Speedy Connections
If you have a small or big business, you will want to have fast internet connection, and you have control over this. One way to increase speed is to group 28 DS1 channels together and you have a DS3 or digital signal level 3 running at 44.736 Mbps, or 45 Mbps for short. Connect that to a wire circuit and its called a T3. By the way, that T3 line is equivalent to 672 voice channels. DS3 and T3 terms are usually used interchangeably. T3 is the big daddy of the T-carrier system. T3 is copper wire based, although using coaxial cable rather than pairs of phone wires to support the higher speed. If your business class DSL or T1 broadband service no longer has enough speed to meet your bandwidth needs for video or data transfer, you may be considering a move up to DS3 or T3 service. Both DS3 and T3 have their origination in the T-carrier system, originally developed to provide high-speed trunk lines between telephone company offices. Everything is based on DS0, which is a 64K bit per second channel. Group 24 DS0 channels together and you have a DS1. When the DS1 is connected to a wire circuit, it is called a T1. T1 runs at 1.544 Mbps.
OC-3 is another animal entirely. It is part of the Optical Carrier levels defined for a fiber optic transmission system called SONET (Synchronous Optical Network). OC-3 runs at 155 Mbps verses T3 at 45 Mbps. That is a big difference in speed and, as you might imagine, cost. OC-1 service is the equivalent of DS3 or T3. It provides 672 voice channels (or 64K data channels) and runs at 52 Mbps to include the extra bits needed for the optical service. The highest OC level you can get at present is OC-768, which runs at 39,512 Mbps or about 40 Gbps.
DS3 transport may be a cost effective substitute for point-to-point microwave for MPEG Broadcast Video Transmission. It is also applicable for Surveillance Cameras, CCTV Systems, and VLAN Trunks. If a full DS3 line is more bandwidth than you really need, it is also possible to get Fractional DS3, which gives you a portion of full DS3 bandwidth at a lower cost. Of course, DS3 is also available in multiples to increase bandwidth, similar to bonded T1 service. DS3 Bandwidth generally makes sense for corporations that have a need for high speed electronic data transfer between plant sites or offices. Very large call centers, enterprise wide VoIP and IP PBX systems, Internet service providers, universities, research labs, video conference centers and software development companies are also good candidates for T3 lines with DS3 level service. If all you require is two or three times the speed of a T1 line, then you are better off with multiple T1 lines or connecting them together in what is called bonded T1 service. Once you get past 6 or 8 T1 lines, the price of a T3 line is often competitive. With T3, you get the equivalent of 28 T1 lines, which is much more capability.
