Metro Ethernet for Business and Enterprise

Metro Ethernet for Business and Enterprise Enterprises have an ever-increasing need to share data and applications across the wide area. Every year a greater percentage of enterprise data traffic makes it's way onto the wide area network (WAN). As an extremely scalable and cost-effective alternative to ATM, Frame and leased lines, Metro-Ethernet meets the enterprise need for greater internal cohesion and more cost-effective wide area connectivity. Enterprises of all shapes and sizes are finding that Metro Ethernet is suitable for both high-speed Internet access and the interconnection of multiple corporate sites in one or more metropolitan areas.

Five example enterprise applications that exploit Metro Ethernet advantages:

1. Use seamless Metro Ethernet LAN extension to connect users via a mesh network between several major enterprise sites across a metropolitan area or across a region.
2. Locate a remote disaster recovery centre in a secure facility that is far removed from other enterprise sites.
3. Increase internal knowledge and speed the decision making process with regular video-conferencing, distance learning and remote training between sites.
4. Create distributed transaction process systems that locate front-tier, mid-tier and backend components exactly where economics and architectural considerations dictate.
5. Create low latency supply/demand chain applications that unite the enterprise with key suppliers, customers and partners in a seamless value chain.

Unbeatable Connectivity

Metro Ethernet provides a straightforward Ethernet interface that gives enterprise users high-speed access to the Internet or other enterprise sites. In effect, this creates a virtual LAN that connects all the sites, users and applications of the enterprise in one seamless high performance network without the traditional limitations of distance and WAN bottleneck.

Because it is based on industry standard Ethernet protocols and interfaces, Metro Ethernet integrates easily with enterprise applications and network devices, providing a very scalable foundation for distributed transaction processing and other production workflows, as well as emerging voice and video over IP services. With Metro Ethernet, video- and voice-enabled collaborative conferencing is now feasible, where before it was constrained by limited leased line capacity and expense. In addition to its excellent support for existing applications, Metro Ethernet is enabling new applications that weren't feasible or cost-effective before.

One of the most powerful aspects of Metro Ethernet is the ability to use software to increase or decrease the bandwidth provided to the enterprise in a granular way from one megabit to Gigabit speeds. This software-based approach to provisioning is much more flexible than the 'forklift" network upgrades associated with traditional circuit-based networks - e.g. from E1 to E3. Software controls let enterprises pay for just the bandwidth they need, when they need it. Metro Ethernet software provisioning can move capacity from megabits to gigabits and back again, responding rapidly to seasonal demand, video training sessions, special commercial events and dynamic business cycles.

Freedom of Location

With Metro Ethernet, enterprises can reduce costs by relocating storage and disaster recovery facilities to an area with much lower lease costs. With 10 or 100 megabit or greater Ethernet connection between main offices and backup data centre, the WAN is no longer a bottleneck or a major application design issue.

With Metro Ethernet the enterprise can now use real-time database replication to mirror production databases into the disaster recover centre, creating complete transactional redundancy. In this scenario, a company could lose its entire production data centre and still serve customers without a glitch. Metro Ethernet gives the enterprise the business continuity it needs at a cost it can afford.

Metro Ethernet also lets teams working closely together regardless of where they are located through high-resolution video and voice conferencing and multimedia enabled workflows.

Whether it’s tying together corporate sites, enabling new applications or creating highly collaborative teams of corporate users, Metro Ethernet is a truly scalable and open-ended technology that's fast becoming an essential component of e-business infrastructure.

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