1Gbps Leased Line – 1Gbit/s Connections for Businesses Shifting LOTS of Data
A 1Gbps Leased Line is a leased line with a connection speed of 1Gbit/s, in other words one that connects at 1000Mbit/s.
You’ve no-doubt seen the ads for ‘super-fast’ broadband at downstream speeds of 20Mbit/s or 50Mbit/s. For home users, that’s super-fast. But businesses that need to replicate or backup vast amounts of data quickly may need something far faster, more symmetrical, and unmetered. And that’s where a 1GB leased line comes in.
1Gbps leased lines are usually used for copying data from a company’s primary data centre to its backup one, for safekeeping.
Another common use of 1Gbps leased lines is to link a company’s in-house data centre to the Internet. Technically sophisticated companies such as hosting companies, banks and media library providers may decide to host their public-facing web servers themselves, rather than host them in a commercial data centre. Hosting can demand a lot of bandwidth, particularly if you’re letting lots of people download or stream large audio or video files. A 1GB leased line helps ensure your connectivity isn’t a bottleneck slowing down access to your sites.
A 1Gbps leased line is often the natural choice for a company that is maxing out its existing 100Mbit/s connection, or expects to do so soon. Such a company can lease a second 100Mbit/s leased line, bringing its connectivity to 200Mbit/s. Or for a little bit more money the firm can probably get a 1Gbit/s connection. Some businesses prefer the resilience that comes from having two circuits, while most who are faced with this choice choose to get five times the bandwidth.
Almost all 1Gbps leased lines are delivered using fibre optic cable. The same is currently true for 100Mbit/s leased lines. However, the fibre-optic cable networks don’t serve the whole of the country. 100Mbit/s leased lines are usually available within a 25km cable distance of a cable node. 1Gbit/s leased lines are usually available within 35km. So sometimes a company will choose a 1Gbps leased line because it wants 100Mbit/s but is more than 25km away from a cable node.
There’s a final reason that businesses choose to get a 1Gbps leased line. That’s to enable them to get faster bandwidth upgrades. If you have a 100Mbit/s leased line and run out of capacity, you’ll have to wait 3 months for a new line to be installed. Many businesses simply can’t afford to put up with 3 months of congestion while they wait for that installation. So some businesses get 100MB of connectivity provisioned over a 1Gbps leased line. That way, if they max out their allotted bandwidth they can upgrade in days rather than months.
