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60% of companies are deploying a next generation technology (either an IPVPN or Ethernet).

Improved reliability, increased bandwidth and specific business applications were the top three reasons for network upgrades. Although still important, cost savings ranked sixth.

Of all carriers identified in the survey, Uecomm rated highest in terms of customer satisfaction – but this makes us anything but complacent.It's an exciting time at Uecomm as we welcome more and more customers onto our high-speed data network and receive further industry acknowledgement of our leadership in the business data market.

In this edition of Wavelength, we profile two customers who are using our network in an innovative fashion to deliver real business outcomes. For retail tyre giant, Bob Jane T-Marts, we have provisioned a 142 site national wide area network which is mostly comprised of DSL services. This is in contrast to the Melbourne Metropolitan Fire Brigade network of over 500kms of dark fibre connecting 47 fire control centres around the greater metropolitan area of Melbourne.

From an industry point of view, in March of this year we were awarded the Frost & Sullivan Australia Best Practice Award for Business Communications Service Provider of the Year 2005 and more recently, two of our staff were invited to speak at overseas telecommunication conferences.

One of those speakers was key Uecomm network architect, Rotem Salomonovitch, who presented at MPLSCon06 – http://www.mplscon.com. Rotem was interviewed by leading IT Journalist David Braue and David's article on Rotem's speech is included in our "expert opinion" comment on technology.

I trust you enjoy this edition of Wavelength and encourage you to sign up to receive this newsletter on a regular basis.

Dean Tognella
CEO, Uecomm

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Tyre Giant Adopts a Secure Private Network

On a mission to improve security, Bob Jane's IT Manager, Edward Hore began looking for alternatives to doing business over the internet.

He wanted a secure private network and with the help of Uecomm, Bob Jane now has a nationwide WAN, with Ethernet ports to 142 sites, which include franchises, state offices and warehouses and company stores.

After talking to Telstra, Primus and Uecomm, Edward decided to go with Uecomm, who had the job completed in 40 days.

"Telstra was very sales oriented (but) I need facts and figures. They wouldn't talk technical with me. They wouldn't tell me how things would work. They wouldn't tell me what I wanted to know, and they were using too many third party providers, which would cost me more.

"Primus couldn't deliver a private WAN which was reasonably portable. They could tell me when it went down but would charge more to tell me why.

"Uecomm could deliver what the network design that I wanted and showed me what they were doing and why."

The Uecomm network is designed to fit in with Bob Jane's existing enterprise resource planning transaction application MarlinTX.

Edward is also happy with Uecomm's Network Operations Centre, which operates 24 hours a day.

"There is a guaranteed level of service with a good response time. I can talk to a technical person in a hurry if I need to. I have spoken to them at times like 1am and 5am and they had intelligent answers."

Uecomm's director of strategy, Brendan Park said the move to a private network posed no technical challenges but the difficulty was selling the idea.

"Retail customers are very price-sensitive and are generally conservative IT buyers (and) will continue to use inexpensive legacy systems. A traditional retail store may have ISDN for Eftpos but Bob Jane is an early adopter with DSL for a network of more than 130 stores." Edward wasn't just focused on saving money. He was aware of other benefits a private network could bring to the business, says Mr Park.

As a result of the Uecomm network, franchises have more contact with the head office and other sites and according to Edward "It's starting to have a family feel now".

Mr Park says the IT manager retains control of the network and doesn't have to negotiate with the carrier. "This network allows rapid turn on of bandwidth and doesn't require a new roll-out (because) it can be turned on by configuration changes to the software. Another benefit is running Eftpos over the network, which will save Bob Jane $270 a month at every site," Mr Park said.

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Fighting Fire with Fibre

MFB celebrated the recent completion of its privately owned fibre network with the last link between Preston and Heidelberg Fire stations in Victoria now connected.

Dubbed 'CommNet', the technology project adopted by the MFB is aimed at delivering a high-speed fibre network to 47 fire control centres, increasing efficiency and response times to emergency calls.

The network design is a first for any state Fire Brigade and according to Neil Wheeler, MFB's IT Manager, the network allows greater reliability and scalability.

"CommNet provides the platform that enables MFB the potential to: respond to emergency calls faster than ever before; communicate with operational staff more effectively; and provide a more reliable method of sharing information.

"CommNet is able to withstand a fault in the network, since the sites are equipped with back up power supplies and fitted with at least two fibre optic cables, linking the sites via multiple paths to the network hub at Eastern Hill, Mr Wheeler said.

Brendan Park, Uecomm's Director of Strategy said the solution created for MFB was to converge their disparate networks into one private network offering MFB full control.

"For organisations like MFB who own their premises, a dark fibre network is extremely cost effective over time and the network is monitored with 24 hour support from our Network Operations Centre," Mr Park said.

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VPLS: keeping Uecomm's network a step ahead

Rotem was invited to be a guest speaker at the MPLS Telecommunications conference in New York (MPLSCon06). The conference is recognised as the world's leading IP and networking technology conference, and brings together numerous North American carriers, service providers and major businesses.

Rotem's topic was VPLS technologies, more specifically the limitations of the forthcoming VPLS networks and how real world experience can be applied to influence the VPLS standard to create an even more robust infrastructure.

David Braue, a leading telecommunication's journalist, caught up with Rotem after the conference and filed a story titled VPLS: keeping Uecomm's network a step ahead.

Uecomm's metropolitan Layer 2 Gigabit Ethernet services are already more advanced than those offered overseas, and the carrier plans to extend its lead with enhanced data services that exploit the capabilities of emerging VPLS (Virtual Private LAN Services) technology.

Like metropolitan Gigabit Ethernet, VPLS emulates Layer 2 (Data Link layer) of the ISO seven-layer model. Devices are added to and removed from the virtual LAN based on their unique ID number, rather than using less specific Layer 3 (Network layer) nomenclature like the ubiquitous four-digit IP address. This consistent and non-repudiable device management lets customers securely extend their corporate LAN onto a carrier's network as if it were their own leased-line wide area network (WAN).

VPLS aims to resolve some of the persistent issues that are inherent with Gigabit Ethernet technology. For example, implementers of Ethernet-based networks face potential issues such as the creation of endless traffic loops, scalability of Ethernet's internal spanning tree error correction protocol, virtual LAN (VLAN) depletion, and limited resiliency and traffic engineering capabilities.

These shortcomings have become more pressing as networks expand and services demand grow and become more sophisticated. "With the explosion of Ethernet into the carrier space and with the services users are buying, managing them was getting more complex," said Uecomm network architect Rotem Salomonovitch. "The core of the network needed to be service aware, and that wasn't scalable."

Uecomm's future VPLS network, utilises MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching), a resilient and scalable network protocol that provides a converged and quality of service (QoS) aware platform for service delivery.

"MPLS was a way of migrating customer information from the core to the edge of the network, therefore maintaining the core in a very simple state," Salomonovitch explained. "This simplifies the requirements of the core and makes it more robust by isolating the core network from the services."

VPLS allows carriers to emulate all the functions of Ethernet at the edge of the network, while MPLS connects all these edges into a single virtual WAN network. Operating together, they let telecommunications providers operate a single converged network that allows for the efficient migration of legacy technologies to Ethernet whilst maintaining consistent QoS and service resiliency. That's a level of Layer 2 services flexibility that most carriers simply cannot match.

Using Layer 2 based VPLS services also lets customer networks take advantage of MPLS' fast reroute capability. Whereas Layer 3 IP traffic can take seconds to recover after a connection is broken, MPLS fast reroute can detect and work around connection faults within tens of milliseconds.

"The point is that now voice and data services experience the same resiliency and benefits as SDH based networks, but for a fraction of the price," said Salomonovitch. "There's no question that Ethernet access will dominate the carriers network. The challenge for carriers and service providers is how to support that mass proliferation. VPLS capability across the network lets carriers scale to support customer demands, moving forward where Ethernet left off."

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