Atm Service Providers

A medical online service provider, in a normal sense, is a person who works as an appointment scheduler and also as a receptionist. In a way, virtual 24/7 online schedulers conducts self-service based patient appointment scheduling. The online mode of these service providers is involved in the 24/7 working of these virtual schedulers.

The virtual medical online service provider is very much easy to use. What is IT Service?

Well - IT Services or Information Technology Services can be any service an IT company provides to customers, such as computer system support, networks, applications, phones, faxes, web pages, and so on.

Inter-site Ethernet

A guide to choosing your Ethernet service provider

Businesses that choose Ethernet-based connectivity for their corporate Local and Wide Area Networks can expect greatly increased productivity and profitability, as well as significant competitive advantage, from the capacity to introduce new applications and services to customers and staff. When choosing an Ethernet service provider, companies need to consider a range of factors including: the fibre-based coverage offered by the provider the methods used to protect, optimise and guarantee network performance the price and flexibility of deploying future services. More and more enterprises are choosing Ethernet connectivity for Internet Protocol (IP) services %u2013 not just for their Local Area Networks (LANs) but also as a means of easily, flexibly and cost-effectively connecting geographically spread sites.

Ethernet offers superior network performance at vastly reduced cost compared to traditional Leased Lines or services based on Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) or Frame Relay transport technologies. 2 Business drivers

There are compelling business reasons why companies are embracing Ethernet as their connectivity of choice for the corporate LAN and Wide Area Network (WAN):

-u2022 major cost savings

-u2022 improved business protection

-u2022 greater productivity and customer service.

2.1 Major cost savings

Integrating WAN and LAN into a single, national Ethernet-based LAN generates considerable cost savings for a number of reasons.

Reduced price & flexibility of bandwidth

Bandwidth on Ethernet is less expensive than bandwidth on Frame Relay or ATM-based networks and you only pay for the bandwidth you actually need. Where providers offer scalable bandwidth upgrades, you can initially set lower capacity while you determine your network%u2019s needs, then increase capacity as and when required, easily and cheaply, without having to replace the fibre over which the service runs.

consolidate servers and storage networks to facilitate their management and reduce IT costs Take advantage of multimedia applications to improve business practices and customer service, such as delivering interactive training courses with live video Use Voice over IP to enhance staff productivity by introducing hot-desking move to thin clients within a web-based software architecture, saving capital equipment costs (servers and software) and minimising hardware wastage. The reduced cost and greater bandwidth flexibility of intersite Ethernet enables you to be confident that your network availability will be robust enough to support new services, as well as increasing the performance of existing applications.

Reduced hardware

Facilities management

Before Metro and National Ethernet services became widely available, companies had two main options for their network management. An Ethernet-based network also gives you flexibility in where you centralise your network management. According to Ovum 1 , 70% of the cost savings from consolidating network resources comes from such staff and accommodation cost reductions.

Reduced staff costs

The overall staff costs of managing a single Ethernet network are lower than with ATM/Frame Relay-based networks, because Ethernet skills are widely available and cheaper to recruit than WAN/router specialists.

Simplified management

Lower maintenance

Centralising the management of the network also simplifies system monitoring and back-up, substantially reducing the level of maintenance needed on the network.

The optimal network

2.3 Improved business protection

Ensuring business continuity

For example, over an Ethernet network, it is easy to mirror corporate databases in real time. 2.4 Greater productivity & customer service

The benefits of Ethernet-based networks can also enable you to explore new ways to increase staff productivity and levels of customer service to gain a valuable edge over your competitors.

Deliver improved service to customers

Deliver new services to customers

For example, nowadays, most telephony providers, utilities and banks provide billing and customer service information online. Ethernet's affordable high throughput of data means that it is well-suited to support such services by enabling them to be delivered cost effectively and quickly over a high quality network.

Deliver new services to employees:

VoIP & video

3 Underlying Ethernet technologies

There are numerous technologies and connection mechanisms that can underpin an Ethernet service. 3.1 Short haul & Metro Ethernet

Point-to-point Ethernet services are based on supplying a dedicated fibre pair for each connection, which is physically laid through the service provider's local hub site. Multi-site Ethernet services for the metro (regional) area often use switched Ethernet technology and do not usually touch a core network. This delivers better performance than a service that traverses a provider's core network. The ideal provider is one with good local presence and an extensive national core network, which can provide a combination of both short and long haul Ethernet services.

3.2 Long haul Ethernet

In the case of long haul or National Ethernet, a portion of the service is usually carried over some form of core network. 3.2.3 Virtual Private LAN Services

VPLS enhances a service provider's MPLS core network by providing a connectionless Ethernet service, delivering anyto-any connectivity, and gives far greater flexibility, scalability and cost efficiency when it comes to managing traffic flows. VPLS also allows multiple services to be delivered to customers over single rather than multiple access circuits.

3.2.4 Developing carrier Ethernet solutions

Technologies such as Provider Backbone Transport (PBT) claim to provide Ethernet services which aim to match traditional networks delivering Quality of Service (QoS) and protected paths.

4 Choosing your Ethernet service provider

Several UK service providers offer National and Metro (regional) Ethernet services, and any evaluation to differentiate between them should consider:

- network performance

- flexibility to add future services

- terms and coverage of Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

- security.

With most Ethernet services, the dedicated access circuit is generally the highest cost component, while shared resources such as the service provider's core network provide significant economies of scale, and are a small proportion of cost to the service provider. likely the service provider will be able to provide a low cost circuit. 4.3 Network performance

When replacing inter-site networks that use technologies like ATM or Leased Lines, it is important that the new network matches the performance of the old, not least because users do not appreciate cost savings at the expense of network performance. When considering Ethernet services, you should be aware of the following:

With packet-based networks like Ethernet, particularly those delivered over a shared core network, it is possible for service providers to contend their network in the same way that Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) broadband internet access is contended to reduce the service provider's cost per customer. Latency, packet loss and jitter

As latency, packet loss and jitter significantly impact the delivery of Voice and Video over IP, inter-site performance should ideally match LAN performance.

Voice

Voice over IP requires low latency, low jitter and moderate levels of packet loss and a network that can also manage a high volume of small voice packets (typically 40bytes). Video

Data

Performance of existing applications

Ethernet Latency

Some service providers quote "round trip delay," which is simply double the latency figure.

Latency is measured in milliseconds. Jitter

Packet loss

inter-site network. Almost all types of packet, frame or cell-based networks lose a small amount of traffic. Choosing a service provider whose network has a low packet loss is therefore important.

4.4 Flexibility to add future services

An inter-site service that is future-proof will be able to support new applications as they are introduced further down the line. Supporting Virtual Private LAN Services

Not all Ethernet inter-site services are based on state-of-the-art technology such as MPLS, some are even based on ATM. Whilst Ethernet presentation of ATM services brings some of the benefits delivered by true switched Ethernet services, it suffers significant drawbacks.

MPLS-based or true switched Ethernet-based services, by contrast, don't suffer from this limitation so there's no need to investigate the packet sizes of your existing network traffic. MPLS-based core networks make it possible to deliver potentially attractive services such as Virtual Private LAN Service. VPLS permits national end-to-end Ethernet (i.e. Layer 2) services to support any-to-any or peer-to-peer traffic, making network management much easier and enabling new applications to be plugged in as and when required at vastly lower cost than in a multipoint network.

4.5 Terms & coverage of Service Level Agreements

Look for providers that include all elements of the service, including the access circuits.

Security is an important concern with any network. None of the inter-site Ethernet products on the market today rely on the internet as the backbone network. However, if any of your sites have an internet connection, adequate inter-site and internet security solutions must be put in place by the service provider. Ethernet-based connectivity for corporate LAN and WAN offers broad business benefits. A massive growth in spend on Ethernet services by UK companies is being fuelled by their recognition that this mode of transport for IP services gives superior technical performance at a vastly reduced cost than traditional Frame Relay or ATM technologies. - save costs

- facilitate network management

- protect business continuity

- flexibly develop their business and services

Ethernet connectivity underpins applications like VoIP, multimedia and real-time video to enable you to provide value-added services to customers and staff, such as online provision of information, collaborative working and distance learning.

Checklist for sourcing an Ethernet service provider

Identify cable companies with fibre, not copper-based coverage, that have good local presence and an extensive national core network to enable them to provide a combination of both short and long-haul Ethernet services. Seek evidence that the provider does not over-provision capacity, which will degrade the performance of your network, but instead offers end-to-end Ethernet services. Look also for providers that publish and include target levels for network availability within their SLAs. Check the terms on which support services such as fault resolution are delivered, to guarantee the level of service you are paying for. Choose a provider that can provide the requisite security applications and measures to safeguard your network from attack and potentially crippling outages.