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jerichorivera
Asked: 2011-09-29 04:55:16 +0800 CST

Carrier ethernet vs Metro ethernet or any other alternative?

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We have three remote offices (office A, B, and C), two (Office B and C) of them need to access the Linux file server and web application server in Office C. We also need to administer the network of the Office B and C from Office A, the network is comprised of servers, wireless routers and workstations. We also have a need to synchronize our database from Office B and C to the central database on Office A.

I am not really an expert on network technologies but our service provider offered Carrier Ethernet and Metro Ethernet to support our needs. Question is - which one is better for us in terms of scalability, reliability and quality of service?

EDIT

We are thinking of getting a 20Mbps pipe and share the bandwidth to all three offices (if possible) and we basically control (by traffic shaping) the allowable bandwidth per network. I don't know if I explained this very well.

networking internet ethernet

2 Answers

  1. Which carrier? Those are just marketing terms and don't actually have any intrinsic meaning. If I had to guess, one of them might be able to pass VLANs and one would not, but we'd need to see the spec sheets to be sure.

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  2. The way I understand it Carrier Ethernet is the same as Metro Ethernet, except that it can extended beyond the the city you are working within. It is mostly a matter of marketing - you should expect to pay more if your connection needs to leave your metropolitan area.

    I connected together four sites with Metro Ethernet at my last place of employment. You really need to have a handle on your bandwidth, latency, etc requirements between your sites. One of my locations could likely have been handled with bonded T1s. That would have saved my company over $2000 a month.

    EDIT - Based on your suggested requirement of 20 megabits per second I would suggest the use of one of the Ethernet solutions. We also looked into using either microwave wireless links or site to site T1s. In the end the tipping point was around 15 megabits a second if my memory serves - it was a few years ago. We did seriously consider the use use of the microwave links but it required line of site which was not available for all of our locations.

    EDIT 2 - Also be aware that not all providers will cover all locations. I needed to mix and match Sprint and ATT service in order to cover all our locations. Doing so does produce significant cost overhead.

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