Advantage of Colocation Bandwidth
Colocation is locating your servers in a colocation facility,
also known as a carrier hotel. Advantages of this approach include
ready availability of low cost bandwidth including 10 Mbps Ethernet,
100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, and Gigabit Ethernet options. These data
centers also offer backup power, environmental control and high
levels of security.
What does Convergence mean?
Convergence is the merging of voice, data and often video onto
a single network. Most often that network is a company LAN with
enough bandwidth to accommodate all users and QoS or Quality of
Service control to ensure high quality voice and video transmissions.
What is PBT?
PBT stands for Provider Backbone Transport. It's an adaption of
Ethernet to extend Layer-2 switching into the WAN transport network.
PBT was pioneered by Nortel and will be standardized by the IEEE
as PBB-TE.
How does Spanning Tree Protocol
work?
STP or Spanning Tree Protocol is a technique used by Ethernet
switches to ensure that there is one and only one physical path
from source to destination. This is done to prevent forwarding
loops.
What is the Cost Advantage
of Carrier Ethernet
Where available, Ethernet transport services from competitive
carriers may cost less than half the lease price of DS3 service
for over twice the bandwidth. The difference in cost between SONET
optical carrier service and Gigabit Ethernet WAN service is even
more dramatic.