Question

Fiber vs Copper from the Telcom

Asked by: Indy_IT_Admin

We are moving buildings and consequently looking to move phone carriers.  We are in contract with our current phone company but are looking to prepare for the future in our phone service.  We have a couple of satilite offices that are either not connected to the main office or connect through a VPN (very slow). Currently we have 23 POTS and 1 T1 (DS1) circuit.
For the immediate term we are looking to switch to a PRI with an internet connection 2Mb for PRI and 4Mb for Internet as well as having a 10Mb direct circuit to a co-location facility to house offsite backup and perhaps mirrored servers in the future.  This will run on VOIP and adventually we will get a new phone system to run dynamic bandwidth over the first connection and bump up the 10Mb direct circuit to accomidate mirroring of servers.  Internally we will be running CAT 6.

What I am wondering is what are the advantages of using Fiber in this case as opposed to Copper?  What can fiber do that Copper cannot?

The company we are looking at switching to will install an Ethernet Circuit for both the VOIP & Internet connection as well as a Metro Ethernet circuit for the co-lo.  This company has mentioned that I need a SLA which includes QoS and CoS to guarantee I receive the benefits of a Metro Ethernet type of solution  Being somewhat new at this technology I am uncertain about the importance of these and if they can be offered on copper.  In other words, I said "HUH?" while scratching my head.

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Asked On
2005-10-24 at 11:30:51ID21605808
Tags

fiber

,

vs

,

copper

,

t1

,

vs.

Topic

Voice Over IP

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Answers

 

by: grbladesPosted on 2005-10-25 at 01:16:29ID: 15152707

There is no difference between copper and fibre feature wise. Fibre has a longer maximum run and higher bandwidth so if you have a lot of bandwidth or are a long way away from the telephone exchange you will probably be given fibre.

If you are given fibre you will probably also be given a device to convert the fibre in various copper connections to connect to your normal equipment.

 

by: Indy_IT_AdminPosted on 2005-10-25 at 15:56:18ID: 15158729

Not to sound argumentative but aren't bandwidth and run length considered to be features?

Oh well, thanks for your input.

 

by: grbladesPosted on 2005-10-26 at 00:37:59ID: 15160422

Features of the physical line yes. I meant features of the circuit itself such as QOS and whether it supports voice etc...

 

by: jar3817Posted on 2005-10-28 at 04:18:46ID: 15177952

Fiber is also not affected by things like EMI unlike copper. And from a security standpoint someone can tap into copper cable to snoop on the traffic, you can't do that with fiber.

 

by: jsc73Posted on 2005-10-31 at 06:34:28ID: 15192782

QoS and CoS are implemented at layer 2/ layer 3 and therefore, physical transport really has no bearing on whether those features may or may not be offered. That is more up to the carrier providing the service and the CP (Customer Premise) / PE (Provider Edge) equipment deployed. Almost every LEC and (facilities-based) CLEC will offer some kind of QoS offering these days - but part of the question is whether you will need to purchase it from them or not.

Let's break it down to facilites and then Carrier offerings:  

Nowadays, in most areas, pretty much anything over DS1 will be delivered over fiber (including metro ethernet, DS3, or, of course, OC-x facilities), facilities permitting. It may come down to the building and what may or may not already be installed there...

Let me ask a couple questions:

1. Are you moving into a new facility or an existing facility? How old?
2. Is it multi-tenant or single tenant (just your company)?
3. Who is the ILEC (the incumbent local carrier - If you are in Indy, I will guess SBC/Ameritech)
4. Does the ILEC (LEC) or any competitor (CLEC - examples are TWTC, XO, Level3, MCI (via MFS), plus many local & regional carriers) you may be considering already have the building ""lit" with fiber services? How to find out? Simple - call the carrier's sales rep and give them the address and they can usually tell you within a day.

We happen to use the LEC and one CLEC that both have their own diverse-path fiber into our facility (but we own our own building and we are the only tenant). What you are asking for, if I understand correctly, is whether the transport to the facility will be over fiber or copper. These days, if there is fiber in the ground outside the facility, and the building doesn't already have it, the carrier will usually bring it inside for you - but who pays for the cost of doing that is variable. They have to look at what they will make off what you are ordering, and whether any other tenant (in a multi-tenant building) will ever order any services from them. If it looks like they may severly impact their margin on your contract because they have to eat the install costs, then they can and usually will charge you what is called "excess construction" to get the fiber into the building. If it is already into the building, it's typically a much easier (and potentially affordable) proposition.

As far as QoS - this depends a lot on what type of circuit you want to run it over. I (my employer) use QoS - to one extent or another - over everything from DSL Internet circuits (actually on VPN over this type of circuit) to OC-12 and almost everything in between (Private line T1, FR, MPLS, Metro Ethernet, DS3). In some cases (MPLS), the carrier is aware of my QoS tagging and adheres to it end to end, and in other cases (Private Line T1, Metro Ethernet), the carrier doesn't know or care what I run over it, but because it is essentially *dedicated* bandwidth, I tell my routers what and how to QoS the available bandwidth (which really never varies), and it works wonderfully. Some carriers will offer to carry and observe QoS tagging on Metro Ethernet services, depending on how they offer such services - "shared" bandwidth or "dedicated" bandwidth. Dedicated bandwidth, as the name implies, gives you exactly what you purchased at all times, and doesn't really require the carrier to deal with QoS tagging - as long as you are dealing with somewhat limited distances (again, as the name implies, "metro" distances). At least in practice, it shouldn't, if the carrier's network is engineered decently - the only variable that might be of concern under dedicated Metro Ethernet is jitter, and in my experience with VoIP over Metro Ethernet circuits (5 to 50 miles typically), I have never had a serious jitter issue that could be attributed to the carrier. This same thing applies to Private line T1 or T3 circuits - if you buy a dedicated pipe, you get the whole thing, all the time. Most carriers don't offer a QoS-aware private line T1 or T3 serivice - mostly because it isn't necessary. Private line is nice in its simplicity, but it is typically the most expensive as far as $$ / MBit.

Last hint: if your chosen facility is not already lit with fiber, and your carrier will bring it in, budget plenty of time for this construction (as much as 4 to 5 months). Good Luck!

 

by: Indy_IT_AdminPosted on 2005-11-02 at 14:57:47ID: 15212939

1.  New facility (currently being built.  Est completion mid to late December.
2.  It will be single tenant.
3.  It appears that we will be going with Time Warner as they are willing to run pure fiber into our building.

We will be running a 2MB channel for a PRI into an older Panasonic 576HD PBX.
We will be running a 4MB channel for internet connection.
We will be running a 10MB Metro Ethernet connection to a co-lo at Time Warner.

PRI Channel will term into a Cisco Router supplied by TW and and off to us to plug into the phone system.
QoS and CoS are backed by a good SLA (I think I have the terminology right here).

We have yet to sign anything but we are hoping that they are true to their word in getting done in 6 weeks.

 

by: jsc73Posted on 2005-11-07 at 20:56:25ID: 15245096

It appears that TWTC will bring in a Cisco 3560 or 3750 Metro Ethernet switch and probably partition three ports. Each will have a different hand-off:

1) One 2 Mbit (trafic shaped and QoS 10Mbit Ethernet port) to the Cisco router which will provide the PRI on a VWIC multiflex PRI port. They are (most likely) bascially doing SIP trunking backhaul and providing a conventional PRI interface for your phone system. Each SIP trunk would take an average 80k (using G.711) and mulitply that by 24 (channels in a PRI) totals 1760 Kbit, hence the 2Mbit allocated for that service.

2) One for Internet - probably a 10MBit Ethernet port traffic shaped to 4Mbit

3) One for Metro LAN connectivity to their Co-loc. Again, A 10 Mbit Ethernet port.

The QoS is an inherent part of the SIP trunking - they would probably need to do QoS tagging on their network to ensure toll-quality delivery of their dialtone over IP - especially if they are essentially sharing a common link back to their CO for all services. The QoS guarantees the voice traffic is never contending for bandwidth (although in your installation it is unlikely it ever would - their backhaul bandwidth is probably at least 100Mbit out of your CPE, but it may (and probably does) share some capacity upstream - at least for Internet and possibly for MAN to the co-loc facility.

Unless you are doing application prioritization (or some kind of voice app?) between your facility and the Co-Loc, you probably don't need QoS tagging on that 10 Mbit link, and I'm not aware of Internet transit connectivity being sold with QoS - it would generally be considered moot, since the tagging would not be acknowledged beyond the edge of the TWTC backbone (if it made it that far).

Just stay on them over guarantees to restore service if there is a cut or equipment failure, and I would make sure the service credits are based on each individual outage, and not cumulative outage times...

/jsc

 

by: Indy_IT_AdminPosted on 2005-11-09 at 06:39:19ID: 15256331

Thanks for the info.  Very helpful.

To my understanding, Time Warner, our projected carrier, holds the Internet and VOIP networks seperately.  The Call is 64K but QOS may make up the other 16.

We are indeed using QOS on our Metro as we are going to be using it as an offsite realtime backup and want to priortize the backup data.

In total 2 10MB circuits, one for 2Mb voice and 4Mb data and 1 for 10Mb Metro to the Co-lo.

Thanks again for the help.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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