My curiosity of the internet and telephony began during the Netscape, Compuserve, and AOL days of the mid 90s. It was a 1200 baud, later 2400, and finally 1400 kpbs modem that took the copper wire or plain old telephone service dial tone and rung out to a bullet board service someone could host out of their house. AOL and Compuserve were the big BBS at the time hosting fun chat rooms and original content.
The internet took over the moderate to avid computer user crowd around ’95. I remember researching the local Bay Area computer magazine for dial up internet hosting providers. Then you go home and sift through several pages of documentation to get the dialup protocol to work with your computer’s Netscape browser. 
Apparently, building computers, setting up a home network, dialing other friends to play doom, and establishing an Internet connection were respectable enough credentials to get me a job at local big name software company in their telecommunications department. We setup RAS equipment and later ISDN equipment for the Bobs. RAS is short for remote access servers. U.S. robotics sold us these big hunking box that card slots filled with modems not to serve a BBS but internet and Lotus Domino email for many large corporations.
Cheaper and faster technology that we all know and despise called cable and DSL modems, all but eliminating the need for a 2 channel ISDN circuit. Speed doubled overnight but T1 circuits (displayed above) were still mainstream for most businesses. Fiber infrastructure has built out in most metropolitan cities to improve these technologies but the last mile is still older copper technologies limiting the potential for extremely high speeds.
Fiber offers from local providers in metro areas can be found now replacing the old T1 1.5 megabit circuit. It could be found a decade ago for $1400. That same price can get you now a 250 megabit both up and down fiber circuit. Obviously, the legacy T1 circuit has dropped in price to about $200 or $300. It’s popular for voice SIP trunking and stable data connection but should be at the sunset of its career if they telco carriers got their act together.
You should know your options whether you are a residential customer being offered services backed by fancy marketing in otherwise mostly deficient setup known as U-verse or a business upgrading your lines for both voice and data. There’s a lot out there left to be desired. Talking to the sales person will get you a very limited and distorted view of your options. U-verse MO along w many other carriers is to increase margins without spending a dime more on the last mile for residential unless there’s competition from the likes of Google Fiber. Business can be a different story. The providers will subsidize the cost if they can get enough businesses in the area to agree to long term contracts. I can digress further but this informational post will then become a rant. It’s best to call a good IT consulting company for internet and phone line support in San Diego, also known as a site assessment or discovery before committing to any long term contract that you will regret immediately.
Below is your quick sheet of terms or lingo used in the industry:
Pairs
Pairs typically means the potential for dial tone from a copper (POTS) line. However, a dry pair was originally used with a security system but more recently used in DSL and PRI circuits. New building require pairs from the street to provide dial tone and therefore internet connectivity. A T1 can connect on a single pair to the NIU (card in the glass box you always see in a server room)
Circuits
T1 (Ethernet over DS1) internet circuit. T1 also come in PRI interface with 24 channels for up to 23 outbound/inbound calls from an organization at a time.
Fiber is the faster but more expensive alternative to the T1.
Fiber Circuits
- 1 pair = 1 circuit
- Dark Fiber is unused fiber
Running Fiber
- Single Mode is mean for much longer distances than multi-mode. Typically runs at 10 gigs speeds and connect to switches.
- Multi-mode fiber is faster but runs less than a half mile or 2000’.
ISP Fiber
- Time Warner Cable Fiber Metro E while not end to end or point to point if you lay your own fiber does offer fast of 250 meg up/down for around $1400
Phones
Polycom is the standard in managed VoIP. PBX setup calls but phones communicate directly once setup.
Legacy PBX and RAS equipment
Connect to PRI T1 circuits. Legacy PBX are very limited in functionality. Leased T1 lines maintains the ability to call extensions rather than dial out.
Hosted PBX AKA Hosted Voice
This eliminates the need for an IT guy to manage or administrate another network device. Contains Edgemarc Networks edge device. Edgemarc is a voice router or proxy. It routes traffic to a PBX in the cloud. The phones talks to the Edgemarc using the SIP, a voice protocol. The Edgemarc talk to the hosted PBX again using SIP. Hosted PBX typically lacks Unified Communications. Megapath’s website said Hosted Voice now bundled with Unified Communications will be available in a week.
SIP Trunk
IP PBX is on-site. Manage your own PBX or lease one from your provider. Reduce the cost of the internet circuit by getting two DSL dry loops for an under 5 user environment. One for SIP and one for business internet traffic.
With SIP service, you purchase only the trunks you need based on the maximum number of concurrent calls your business requires. SIP Trunks are significantly less expensive than analog lines, further helping businesses reduce costs.
With SIP Trunking, the internet replaces the traditional trunk (a line/link that carries multiple signals at once, connecting centers and nodes in a communications system). In doing this, users are able to communicate with both fixed and mobile subscribers all over the world.
SIP gateway- This is where outgoing/receiving calls originate from.
Popular Types of WAN Connections
T1 – Voice technology that’s been around since the early 70s that later introduced data traffic on the circuit
Ethernet over Copper – 20 megs down option. More expensive than T1
Cable Internet – Cheaper but less reliable. No QOS
DSL – Cheap. Setup SIP Trunk to reduce cost for under 5 users environment. Order one DSL for internet, one for SIP.
SIP gateway- This is where outgoing/receiving calls originate from.
Fiber – OC3 is a popular choice.
The following list shows some of the common line designations:
- DS0 – 64 kilobits per second
- ISDN – Two DS0 lines plus signaling (16 kilobytes per second), or 128 kilobits per second
- T1 – 1.544 megabits per second (24 DS0 lines)
- T3 – 43.232 megabits per second (28 T1s)
- OC3 – 155 megabits per second (84 T1s)
- OC12 – 622 megabits per second (4 OC3s)
- OC48 – 2.5 gigabits per seconds (4 OC12s)
- OC192 – 9.6 gigabits per second (4 OC48s) Fiber
Bring Your Own Bandwidth BYOB
Cable SIP Trunking and Hosted PBX can be standalone options. You don’t need a bundled ISP player.
Additional Lingo
Cable Internet:
Medical Practice Telephone Infrastructure Example:
Modems contain 12 (aka channels) phone lines coming into the office for voice.
8 lines on modem 1
4 lines on modem 2
Modem 3 contains segmented internet connection. 25/2 meg
Internet and Phone Line Support in San Diego Future
Depending if you are a business or residence your future varies. ATT continues to look at more and more wireless options to avoid paying hard wired infrastructure upkeep. Look no further than the DirecTV deal. There are joint trenching projects in around the community to give fiber roll outs a chance to be deployed close and closer to your house. Cox has been good to the business community. They are aggressively deploying high speed infrastructure to small and large business if the math works. To give you an idea of that math, it’s $30,000 to trench across the street for laying fiber and whatever else. It will be tough them to push it out much further in older communities unless more competition is available.
References:
http://getvoip.com/blog/2013/01/24/differences-between-sip-trunking-and-hosted-pbx
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