The LAN has left the Building
December 3, 2009 Leave a Comment
In 1973, Ethernet was invented, and went from 4Mbp/s to 10Gbp/s in 30 years. But it’s the last 5 years that will revolutionise the communications market. 
Today’s Enterprises are consuming megabits at an alarming rate simply to meet the demands of today’s server centric applications but this appetite is about to rocket with the adoption of SaaS and Cloud based applications. As applications become truly network centric the demands placed on the Wide Area Network will multiply, so will complexity and thus so will cost. Don’t panic…
In my best Elvis acent Ladeez n Genillmen; Thu LAN hayuz leff thuh Beolding.
35 years later its LAN not WAN technologies that are fixing the bandwidth the challenge. Ethernet WAN services are revolutionising wide area connectivity by removing the glass ceiling of capacity, simplifying end points and providing connections that can used for desperate applications such as Video, Voice, Data and Internet thus lowering the total cost of communications.
Buyer beware; Ethernet is more than an access technology, carriers who simply use it to give access to their MPLS cores are only providing a fraction of its benefit, yes you will get cheaper access but having 100Mbp/s pipe into your MPLS provider and only using 20Mbp/s is pointless especially when it takes them 20 days to upgrade it…
So Ethernet is a silver bullet for communications, but only if the core provider it connects you too can compliment it. Ethernet WANs should provide flexible bandwidth for multiple applications, upgradable at an instant, and allow the removal of legacy “one pipe per application” connections. Embracing Ethernet without a clear consolidation strategy is madness; contact Varidion today and we’ll show you how to reduce costs and increase business performance with our VPLS powered Ethernet WAN service.
The LAN has left the building….don’t be left out!
Clearly Tarmacadam. It has a few years on Ethernet. The first Tar road was laid in Bagdad circa 8th Centaury AD, a few years before Robert Metcalf and David Boggs published their paper in 1973 outlining a successful Multipoint shared Network running locally at 3Mbp/s. 40 years later, Ethernet Networks are delivering 10Gbp/s allowing CIOs to adopt virtualisation, rich media and ignore network quality as bandwidth is now so plentiful. While LANs race towards 100Gbp/s the network connectivity that needs to go beyond the LAN has struggled to keep pace, actually local traffic has never been an issue for most, it’s the WAN that’s still expensive and slow
