The unique Public/Private T1

Company Network Design

The T1 Company offers fast, highly reliable, secure and available network connectivity based on private point-to-point leased lines in a hub and spoke topology.

Think of The T1 Company serving as the “telecommunications nucleus” for your organization. Most would describe our network topology as a hybrid cloud, but we prefer to be more descriptive and talk specifically about the “private side” and the “public side” of our cloud.

The foundation of our network is centered within the collocation facilities (or data centers) that house The T1 Company network access and telecommunications processing equipment.

All data centers are SSAE 16 compliant and provide near constant availability including redundant power, dual entrance facilities, environmental conditioning, perimeter security, fire suppression, etc.

The T1 Company network is built and runs almost exclusively on Cisco Systems hardware. At the core of the network is a Cisco Aggregation Services Router (or ASR) 1013 to facilitate flexible, efficient, and cost-effective delivery of complex business services including real-time applications like video and hosted VoIP.

Data Center

Cisco Aggregation Services Router

Here is our Data Center, with the Cisco ASR core aggregation router.

Here is a simple network drawing to show all the components…

Data Center

Cisco Aggregation Services Router

Carrier

POP

Fiber Cross Connect

TDM/Ethernet Services

The router is connected via fiber optic cable to various carrier networks that are housed within the same Data Center facility. Multiple fibers connect to multiple carriers allowing the T1 Company to offer both TDM and Ethernet private line services.

Data Center

Cisco Aggregation Services Router

Carrier

POP

Fiber Cross Connect

TDM/Ethernet Services

AcmeChicago

AcmeDallas

AcmeCleveland

AcmeAtlanta

DS1

DS3

1Gb Ethernet

20Mb Ethernet

These carrier network providers facilitate the fan-out and delivery of private point-to-point leased line circuits that include traditional TDM (DS1, DS3, OCn), and Ethernet Private Line (10Mb, 20Mb, 50Mb, 100Mb, 1Gb, 10Gb) connections. Using our illustration of multi-location ACME company, we have now created a fully meshed, any-to-any intra-company WAN based on private point-to-point leased lines.

Data CenterCisco

Aggregation Services Router

Carrier

POP

Fiber Cross Connect

TDM/Ethernet Services

AcmeChicago

AcmeDallas

AcmeCleveland

DS1

DS3

1Gb Ethernet

20Mb Ethernet

Cisco Router

Acme Atlanta

ASAFirewa

ll NInternet

1Gb

1Gb

But…our customers also need access to the public Internet and to individuals and companies outside of their organization. The T1 Company accommodates this need via multiple connections to the public Internet configured for redundancy and failover. In addition, The T1 Company offers managed hosted Internet firewall protection via redundant Cisco ASA hardware.

Data Center

Cisco Aggregation Services RouterCarri

erPOP

Fiber Cross Connect

TDM/Ethernet Services

AcmeChicago

AcmeDallas

AcmeCleveland

DS1

DS3

1Gb Ethernet

20Mb Ethernet

Cisco Router

Acme Atlanta

ASAFirewa

ll NInternet

1Gb

1Gb

PrivatePublic

So…what we have now is really the best of both worlds. A private intra-company network with ultra-low latency between locations over private point-to-point leased lines, with redundant large capacity Internet access pipes secured with central and managed firewalls. This topology is the secret to our success, and has allowed our customers to support video conferencing, Citrix sessions and other latency sensitive applications without worrying about congestion or other issues, leading our customers to ask “Can you handle my voice traffic, too”?

Data Center Cisco

Aggregation Services Router

Carrier

POP

Fiber Cross Connect

TDM/Ethernet Services

AcmeChicago

AcmeDallas

AcmeCleveland

DS1

DS3

1Gb Ethernet

20Mb Ethernet

CiscoVoice Router

Acme Atlanta

ASAFirewa

ll NInternet

1Gb

1Gb

PrivatePublic

Cisco PoE Switch

PC

Data Voice

POTS(911 Compliance)

CiscoUnified Communications Manager

(Call Processing)

CiscoVoIP Gateway

CiscoUnified Messaging

(Voice Mail)

Public SwitchedTelephone Network

PRI

PRI

PRI

With our centralized approach…adding hosted VoIP was easy. Keeping our infrastructure consistent we chose Cisco Unified Communication Manager as our voice processing platform, including Cisco Unified Messaging (Voicemail). At the customer premise we deploy a Cisco voice enabled router, Cisco PoE switches and Cisco 7900 series IP phones. This approach allows T1 Company to manage and control voice quality of service (QoS) right down to the desktop. At least one dedicated analog POTS line is required for 911 compliance.

Data Center Cisco

Aggregation Services Router

Carrier

POP

Fiber Cross Connect

TDM/Ethernet Services

AcmeChicago

AcmeDallas

AcmeCleveland

DS1

DS3

1Gb Ethernet

20Mb Ethernet

CiscoVoice Router

Acme Atlanta

ASAFirewa

ll NInternet

1Gb

1Gb

PrivatePublic

Cisco PoE Switch

PC

Data Voice

POTS(911 Compliance)

CiscoUnified Communications Manager

(Call Processing)

CiscoVoIP Gateway

CiscoUnified Messaging

(Voice Mail)

Public SwitchedTelephone Network

PRI

PRI

PRI

On the “private” side we have created a voice environment supporting 4-digit dialing among all employees, centralized company-wide voicemail and we eliminated the need to have disparate phone systems and associated maintenance cost at each location. But…what about calls to individuals and businesses outside of the company?Quality is key when it comes to processing voice calls. Voice over IP does not have to mean voice over the Internet, and The T1 Company avoids sending any voice traffic out over the Internet. Nearly all voice calls handled by The T1 Company are sent to the old school “Ma Bell” Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) via traditional PRI trunks ensuring that the voice quality is as good (or usually better) than the traditional premise based phone service that we are replacing.

Data Center

Cisco Aggregation Services RouterCarri

erPOP

Fiber Cross Connect

TDM/Ethernet Services

AcmeChicago

AcmeDallas

AcmeCleveland

DS1

DS3

1Gb Ethernet

20Mb Ethernet

CiscoVoice Router

Acme Atlanta

ASAFirewa

ll NInternet

1Gb

1Gb

PrivatePublic

Cisco PoE Switch

PC

Data Voice

POTS(911 Compliance)

CiscoUnified Communications Manager

(Call Processing)

CiscoVoIP Gateway

CiscoUnified Messaging

(Voice Mail)

Public SwitchedTelephone Network

PRI

PRI

PRI

Internet

Cable / DSL

VPN

PC

London Home Office

Noting that one big advantage of VoIP is mobility and the ability to transparently extend the phone system and all its features to teleworkers, we make our hosted VoIP service available to any remote worker with an Internet connection. Since we cannot control quality of service over the Internet we cannot offer the same level of support or quality guarantees that we give with private point-to-point access, but we are currently providing service to hundreds of remote workers located throughout the world using their own Internet connection without issue.

Data Center

Cisco Aggregation Services RouterCarri

erPOP

Fiber Cross Connect

TDM/Ethernet Services

AcmeChicago

AcmeDallas

AcmeCleveland

DS1

DS3

1Gb Ethernet

20Mb Ethernet

CiscoVoice Router

Acme Atlanta

ASAFirewa

ll NInternet

1Gb

1Gb

PrivatePublic

Cisco PoE Switch

PC

Data Voice

POTS(911 Compliance)

CiscoUnified Communications Manager

(Call Processing)

CiscoVoIP Gateway

CiscoUnified Messaging

(Voice Mail)

Public SwitchedTelephone Network

PRI

PRI

PRI

Internet

Cable / DSL

VPN

PC

London Home Office

CiscoUnified Call Center

Call Recording

ConferencingAudio/Web/Video

Online Back-Upand Recovery

Desktop FaxTo further capitalize on our centralized Data Center hub and spoke topology, we have added a host of complementary features at the hub including Unified Call Center, Call Recording, Voice/Data/Video Conferencing, Desktop Fax, Online Back-Up and Recovery and other services that are instantly available to any user or end point connected to the hub.

A Few Final Notes…

A private point-to-point network will always outperform a “virtually” private network that relies on the public Internet

A private point-to-point network is inherently more secure and much easier to monitor and manage

A private point-to-point network provides the ultimate ability to control Quality of Service, including important parameters such as latency, jitter, bandwidth utilization and packet integrity

Every network needs access to the public Internet, but nothing says the public Internet has to be your Wide Area Network, too. Stay private, my friends…