there won't be any difference at 100G so Ethernet could prevail adopting some of the reliability factors and DWDM compatibility from OTN. There is still long ways to go before the true convergence. In fact IEEE HSSG and ITU-T are working together to assure neither one reinvents each other's wheels. Perhaps, if they succed, we would see single physical interfaces that could handle both: Ethernet for end-to-end connectivity and OTN for transport applications.

If you are thinking forward, perhaps you need to add OTN and EoS to your transport/core infrastrucure so it is ready for the future and yet flexible to interconnect to other peers using OCx, or deliver services below 1 GigE using EoS. People claiming they get "pure Ethernet" from their providers may not be paying attention to the EoS add/drop box that was delivered with the service contract and it is in fact receiving packets and shooting OCx frames back to the central office, or it arrived at a near aggregation location via OCx/EoS and then radioes to the customer premisses (perhaps over an internal OCx link too).

Below 1 GigE rates (I believe) there is no good way to deliver Ethernet directly to the customer (access network). it always has to be wrapped on some sort of (unreliable) transport scheme like VDSL, SHDSL, DOCSIS,... This is (in my opinion) what's keeping SONET/SDH alive. Once we all have fiber and beyond 1GigE then there is no issue. You would be able to go Ethernet/OTN all the way.

While Ethernet is becoming quite widespread and cost effective, often times the A and Z locations may require a decision in favor of OC3. SONET being readily available, it may be more cost effective (yes - even including the WAN module for OC3) in some locations. For the same A and Z locations, if both Ethernet and OC3 are available, I would pick Ethernet due to the ease of integration as long as the cost is within ~ 65% of the OC3 circuit.

OCx has history, resilience, and capacity, and is subject to suppliers wringing every last cent out of it as an asset given the emergence of long(er) distance Ethernet.

"Choose wisely", says the Templar Knight in Indiana Jones and the Final Crusade... likewise here. Unless you are committed to a long-term contract on OCx, don't extend it unless your business and application requirements say you won't need Metro-E flexibility until the end of the extension period. Even then, negotiate for huge concessions and/or cost-free upgrade to Metro-E at the end. As cost competitiveness of a service is based on the amount of market share: Metro-e /10GB-e will dwarf OCx over time.

Lastly, choose OCx/Metro-E service based on achievable and measurable SLAs first ..... then nail the supplier to the floor on price (as you do .... or .... you should do).

Michael is the owner of FreedomFire Communications .... and author ofBroadband Nation. Michael also authors Small Business Resources Cafe with resources, tools, tips, & insights for small businesses. The Cafe is always open. So .... grab a cup of Joe & sit awhile!

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Choose the Green Router for Your Wireless Network and You Care for Better Environments

Why you need green router? With green routers, you can save cash on energy costs, comply with government regulations, and the more important reason is you care for the environment.

Power consumption related to technology including the wireless devices such as routers is rising rapidly. As a consequence, this will also creates a rising in technology pollutes including the increase amounts of electricity, toxic elements in the materials that compose the hardware such as cadmium and mercury. It is therefore, the need of electronic devices with the green logo is very important to help save the power and care the environments.

Why You Need Green Router?

There are many general reasons why you need green router. With green routers, you pay attention to energy consumption and other recycling hardware which consequently helps you save power and comply with government regulations, and the most important thing is that you care for the environments, help heal the planet, and make it beautiful and clean.

There are many ways for manufacturers to produce green equipments including green router such as:

Producing equipments that require less power than normal by designing the products with less power consumptions such as minimizing power waste and design power-saving features into software, firmware, and hardware.
Reducing the amount of toxic waste materials in manufactured products and using more recyclable materials. Unfortunately, the fact is that almost 70 percent of overall toxic waste comes from dumped electronic equipment.

There are many green router products available in the marketplace today such as the following:

Airlink101 AR675W 300Mbps Wireless N Green Router

Airlink101 AR675W is designed with the green Ethernet technology to help save more energy. The router is powered by the high performance wireless 802.11n technology for highest wireless data rate of up to 300 Mbps. It includes the two 3dBi antennas to provide wider coverage to eliminate dead spots.

Other features:

Wireless On/Off Switch to reduce power when you don't need wireless network.
WPA2, WPA enhanced security provide fully protection for your wireless connection
To prioritize the HD media streaming or voice, the router supports Quality of Service (QoS) WMM
NAT and SPI feature for your internal network protection against any types of internet threats
Supports VPN pass-though for secure remote connection via public internet.

TEW-672GR 300Mbps Dual-band Wireless N Gigabit Green Router

TEW-672GR Wireless Gigabit Router is powered by GREENnet technology which is designed to reduce power consumption by up to 70% by reducing power supplied to unused ports, and the use of Energy Star Certified external power adapter that help consumes less power. It is also equipped with the Enable/disable wireless functionality with the WLAN on/off toggle switch to save energy while you are not using the wireless.

Other features:

Powered by the wireless –n dual-band technology and 3 external antennas with smart MIMO antenna technology for the speeds of up to 300 Mbps and longer distance coverage
Equipped with 1 Gigabit WAN port which is compatible with most popular cable/DSL Internet service providers using Dynamic/Static IP, PPPoE, PPTP and L2TP. For wired connection, the router is equipped with 4 Gigabit Ethernet Auto-MDIX ports
Advanced dual-firewall protection (NAT and SPI) for internal network protection against any threats
Access restriction with Internet Access Control; time scheduling, URL and MAC filtering
Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) for auto discovery and support for device configuration of Internet applications

WNDR37AV Wireless N Gigabit Router for Video and Gaming

WNDR37AV is a new powerful wireless n gigabit router for video and gaming which is also designed with Netgear Green technology including Power On/Off Button, 80 percent recycled packaging, Wireless On and Off Button, Cable Length Power Save, and Energy Star etc. WNDR37AV is different with others because it is specifically designed for video and gaming with green technology.

Other features:

ReadySHARE USB Storage Access which supports FAT16/32, NTFS Read/Write, Ext 2 Read/Write, Ext 3 Read/Write
Powered by Wireless –n technology with dual-band wireless 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz for twice the bandwidth for better connection and less interference
Equipped with 4-port Gigabit Ethernet for high-speed wired connection which is ideal for large HD file transfer
You can stream video and music from a USB drive to media players easily with DLNA Media Server feature – no PC required
Video Quality of Service, a dedicated video network which allows you stream video on one network, while surfing the Internet

In selecting the wireless router, make sure that you choose the router with Green technology logo including Energy Star, On/Off wireless, recycle materials packaging, and so on. By selecting the wireless router with green technology in mind, you care for better environments, help heal the planet, and make it beautiful and clean.

By Ki Grinsing

Ki Grinsing was graduated from a technical college with the additions of MCSE and CCNA certifications and long years of working experiences in IT. For complete article please visit: Wireless green router and best wireless gaming router

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How to Choose a Telecom Consultant - Part 1

The task of selecting a telecommunications consultant can be daunting at best. This step-by-step guide will help you focus on the most important aspects of the job. Follow this formula carefully and you will be successful in your search for the right telecommunications consultant for your company.

What Telecommunications Consultants Can Do

The very nature of consulting implies specialization, and awide variety of telecommunications specialists are available.

You can save time by limiting your search to consultants who regularly do the type of work you want. Consider your need for consulting help from three different perspectives.

WHAT FORM OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS IS INVOLVED IN YOUR COMPANY SITUATION?

The possibilities....

Voice-Data-Video-Radio-Facsimile-Microwave-Paging-Broadcast-Program-Telegraph-Wireless-Voice Messaging-Electronic Mail-Teleconferencing-Remote Metering-Frame Relay-Virtual Private Networks-LANs- WANs-Voice over Internet - and the list goes on!

As you can see, there are A LOT of possibilities! Once you've narrowed down the areas of telecommunications where you need help, answer these questions:

Is your operation small, medium or large? Is the one location, a few, dozens, or hundreds? (thousands?) Are these locations local, national or international? Are telephone operations specialized in your type of business? How sensitive are your operations to telecommunications (i.e. what is the potential ramifications for technical breakdowns?) When to Use a Telecommunications Consultant

Now the question arises: Just when do you need to hire a telecommunications consultant? Below are a list of scenarios to help you determine your need for a professional consultant.

1. When you need experienced temporary help.

This situation is often a case where you know what needs to be done, and your personnel either have the skills or could learn them, but you can't spare the people or time from other tasks.

2. You need specialized skills for a specific project of task.

This scenario results when you know what needs to be accomplished, but you don't have the knowledge or skills available to accomplish the task the way it should be done.

3. You need specialized skills for specific part-time work.

You need and want identified tasks to be performed on a recurring basis, but you don't want to add full-time specialized staff to your payroll. This is a common frustration with companies thinking about engaging a telecommunications consultant.

4. You simply need a different or "outside" perspective on your telecommunications services or needs.

You sense there may be problems needing resolution, but you can't seem to pull the pieces together into a workable plan. Or, maybe you believe you know what should be done, but management feels the potential risk or investment warrants additional analysis and recommendations from an outside expert.

It is not a consultant's role to make your decisions for you.

However, a good consultant can efficiently facilitate inputs, conduct analyses, display and evaluate information in a meaningful way, and reduce related uncertainties so that you can make necessary decisions. Once decisions have been made, it may be cost effective to use a consultant for selected implementation activities.

Karen Thatcher is President and CEO of TelCon Associates, a 37 year old telecom consulting firm

For more information on how to effectively hire a telecom consultant, visit http://www.telecomauditguide.com

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Why and How to Choose a PC Backup Solution?

Did you know that people lose over 600,000 laptops at US airports every year?

This loss seems even more serious once you realise that most of them didn't have a backup. Statistics? At least 65% of users do not backup before travel, while 90% do not backup while on the move.

Why? Well, the top three reasons I have heard are:

- My backup software does not work over WAN

- I had limited bandwidth connectivity

- I hate backups - they slow down my PC and work

The main problems seem to be availability of bandwidth and backup disruptions over WAN/Internet.

Issues with bandwidth arise due to the huge amount of duplicate data between corporate users. Not very surprisingly, over 80% of data across corporate PCs (emails/docs etc) is duplicate. It is these duplicates that choke bandwidth and storage.

Here's where Data De-Duplication – henceforth referred to as DDD – comes in. This technology saves just a single copy of duplicate data, thus cutting down on duplicates and shrinking the backup size for corporate PCs. This potentially savings in backup time, bandwidth and storage are about 80%!

Thanks to the tape-backup legacy, most existing software has a server-triggered backup mechanism, which creates problems for travelling users connected via WAN. Since the PC does not have a fixed IP address, the server can't reach it and hence the backup fails. New generation PC backup software address the problem of server accessibility by using client-triggered backup.

Cumulatively, this is what you should look for in any laptop backup product:

- Smart bandwidth prioritization: Sets only a percentage of bandwidth for backup

- Super Secure: SSL encryption over WAN/VPN for backup

- WAN Optimization: Automatic Network sensing for choosing appropriate packet size and bandwidth

- Data De-Duplication: Saving single copy of duplicate data.

One of the popular options for office and remote users is Druva inSync, featuring simple backup and point-in-time restores. Get a free trial today at www.druva.com

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Why You Have To Choose A VoIP Internet Phone

Most likely you have heard about the VoIP services before but are just not aware of all the benefits that are offered to you here. If you are considering getting a VoIP phone system for yourself, you should first become more educated on the idea of using a VoIP Internet phone and what advantages you are going to be gaining as a result.

Benefits

There is an array of benefits that you will receive if you switch to a VoIP Internet phone. For one, you will be saving yourself a great deal of money because you will be making all your calls through a Broadband Internet connection rather than through your regular phone service. This means that you will no longer have a monthly bill to pay to your phone company every month.

You will also be able to improve productivity, which is something that most people, especially business people, are interested in. With a VoIP Internet phone voice is treated as if it were any other type of data, and so as a result users are able to attach documents to voice messages or participate in virtual meetings using shared data and videoconferencing.

You will also gain added flexibility by using a VoIP Internet phone, as a Virtual Private Network is an allocated amount of bandwidth on the public Internet where public access is prevented through encryption. If your company has its own VPN and then combines it with VoIP, you are able to set up a fully functioning office anywhere, as long as there is an available broadband connection.

Another benefit of using a VoIP Internet phone is that you get a simplified infrastructure. Making phone calls has never been easier than with VoIP, and with VoIP on your network you no longer need to have separate cabling for your telephone system. The clarity is also better than ever, as times have changed and there are new VoIP technologies.

The benefits of a VoIP Internet phone are much more than just saving money, and those who switch to VoIP can expect savings of between 30 and 50-percent off of their traditional phone bills and sometimes even more than that. This is obviously quite impressive and definitely makes it worth at least considering it further. This makes a big difference to those who have been disenchanted with the large phone companies and when it comes to large organizations, the savings can be up in the millions of dollars.

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