The MegaPath Connectivity Blog

As promised in my post yesterday, I’m pleased to introduce the Connectivity community today to Diane Giuffre, Voice Product Manager here at MegaPath, and a welcome new voice for voice over MPLS solutions. You’ll be hearing regularly from Diane as she takes voice-related questions from you, and helps to develop a deeper discussion about a key focus area for voice solutions at MegaPath: putting the quality back in voice. But first, you need to know a little something about Diane’s background and her tenure in voice communications.

Diane has 25 years experience in telecommunications, 17 of which was spent at MCI Communications.  She spent the first 10 years in voice network engineering, and then made the switch to marketing.  Diane’s product management focus has been on products like voice conferencing, collaboration, unified communications, and VoIP.  Her first introduction to VoIP was in 2004, when MCI rolled out its VoIP audio conferencing product. Subsequent to MCI, Diane worked for a hosted IP PBX company, working on introducing new features.

Fast forward to late 2009 when Diane joined MegaPath and jumped right into the thick of the development process of bringing our latest voice and data service, Duet(SM) Hosted Voice, to market. By now you may have seen yesterday’s announcement on our hosted business voip service, so indeed, Diane’s timing for joining the voice product team could not have been better. On Paul Marra, VP Voice Products’ team, Diane helped to develop what is unique about Duet Hosted. Officially described as a complete, cost-effective hosted IP PBX solution that gives businesses a feature-rich and scalable alternative to traditional phone service and expensive equipment, Duet Hosted is also the industry’s first true, national, Voice over MPLS solution. It’s because of the MegaPath network – the largest broadband reach of any network in North America, and the broadest Quality of Service (QoS)-enabled voice network – that Diane, Paul, and the rest of the voice team can confidently offer any size organization an enterprise-level hosted voice experience. I’m looking forward to the opportunities in this forum to spend some time talking about putting the quality back into voice. I’m also interested in learning more from Diane as she addresses call quality and secure call delivery issues that happen when mission-critical voice services are exposed to the public internet. Priority issue #1: dynamic bandwidth allocation. If you’re a network engineer, that’s an issue near and dear to you. You’re in the right place.

If you have hosted VoIP, integrated voice and data (managed voice services), or QoS questions for Diane, go ahead and submit a comment and she’ll be glad to address them. Stop back soon for regular voice posts from Diane, and feel free to share what you learn.

Ask the Voice Expert, Diane Giuffre

Typical Business Ethernet Customer Premise Device (Hatteras HN400)

We  are living in what will be recognized as a Golden Age of Business Communications, and are enjoying the advantages of a widely interconnected planet in which our customers, partners and team members are able to affordably share information globally, in real time.  There are so many exciting technologies out there, from VoIP to VPNs, from Broadband to Wireless, that is hard to know what to be most excited about.  Personally, though, I am most excited about Business Ethernet in 2010.

Ethernet came into existence at the XEROX Palo Alto Research Center in 1973, when Bob Metcalfe and David Boggs started working on their ‘Alto Ethernet’ concept, which would connect computers together over short distances using coaxial cable.  Now here we are in 2010, and we’re still excited about developments in Ethernet technologies.  We’ve come a long way from the days of  ‘Thick Ethernet’ and ‘Vampire Taps’, and luckily for us, Ethernet has moved from being a LAN technology to being a widely deployed WAN technology.

Business Ethernet offers many advantages to an organization that is looking for a big pipe on a budget.  Offering truly symmetrical service with upload and download speeds of up to 20Mbps, it is the perfect solution for those looking to extend their network reach at a fraction of the cost of a DS3.  The loop is delivered via highly reliable copper bonding technology, and is perfect for businesses deploying VoIP, or who need to move large data sets around.  As a fully managed service, combined with security and pro-active monitoring, it is the perfect solution for any business that need to maximize their resources.

We have delivered Ethernet technologies to many of our customers for years and years, over both coaxial cable within carrier hotels, and over fiber via Metro Ethernet connections.  Delivering Business Ethernet (pdf) services over bonded copper loops allows us to offer more businesses than ever the advantages of a fast, reliable service, backed by a rock solid SLA and by the 24×7x365 availability of the team of engineers in our NOC.

If you find that your current bandwidth needs aren’t being met, you should make sure to speak to us and take advantage of the possibilities Business Ethernet presents.

5 Minutes with Tommy Triplett of Rumbi Island Grill

Is there anything better than a good story? Tommy Triplett was kind enough to tell his story by sharing this video of his customer experience.

For people like us here at MegaPath, where we’re managing network access, voice, and security services to literally thousands of customers in all industries, and solving a very diverse range of network connectivity-based problems for them, we hear customer stories all the time. And that’s great because we just never tire of them. Learning how we helped a customer address their big IT priorities and meet some interesting challenges is the kind of insight that drives us. It’s equally important when we can get a glimpse of typical day-in-the-life stuff that really does matter to our customers.

Watch Tommy describe how MegaPath is helping Rumbi Island Grill, an aggressively expanding Hawaiian restaurant group, put connectivity to work in its 22 locations across Arizona, Colorado, and Utah. Their fun, innovative dining experience is well-served by MegaPath MPLS virtual private network (VPN) , Managed Security, and PCI compliance services. Tommy leads the IT project management team. He was challenged by rolling out new restaurants, but without a cookie-cutter approach to site specs, network user needs and broadband access services. He needed the best-fit type of flexible approach that MegaPath provides in our site-to-site MPLS VPN solutions. We’re helping Rumbi Island Grill to protect their network assets and customer credit card transactions, plus putting access to system status into the hands of Tommy’s team through a customer portal that they “just love”.

Tommy tells their story best, so please watch Success at Rumbi Island Grill.

For more information about how MegaPath ensures PCI compliance for restaurants and retailers like Rumbi Island Grill, start here.

This Sunday at 6:18 pm eastern, will you be tuned to the Colts and Saints game big-screen style? Tapped into an online stream? Both?

Last year’s Super Bowl had a reported audience of 1 Billion worldwide, with broadcasts or online streams to 232 countries and available in 34 languages. Shortly afterwards, CBS announced that they were in talks with the NFL to live stream this year’s Super Bowl XLIV, in addition to the mega TV broadcast programming that American fans have come to expect. You may be asking:  who would be interested in watching an online stream of the Super Bowl when they could watch it on network TV? Turns out plenty of people want that online connection to the big game, for a variety of reasons. The old argument that streaming the game online would cut into the broadcast viewing audience and upset TV advertisers who are investing millions for seconds’ worth of attention just doesn’t pan out.

In an April 15 interview article in BusinessWeek, Brian Rolapp, who leads media strategy for the NFL, noted that the NBC regular season online streaming tests they conducted had revealed the millions of online viewers did not cannibalize the broadcast audience for Sunday games. In fact, they found that ”80% of viewers turned to the streams to complement TV watching, as the Internet version offered four alternative camera angles to supplement NBC’s primary picture.” Clearly fans want to tap into a better, more extensive sports experience, and of course, they want to do it on their terms. Think of the possibilities — the online stream offers you and your Super Bowl party goers stats on all the plays with the ability to display that data by any number of variables. Maybe like a real-time pivot table. Then again if you won’t be parked in front of a big-screen for the game, you may want to rely on a mobile device for on-demand Super Bowl connectivity. Surely someone is thinking of that, since I learned that the ad-supported March Madness stream for the iPhone was an absolute hit. And while Tivo can help viewers watch what they want ad-free, that’s not really an issue for the Super Bowl. This is one day when people tune in to see what the best ads will be. They can vote online for their favorites, and of course, they can vote online for the game MVP. Connectivity and interaction are definitely being force-fed into the Super Bowl experience.

If you’re someone who won’t be in front of a TV for the big game and want to watch it all online, that’s great — provided that network capacity allows the stream to be free of those annoying gaps and pauses that you sometimes experience on Hulu or YouTube. For the network administrators and IT professionals reading this post, you can imagine the bandwidth required to ensure seamless delivery of the Super Bowl to millions of online fans. At MegaPath we work with IT leaders all the time on engineering their network for performance and security in order to ensure their traffic is segregated, optimized and prioritized. Increasingly our customers’ network traffic involves delivery of voice and video applications for their users, and our engineering experts work with them to support those business-critical services and ensure Quality of Service (QoS). It’s an exercise in fine-tuning. Our customers’ organizations are dynamic, and so are the networks that they rely on. Connectivity, flexibility, and application performance are critical to technology providers and users — and while your network may not need to be robust enough to scale to millions of online Super Bowl viewers, your users may not be any less demanding. MegaPath network, voice, and security experts are always ready to answer your questions.

Enjoy the game on Sunday!

Snow plow by Petr Kratochvil

There is word of another Winter Storm heading for the middle of the country, with this article saying that all my friends back in Maryland could be looking at another 12″ to 20″ inches of the white stuff.  While weary of all the snow this winter, the wise among them are still working away.  This is because they developed a  business continuity plan, and took advantage of broadband technologies to stay open, and keep their business going, even when their staff can’t get into the office. 

When Mother Nature decides to blanket a few states with snow and ice, the end result can be Snow Days, where liberal leave policies need to go into effect.  But just because you can’t get out of the house doesn’t mean you can’t make use of a Virtual Private Network to get needed work done.  So, as another blizzard seems to be in the making, I would propose that this is a great time to look into teleworking and other business continuity options that your business can implement to keep connected, even when you can’t get the car out of your driveway (unless your car happens to be a snow plow).