City Ethernet is a service that has been developed to address the growing requirements expressed by our customers for increased bandwidth combined with reduced cost. Organisations of all sizes are increasingly finding that their bandwidth requirements are outgrowing their current wide area network (WAN) solution, and yet increasing that bandwidth must mean increasing the cost. Right? Well, not necessarily. If your company has not yet looked at City Ethernet as an alternative to traditional Leased Lines, ATM or Frame Relay solutions, then it may be that increasing the capacity of your WAN will cost you far less than you think, while also delivering significant benefits that you may not have considered.
What can City Ethernet do for you?
Many organisations are already enjoying the simplicity of THUS’ City Ethernet. As Ethernet is used in more than 99% of local area networks (LANs), it is a protocol which IT staff are familiar with. It makes sense, therefore, to connect Ethernet LANs using an Ethernet circuit as there is no protocol conversion required. The result is a faster, ‘seamless’ connection that extends the LAN to the WAN environment, but without any of the bottlenecks normally associated with traditional WAN solutions.
City Ethernet reduces the complexity of WAN solutions as the service plugs straight into LAN switches, removing the need for routers or even firewalls. It's also very flexible; organisations can choose to route their own IP traffic over the top of City Ethernet circuits, in which case routers are required.
Of course, a big benefit of City Ethernet is the ability to achieve more bandwidth for a lower cost per Mbps than traditional networking services, while supporting the transport of a variety of delay-sensitive voice, video and data applications.
City Ethernet in detail
THUS City Ethernet is typically purchased at standard bandwidths of 10, 100 and 1000Mbps. It is ideal for connectivity between pairs of sites of up to 25/35km apart (THUS’ National Ethernet service supports distances greater than 35km). It is available within most towns and cities across Great Britain.
City Ethernet is ideal for networking converged multimedia traffic. The service supports the networking of a variety of different business communication and application services, ranging from real-time VoIP or video, to standard FTP or email. It is provided over a private network, as opposed to the Internet, ensuring high levels of security and constant bandwidth availability.
If you plan to carry converged applications between pairs of sites over a single network in the future, then we would recommend City Ethernet. What’s more, should your network grow beyond two sites, it is possible to create a hub-and-spoke architecture or migrate to our Layer-3 MPLS IP VPN service.
City Ethernet is generally provided over our high availability, next-generation metropolitan area networks (MANs), providing greater reliability than traditional LAN extension services which are provided over single fibre pairs. It is a reliable and fast solution for storage networking, video, VoIP, corporate networks and business applications. One customer, for whom disaster recovery was a critical requirement, found a 1000Mbps City Ethernet connection enabled them to mirror data between sites, practically in real time. So in the unlikely event of a disaster at one major site, they could be confident that business could carry on as usual with a complete backup being held at the alternate site.
Making the move
The benefits of a City Ethernet WAN solution are clear - from the simplicity of connectivity through to its suitability for carrying converged network traffic. However, when is City Ethernet an appropriate solution for your organisation? What do you need to look for in your organisation’s topology to know if you too can enjoy these benefits, and how can you identify if the time is right for you to move to this next-generation service? Ask yourself the following questions:
- Do I need higher bandwidth connectivity between pairs of sites?
- Do I want a private network solution as opposed to one provided over the public Internet?
- Would upgrading to 10/100/1000Mbps offer my organisation an improved WAN service?
- Are my sites less than 35km apart?
- Do I need a high quality, reliable connection to network converged voice, video and data traffic between my sites?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then City Ethernet could provide you with the benefits outlined above.
City Ethernet can provide many service and cost benefits to small to medium-sized enterprises requiring short distance point-to-point connections between pairs of sites. To find out more, visit http://www.demon.net/demon/products/data/.