Time Warner Telecom - Industry News

Fast, Economical, and Distinctive – It Must Be Metro Ethernet

Ethernet technology has been available for over 25 years and is the most widely used local area networking (LAN) technology in the world today. The vast majority of corporate networks are deployed using Ethernet technology. Now, it's being leveraged to connect customer locations within a metropolitan area (metro Ethernet) or between regional cities (inter-city Ethernet).

It won't be long before your peers are insisting on metro Ethernet, which provides faster connections, lower costs, and unique benefits for businesses. It has attracted customers in growing numbers over the past five years because its appealing characteristics aren't available from competing legacy data solutions such as ATM, Frame Relay, or even Private Line services.

Faster, Scalable Connections

Metro Ethernet services are highly scalable and available from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps. Legacy data solutions cannot easily scale to these levels. In addition, metro Ethernet offers you resiliency, fast recovery, and options for new levels of service support over a single network.

Lower Costs

Today, businesses have options. Metro Ethernet can replace ATM or Frame Relay backbones because of the low cost of ownership and scalability. Companies have made hardware investments over the years that can now be part of a long-term communication strategy. Metro Ethernet uses your existing LAN equipment so there's no need to buy additional, expensive gear — because there's no protocol conversion.

Metro Ethernet networks can carry voice, video, and data traffic. Transmission can be intra- or inter-office, as well as across town or between cities. In addition to flexibility, metro Ethernet also offers high-reliability and security at lower prices than traditional networks.

Familiar Technology

Since Ethernet is already deployed in your corporate network, your IT team can easily troubleshoot and maintain it, which usually isn't the case with legacy data solutions purchased from your carrier. This benefit also lowers your business costs.

Customers

Typical metro Ethernet customers include financial, healthcare, higher education institutions, broadcasting, and manufacturing companies. Here are just a few examples:

• A medical imaging company uses a 622 Mbps Ethernet connection to send medical images between two locations 20 miles apart in seconds — compared to 30 minutes to send previously.
• A northeast-based university uses 10 Mbps and 100 Mbps metro Ethernet connections to efficiently send voice, data, and dedicated Internet between several off-campus locations.
• A mortgage banking company extended metro Ethernet to multiple data centers in Arizona, California, Texas and Hawaii to support redundant data transfer requirements and VoIP, imaging, and application data with bandwidth scalable to over 1 Gbps.

While metro Ethernet provides obvious benefits to companies, success depends on fiber availability. Local fiber, facilities-based providers can assist customers with a variety of services, such as point-to-point and point-to-multi-point applications.

For additional metro Ethernet information, call your local account representative or visit www.twtelecom.com.

Source: Metro Ethernet: Today's Most Compelling Data Networking Solution for Business

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