High speed internet
Walter Lindsay, managing director at Line UK Internet, discusses the latest advances in catering for low cost, and yet high performance, internet connectivity
managing director, Line UK Internet
Tuesday, 29 Jan 2013 14:28 GMT
Line UK’s Walter Lindsay says that ‘ethernet in the first mile’ (EFM) is more suitable to small businesses than a traditional fiber leased line, and opens up brand new avenues of opportunity for providing a professional internet service
Demand for
increased internet bandwidth and more sophisticated services that require higher
reliability continue to rise each year. This is in part due to the growing
adoption of cloud computing technologies such as hosted e-mail and voice over IP
(VoIP) services, as well as the increasing use of other bandwidth hungry
services such as the regular transfer of large digital files.
For many small businesses, going down the traditional fibre leased line route
in order to obtain higher bandwidth with the corresponding and much needed
improved quality of service is prohibitively expensive. Fortunately advances in
technology has brought new solutions to this problem. Ethernet in the First Mile
(EFM) is one such solution.
EFM provides dedicated high speed internet connectivity at a much lower cost
than a traditional fibre-based leased line service. This cost reduction is
achieved by delivering the service across regular copper cables.
EFM provides dedicated high speed internet connectivity at a much lower cost than a traditional fibre-based leased line service”
The ‘first mile’ refers to the communication network that runs over the
copper cabling from the customers premises to the last provider owned node. This
node might be in a street cabinet, equipment in the local telephone exchange or
another point-of-presence held by the provider.
The EFM technology provides new specifications designed to allow the industry
standard Ethernet protocol, as used in the local area network of most companies,
to run long distances across standard telephone copper cables. The service
typically allows symmetrical bandwidth of up to 35mbs to be achieved by bonding
multiple pairs of copper cables.
The bonding of copper pairs has the benefit of providing a highly resilient
service. If a copper pair fails, the remaining pairs continue to delivery
connectivity with no down time but at a reduced bandwidth. For example, assuming
a service is being provided across four copper pairs. With the loss of one pair,
75 percent of the bandwidth is retained and full service returns when the failed
pair is restored.
The copper cables are dedicated to the transmission of digital data, they are
not provisioned to carry analogue voice calls as is the case with regular
broadband. This allows increased data throughput to be achieved.
Some of the benefits of EFM
include:
Dedicated, reliable and uncontended (1:1) bandwidth
Fast connectivity of up to 35Mbs, this is expected to increase beyond 50Mbs
in the future
Symmetrical bandwidth, for example 30Mbs upload and 30Mbs download
A lower cost alternative to a fibre-based leased line
A high ‘quality of service’ (QoS) backed by a ‘service level agreement’
(SLA)
Has no data/bandwidth caps and your business has full use of the agreed
bandwidth
Whilst regular broadband is a shared service, which allows the available
bandwidth to fluctuate by the actions of other users, EFM is a considerable
step-up from regular broadband, providing dedicated and consistent bandwidth
with a business grade SLA. EFM can therefore be seen as an ideal technology for
businesses that have outgrown their broadband service but cannot justify the
cost of implementing a fibre-based leased line.
Established in 1998 Line UK
Internet today remains true to its roots as a ‘business only’ Internet Service
Provider. To find out more about the issues discussed in this article
e-mail:info@lineuk.net, or Tel:
03300 882 884
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