What Is The Ideal Bandwidth Solution For Critical Business Applications?

By Michael Lemm

When deciding on a bandwidth solution for your business's computer network architecture there are many options to choose from .... and even more factors to consider in the process. Be sure to assess both business and technology implications to arrive at the best choice.

First, the increased availability of metrics for SONET-based facilities through the use of APS and rings (folded on traditional such as BLSR) should be considered. A well designed SONET - based interconnect or network can achieve 99.999% availability. This is something typical electronic interfaces would be hard pressed to do without gobs of additional complexity and layers.

Next concatenated STS-1 provide great flexibility to data-enabled equipment, permitting network operators to run larger and larger virtual pipes into their gear. In a data-centric world such as POE, MPLS and ATM .... this is invaluable. Replicating such flexibility with copper-based solutions is a kludge, not plausible, or a near impossibility.

Remember too that SONET-based solutions are pretty much limited to mostly North-American eye balls. If you were to open the scope to include SDH-based solutions, your addressable options now become global as far as installation locales.

Another factor for consideration is that SONET ADM and next generation multi-service switches permit an extraordinary amount of flexibility with regard to MUX/drop options, and have several OSI layers of ability and configuration within the single platform. This heavy reduces the amount of boxes required to complete the same functionality, as well as simplifies the overall network topology.

Lastly, the cost per usable Mbps payload drops considerably as you move up the bandwidth ladder. For example, the costs of a DS-1 worth of bandwidth plummets as you move from an OC-3, to OC-12, to an OC-48, etc.

But keep in mind that the geography where your business is located will yield different solutions. For example, you may be able to work on OC-3 Sonnet rings with dual entry points to your install Premise. This solution is far more bullit proof than any other solution because it is connected to multiple CO's .... and there is a backup ring that travels in an opposite direction from the primary ring. Plus the provider may well do the build out at no NRC to a bsuiness customer. Also, you may be able to bury the MRC so that the loop cost essentialy goes away.
This type of buildout would normally cost between 350K and 475K through Qwest, Verizon or sprint .... and also have a similar MRC associated with it.

Now although the option of Metro Ethernet in this case is cheap bandwidth .... there is still a single point of failure with this product. Thus Metro E may not be the best choice if your applications can not tolerate single point failures.

This is an example of how every company will have slightly different needs .... and a solution at this level should be evaluated carefully.

Many suppliers will offer various options, but increasingly businesses are coming over to Ethernet based solutions. Smaller locations can be connected using 10 or 100 mbps Ethernet, often for the same price as SDSL. For a hub you want Gig-E or 10 Gig-E, and with the ability to provide point to multipoint or even meshed configurations. In this case Ethernet has much more flexibility than point to point circuits.

Ethernet can and does come in many different flavours. Over SDH or SONET you get guaranteed throughput ..... and either "all you can eat" bandwidth or upgradable in T1/E1 increments (depending on platform it can be even smaller increments).

Many platforms also allow flexible usage also. Pay for what you need only, but still be allowed to burst high for periods of time. This is very handy for backing up those application servers to a disaster recovery site overnight.

Ethernet is also available over SDH/SONET. So if a T1 or E1 is more cost effective, you still get the low cost of the Ethernet port to plug your equipment in. Naturally too Ethernet supports IP. So you can buy your Ethernet at Layer 2 or 3 - depending on your own organizations requirements for security, ease of management, and so forth.

Of course OCx and STM-y still have their place in the world. But with interfaces now going up towards 100 G for Metro and Long Haul .... Ethernet will continue to scale in speed and grow in popularity. The attractiveness once driven primarily by cost effectiveness is fast adding performance as a factor.

So there you have it. Your primary options for high demand critical business applications should be SONET based OCx solutions .... and Ethernet based solutions. Remember to weigh both your specific business and technology implications in your decision. Whatever direction you go in ..... do your homework and choose wisely.

Michael is the owner of FreedomFire Communications....including DS3-Bandwidth.com and Business-VoIP-Solution.com. Michael also authors Broadband Nation where you're always welcome to drop in and catch up on the latest BroadBand news, tips, insights, and ramblings for the masses.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Lemm

Eight Barriers to Critical Thinking

By Gene Pinder

All too often we fall prey to patterns of thought that are comfortable to us without analyzing their effectiveness. When this happens we may not get the desired results because we haven’t asked the right questions or asked enough of them to arrive at the best response to a problem.
Researchers and management specialists have identified more than 100 different barriers that prevent effective critical thinking, but there are eight roadblocks that all executives should burn into their memory. To help remember these eight, here is an acronym for them – CAT MAGIC.

1. Confirmation bias –
bending evidence to fit one’s beliefs. How many times do executives look for information that supports their point of view as opposed to seeking evidence that is individually or group “neutral?” “The best way to fight this natural temptation of confirmation bias is to actively seek information that disproves your beliefs.

2. Attribution (or self-serving) bias –
the belief that good things happen to us because of internal factors and bad things happen to us because of external factors, while the reverse is true with others. This bias causes us to pigeonhole the actions of others, especially bad behavior, as strictly the fault of the individual and not circumstances.

3. Trusting testimonial evidence –
the fallacy of believing information from someone else, even if there is no evidence to support their statements. Studies have consistently shown individuals are more likely to buy something on the recommendation of others than the strength of advertising or some other marketing effort, yet how many of those same people actually know the veracity of those recommendations?

4. Memory lapses –
while this barrier seems on the surface to be fairly self-explanatory (everybody has gaps in memory), its danger lies in the common human trait of filling in the memory gaps with information that may or may not be true. In other words, we make things up as we go along, which often prevents us from arriving at more fact-based decisions.

5. Accepting authority without question –
a behavior documented by the famous experiments of researcher Stanley Milgram in which many people were willing to administer increasingly more powerful shocks to other people on the orders of an authority figure, even though they weren’t sure it was the right thing to do. This critical thinking failure continues to manifest itself today in the blind acceptance to people with questionable degrees or expertise.

6. Generalizing from too few observations –
a common practice in consumer marketing where a small group of people in a focus group determine the direction of multi-million dollar ad campaigns, even though the opinions of those people cannot be projected onto a larger population. The same occurrence happens when a small group of executives or board members discuss an issue. We must constantly resist the temptation to take these informational shortcuts. For example, one way to counter the built-in bias of small groups is to seek out the unvarnished input from employees lower on the organizational chart.

7. Ignorance and the failure to admit it –
a trait that leads to fabricated information and wild speculation. Nobody wants to look foolish, so instead of admitting his or her lack of knowledge a person may fake it and then explain the fakery in a way that makes it seem true. Beware of those who are quick with answers or slow to admit they don’t know something.

8. Coincidence (or the Law of Truly Large Numbers) –
the mistaken belief that pieces of information have causality when, in fact, they are the result of a pure coincidence or the law of large numbers. Any large block of data will show connections, but those connections most likely have no other meaning. For example, some hospital CEOs will likely have red hair, but no other link can be made between being a CEO and red hair. Yet, we often attach causal links to events or date where no links exist.

Like any other behavior in life worth doing, good critical thinking is all about turning ideas into habitual behavior. You first have to recognize that their critical thinking skills might not be up to par and then you must go about improving them. Only when you start applying those news skills again and again to a variety of circumstances will the skills stick and generate results.
Critical thinking must become a force of habit for top leaders, much like their breathing. It must become part of your leadership core.

Gene Pinder is the assistant director of executive programs for the Department of Health Policy and Administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and president of PinOak Analytics, a market research and consulting firm.

Web Business Building - Four Critical Steps to Web Business IV

By Sean Mize

You can certainly make money by placing E-Zine Ads, and driving people to your website. I have done some of that: some of them have been productive--some haven't. Press releases--you can do press releases. I've done some Joint Ventures. Some of them are horrible. Some of them make me some money.

Sometimes I think that I'll never do another joint-venture. But, Article Marketing--I have complete control over. I write the articles. I tell people that they could download this particular book, and they do. So, I have a lot of control over it--I like Article Marketing. However you go, you have to have traffic.

Number four: you've got to have products. And, I'm going to stress here: products.
You have to have that free giveaway to make something work. When you're first getting started--you need a low-priced product. Why do you need to start with a low-priced product? Because, frankly, you don't have the experience online to create a four-hundred, or a two-hundred page manual, and sell it for a hundred dollars. It might take you a year to create that manual. However, if you start small--come up with a thirty or forty page manual--sell it for ten dollars, or twenty-five dollars.

It gives people an opportunity to get to know you, without risking a lot of money. Think about it. If you sell something for ten dollars to somebody that doesn't know you very well, then they might feel a little bit more comfortable about that than if it was a hundred dollars. Because, a hundred dollars--they might really be thinking, -am I really going to get my money back if it's no good?

If it's a ten dollar or hundred dollar product then maybe they're thinking--well, hopefully it's a good product. But, if it's not, well, I only just lost ten bucks. Then what happens folks--this is critical. After you've created that ten dollar product, and people buy that ten dollar product, and they realize that it was worth something and they didn't throw their money away. Now, every single person that's bought that ten dollar product, or twenty-five dollar product, that liked it, is now a candidate for your fifty dollar, or your one-hundred dollar product.

Your hundred-page manual. Your step-by-step guide. Your collection of cd's. Ya'know.
Whatever it is that you create. So, I really want to focus on building a sales-funnel. As much as we talk about list-building, as much as we talk about traffic--if you don't have any products, you can't monetize any of it.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘
Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 1200 articles in print and 9 published ebooks.

Web Business Building - Four Critical Steps to Web Business III

By Sean Mize

The third that you need is traffic. I know I talk a lot about Article Marketing. Why do I talk a lot about Article Marketing? Because, that's kind of my specialty--that's kind of my targeted niche. That's the thing that I've very, very good at. That's where I drive eighty, ninety--right now I'm driving about ninety-five percent of my traffic, just through Article Marketing. I have all--just under fourteen-hundred personally written articles on E-Zine Articles dot com. So, I believe a lot in Article Marketing.

But, there's some other forms of traffic. There's PPC. You can do classified ads. You can do E-Zine ads. You can write press-releases. You can do Joint Ventures. Now, and there's other things that you could do for traffic, too, that are reasonable.

And, I will tell you this: from my personal experience--from me personally--it may be different for you. But, for me, personally, Article Marketing is easier to do than anything else out there.
I've spent a lot of money testing and trying pay-per-clicks. And, I haven't been very effective at it. And, if pay-per-click was the way that I was driving all of my traffic--I wouldn't have done eleven-thousand dollars of last month. I believe that with all of my heart.

Are there people out there that make a lot of money using pay-per-click? Certainly. They've taken the time and spent the money--they put as much effort into pay-per-click as I put into Article Marketing. Same thing with E-Zine Ads.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘
Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 1200 articles in print and 9 published ebooks.

Web Business Building - Four Critical Steps to Web Business II

By Sean Mize

First thing is--you have to find a niche. The tighter your niche, the better. The higher--the tighter your niche--the higher price you can charge for the product. Now, several of you on this call have good, strong, well-defined niches. Some of you do not--you've got a very generic niche.
If you have a very generic niche--I would ask myself--what can I do? Who is a part of this niche who is, perhaps, of the smaller part of this niche, than what I'm servicing right now? If I could meet some very specific needs, of some very specific people in my niche--could I charge a higher price? Could I become unique? Could I become the very best in my tight niche?
Number two: you have to build a list--you have to build a list. And, we've talked about it a lot.

I've talked about it in this call--I've talked about probably on every other call. And, you read something in email I send you every single day. If you're reading my new articles as I publish them--in E-Zine Articles dot com--I continue to talk about this. You need to have a list. Why do you need to have a list? Because you want to be able to send people back to your website. You want to be able to build a relationship with people. People do not buy from you because you have a pretty looking sales page. They do not buy from you because you're an awesome sales writer.

They buy from you because they develop a relationship with you. And, they trust you, and, they trust your judgment. And, they purchase from you, because they believe that what you produce is going to be of the same quality as that relationship that you've created.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘
Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 1200 articles in print and 9 published ebooks.

Web Business Building - Four Critical Steps to Web Business I

By Sean Mize

There are four things that are critical to building a big web-business. I'm going to give you these four in a specific order. This order, however, is just specific to me. If you were to ask anybody out there, they might change the order around a little bit.

They might have a different name for each one of these things that I'm talking about. I think that that's one of the things that happens when we get online--especially for newbies. You buy a step-by-step program-- a super-duper system for making success online. And you try it and you go through it and you get to about step three, and you just don't get it.

Or, you think that step just doesn't make sense. And so you skip it. And, then you get to step four and it becomes very difficult now. And, now you realize you needed step three--but, you have a hard time going back. You don't know where to get to. Sometimes it's just so easy to just blame the system.

And, then you go out there and you buy another system--and this time you get to step five. I want to give you a concept here, that transcends all systems. Every system out there that is designed, is simply a way to get the job done. These are the four things that you have to.

Now, you can make these into twenty-five different points, and call it a system. And, then you can mix and match all the points and call it a different system. But, I'm going to give you the basics of what has to be done. And, then, through the course of learning--you need to learn how to do each one of these things.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘
Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 1200 articles in print and 9 published ebooks.