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Ethernet WANs, VLANs, and Community of Interest Networks (COINs)
Carrier Ethernet is here. Metropolitan and long-haul services with a simple Ethernet hand-off are available in and between most cities. Speeds from 10Mbps to 10Gbps are available, with fractional GigE being the most popular. Protected services have all the benefits of SONET at a lower cost.
1. Why would anyone choose anything else for wide-area connectivity?
2. What applications are you using wide-area Ethernet for today?
3. What pitfalls have you found that others might avoid?
Thanks for your comments -
Chuck Stormon, VP, PacketExchange.net, +1 315 491 1011, chuck.stormon@packetexchange.net
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1 Answer
This is a great question. I think the key answer is that not all carriers are created equal. Let me give you a real-world experience we ran into with our company.
An aggressive carrier ran a loop of dark fiber around the KC metro area and started selling portions of the bandwidth at equally aggressive prices. At the same time, we had a second carrier that was not quite as aggressive but was being utilized as a back-up. Over time, we came to realize that the performance of the inexpensive carrier was not up to our standards. At issue, the bandwidth from the dark-fiber carrier was significantly over-subscribed.
We were also concerned that the dark-fiber vendor was also a tier-2 ISP in our market and not a tier-1 vendor. Consequence: our vendor was not directly hooked into the main telecom trunks as the tier-1 vendors.
SMB's should be wary of the following: 1) Is your carrier significantly over-subscription their ethernet bandwidth? 2) Is your carrier a tier-1 vendor or a tier-2 vendor in the ISP space for your market? 3) Should troubles arise, how good is your carrier's service?
NOTE: I'm in a unique position because the Kansas City marketplace is extremely competitive. We've found that we can obtain our own dedicated circuits (T1's, gigaman, decaman) here in the metro area much cheaper than we can contract for the equivalent bandwidth to replace our circuits.
However, we still see contracted capacity as a significant benefit for outlying offices. For example, in several remote locations, we are using an MPLS cloud so as to avoid the higher costs of running long-distance dedicated circuits.
KEY: Each SMB should evaluate their carriers strengths, services, and ability to deliver. At the same time, a cost comparisson should be made between company-owned versus carrier provided bandwidth for their particular market. (What makes sense in Kansas City may not make any sense at all in San Diego.) Finally, take a look at the particular needs of each company location to determine if a hybrid solution of company-owned and carrier-provided networking is the most cost-effective for your company.
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