For millions of broadband users who may be tempted by a better deal from another provider, the fear has always been that of being stuck in an “internet-less limbo”, waiting until their new service is switched on.

Thankfully, changes to the way switches take place have dramatically improved the situation.

On 14 February 2007, Ofcom introduced a code of conduct for moving between broadband service providers called the MAC Code of Conduct.

If they wish to switch, broadband customers need a Migration Authorisation Code (MAC). The Migration Authorisation Code is a 17 to 19-digit unique identifier code consisting of both letters and numbers.

MACs usually begin with “BBIP”, “FTIP”, “BBDS”, or “BBDP”, and consist of 4 letters, 7 numbers (sometimes up to 9), a forward slash, 2 letters, 2 numbers, and 1 final letter.

Once requested, your internet provider should provide you the MAC code within 5 working days. This code will then be valid for 30 days in which the customer may switch broadband providers. While it should not take any longer than 10 working days to switch your broadband, there is no set limit imposed on broadband providers to switch you to a new provider and it can take up to 5 weeks.

Your internet service provider cannot refuse your request for a MAC code and must not charge you for the code either. This was introduced to help ease the process of switching your broadband and also allowing the switch to be done in just a few hours resulting in a temporary loss of internet.

The only exceptions for refusal are as follows:

• The account holder does not comply with standard checks by the ISP
• A contract is already terminated
• The MAC has already been requested
• The ISP has already submitted a cease request
• The ISP is unable to obtain a MAC from ISP whom customer is switching to

These rules were set by Ofcom, although, some broadband providers have been known to bend the rules just a little.

This has led some questions about whether some broadband service providers try and make it as difficult as possible for you to switch.

Even though broadband providers must comply with the rules, most providers will try to convince you to stay. They may question you about who you wish to move to and your reasons why and single out comparisons between themselves and their competitor in an attempt to hold on to you as a customer.

In some cases they may offer you something in return for your loyalty as a customer, for example a free upgrade to a higher level of service.

From your perspective, if you are satisfied with the level of service on offer from your existing provider, it always makes sense to listen to any offers that are made.

However, if you are determined to switch, you should so – and the new MAC system should make it a lot easier to do so.

If you are interested in taking advantage of current broadband internet technology then you should compare many broadband providers available in your area.

Shopping around for a cheap broadband deal always makes good sense. But the reality is that that every cheap broadband deal will have its pros and cons.

While you may get the great benefits of one aspect, you may find disappointment in another. Therefore, when choosing a broadband provider, you must make sure it is one that suits your needs.

The following five broadband providers offer some cheap broadband deals:

TalkTalk
Plusnet
Virgin
Pipex
AOL

TalkTalk – Talk 2 International
Average Monthly Cost = £5.89
Monthly Line Rental = £10.50

Advantages:
Max Speed 8Mbit/s
Download Cap 40GB per month
Modem Free
Installation by Geek Squad for £9.99

Disadvantages:
Contract 18 months
Wireless Router £20
Connection Fee £29.99

Plusnet - PlusNet Option
1
Average Monthly Cost = £9.99
Monthly Line Rental = £10.50

Advantages:
Max Speed 8Mbit/s
Modem Free
Webspace 250MB
Email addresses Unlimited
Connection Fee Free
Contract No minimum length

Disadvantages:
Download Cap 1GB per month
Line Rental Not included

Virgin Media – Virgin Media Beyond Non-Cable Switcher Offer
Average Monthly Cost = £10.00
Monthly Line Rental = £10.50

Advantages:
Max Speed 8Mbit/s
Download Cap Unlimited
Modem Free
Connection Fee Free

Disadvantages:
Contract 12 months
Wireless Router £40
Line Rental Not included

Pipex – Pipex Mini
Average Monthly Cost = £13.48
Monthly Line Rental = £9.99

Advantages:
Max Speed 8Mbit/s
Wireless Router Free
Connection Fee Free
Anti Virus/Firewall Free for 1 year

Disadvantages:
Contract 12 months
Line Rental Not included
Download Cap 2 GB per month

AOL – AOL Wireless
Average Monthly Cost = from £13.74
Monthly Line Rental = £10.50

Advantages
Max Speed 8Mbit/s
Download Cap 10 GB
Wireless Router Free
Web Space 150 MB
Connection Fee Free

Disadvantages
Line Rental Not included
Contract 18 months
Apple Mac Not compatible

One thing you must remember when choosing your broadband provider is that most offers speeds of up to 8Mbit/s. However, the 8Mbit/s speed is impossible to achieve, as technical factors – such as your computer’s distance from the exchange or how many people are accessing the internet at the same time – will slow things down.

Download caps are very important too: whether you are a light user or a hardcore online gamer, you must consider this aspect to avoid extra unnecessary charges.

Remember that sometimes cheap broadband isn’t always the best solution for everyone. You may need to pay that little bit extra to save yourself money in the long run.

At the end of the day there are enough cheap broadband deals to suit almost everyone, it’s just a matter of comparing – both price and the quality of service you receive.

If you are interested in taking advantage of current broadband internet technology then you should compare many broadband providers available in your area.

According to the IETF RFC 1631 document, the two most compelling problems facing the IP Internet are IP address depletion and scaling in routing. As we know, the IP address in the IPv4 version is a 32-bit number, giving a total number of IP addresses of 2^32 or around 4 billion. However, with the rapid development of the Internet and the increase in IP nodes connected, the IP address depletion was a real threat to the Internet Community.

The IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) and other international bodies had to take measures to conserve IP addresses. Network Address Translation (NAT) was proposed as a temporary measure to alleviate this problem. Other long-term solutions were also proposed, such as the introduction of a new IP version, namely IPv6 with 128-bit addresses.

Even if NAT was suggested as a temporary solution, it has been adopted by all network hardware manufacturers, and it is considered a very useful technology, not only for IP address conservation, but also for many other purposes including security.

The IP address header contains a source and a destination IP address, in order for the IP packet to be properly routed within the IP network. A device which implements Network Address Translation can change the source address in the IP header and replace it with a different value. For example, a border router connecting an Internal LAN to the Internet, can replace all source addresses of the packets received in its Internal interface with the IP address of its External interface (the one facing the Internet). Doing this, we achieve two things: First we represent many IP addresses with just one address (many-to-one translation), thus achieving IP conservation, and Second we hide the IP addresses of our Internal Network behind one single address (the one facing the internet on the router), thus achieving better security.

Please check out my website for valuable information about tcp/ip networks with emphasis in Wired and Wireless Home Network Setup

Given a scenario that you are developing the network architecture for a business (single or multi-site)….what would be the best application(s) where you would choose MPLS as the (or part of the) solution? This may not be as simple as it sounds…..thus the frustration faced by many responsible for a company network infrastructure solution.

First, I recommend reading “MPLS Enabled Applications: Emerging Developments and New Technologies”. A simple Google search will find the best source to obtain a copy.

For additional resources check out one of these books:

MPLS and VPN Architectures, Volume I & Volume II
by Jim Guichard; Ivan Pepelnjak; Jeff Apcar

Definitive MPLS Network Designs
by Jim Guichard; François Le Faucheur; Jean-Philippe Vasseur

Traffic Engineering with MPLS
by Eric CCIE #4122 Osborne; Ajay CCIE #2970 Simha

Internet Routing Architectures, Second Edition
by Sam Halabi; Danny McPherson

Generally, MPLS is often thought of when considering replacing an existing frame relay network. MPLS is best at supporting the QoS needed for supporting integrated VoIP and data. Plus, MPLS is significantly easier for to engineer and roll out than say a new frame relay cloud.

A good scenario would be an enterprise WAN with multiple service delivery needs, teleconferencing, VoIP, video, and data. Each of these services has different data delivery requirements. VoD needs bandwidth but after the initial push it is not time sensitive, data is not in any reasonable sense time sensitive, VoIP and video conferencing are both extremely time sensitive applications.

In this situation MPLS is an excellent choice as transport. Not only is it fast, not requiring deep packet inspection beyond the ingress point to prioritize traffic, it also allows for multiple levels of service which puts you in a position to future proof your network to some extent.

MPLS is also refered to as tag switching. The way that it works is at the network ingress point each packet is ‘tagged’, or a header put on the packet, which gives it a network identifier and a service level if service levels have been implemented. When switching within the network each router needs only inspect the tag to prioritize and forward the packet.

In addition, network service providers are moving to MPLS because of its ease of implementation and the ability to transparently provision multiple customers on the same network, as opposed to frame relay which requires a separate network for each customer, and keep those customers perfectly digitally segregated. So, it’s a case of faster, cheaper, better for the service provider.

QoS for VOIP and video is the big thing. MPLS gets used a fair bit for bandwith guarantees and limits for things like Disaster Recovery (DR). A good example is when a business has two offices in different geographical areas, and wants to use a data-syncing solution (SAN replication, for example) between them for disaster recovery. But they have limited bandwidth, and don’t want the DR traffic to swamp the normal or VOIP traffic. Being able to label your traffic and set guarantees (for both minimum and maximum bandwidth) is pretty powerful. This also offers guarantees for in-order packet delivery (very important for VOIP/voice).

For a single-site business, I would probably not deploy MPLS unless there was a serious amount of bandwidth in use, or if the campus was significantly large enough to justify using label switching for speed / QoS considerations. Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer for this scenario.

For a multi-site, geographically diverse business, I would strongly consider MPLS as part of the solution, particularly if I am using a service provider such as Sprint, Level 3, BT, or any others to provide the meat of the network. This arrangement allows me to leverage the availability, redundancy, and scalability of their network to take the shortest path between sites.

Most companies moving to MPLS were previously operating their private-line networks with either direct connections between offices, or utilizing frame-relay connections. A hub-and-spoke architecture is only efficient if all the data flows to/from the central location. However, most frame networks are meshed together, to facilitate office-to-office networking without overwhelming the hub site. It’s very easy for a large number of sites to turn into complex and unwieldy collections of frame circuits and PVCs. If the company’s IGP is not set up properly, traffic patterns can become stable at best, and down right chaotic at worst.

Using MPLS with a provider eliminates the need to worry about any of the meshing that would have been handled by multiple private lines or frame-relay networks. Usually, routing is exchanged with a provider via BGP, or in the case of smaller networks, statically routed.

An excellent application of MPLS seen in practice is that with a BGP-connected network, it is possible to set up a disaster recovery scenario at any other site connected to the network by a simple matter of moving the routing announcement for the primary location’s IP block to the DR location. It’s possible to do this on frame relay as well, but it can get complicated if the network is not configured properly.

For application-specific items, MPLS can handle any variety of traffic classifications, which make it an ideal candidate for multi-site voice traffic to go along with your data.

The downside of MPLS is that you’re at the mercy of your provider if there’s a configuration mistake or if their redundant network doesn’t redirect around an outage properly. Additionally, routing can become complex if there is a private network on the back end connecting two or more sites that also share an MPLS connection.

As an overview of MPLS…….

The Pros:

* Site to Site Routing
* Enhanced Carrier Aware QoS
* Reduced Deployment Complexities
* Enhancing High Availability
* Quickened Disaster Recovery Readiness

The Cons:

* Initial Architectural Design Cycles
* Reduced Visibility of Transport Network
* Enhanced Security Concerns

In summary MPLS is really just one alternative for the WAN communication backbone. The advantages are clear over a Frame Relay network…..as are the pitfalls. Whether you choose MPLS as all or part of your network infrastructure solution must takes those into account.

Michael is the owner of FreedomFire Communications….including DS3-Bandwidth.com and Business-VoIP-Solution.com. Michael also authors Broadband Nation where you’re always welcome to drop in and catch up on the latest BroadBand news, tips, insights, and ramblings for the masses.

Microsoft Internet Explorer keeps Crashing on you?

Loosing all your hard work on the computer after many hours of typing?

Problem: Microsoft internet explorer has alot of coding errors in it, alot of the software programming is not compatible with some web pages.

Here is your solution.

Benefits: Firefox is free, it work for Windows, Linux and MacOS. Firefox is very fast, secure, and is easy to use and navigate. The user interface is straightforward and uncomplicated. Download Firefox Free Mozilla

There is a built in useful automatic popup blocker, this comes with the free sotware download from the site listed.

It has popup blocking capability, Firefox also allows you to use tabs to open new web pages instead of using a new window. you can also open web pages in the background.

If you are trying to download some file, it will be automatically saved to your desktop, installing the new browser is very simple and easy to do.

Download Firefox Free Mozilla, Importing all your saved favorite sites from internet explorer is a piece of cake.

Firefox is also available in several languages so if you prefer to use some other language other then English, you can just install your language of choice.

Firefox browser prevents Spyware and Adware from automatically installing themselves on your computer.

Pick the better choice.

I think you will find that fire is a lot more stable and smooth.

Pick Firefox, its a better and more fast, reliable browser than internet explorer.

Download Firefox Free Mozilla!

Download Firefox Free Mozilla! Free FireFox Browser, Powerful,Fast,More Secure

For IT Infrastructure, optical fiber connections (especially SONET, e.g. OC3, OC12, OC48) are becoming critical. It is not uncommon for $50-100M companies to take advantage of SAN technology with offsite replication to a colocation facility. This application than requires higher bandwidth, low latency, and resiliency.

The primary difference between “OC” SONET connectivity and Dedicated lines is that SONET provides a standby “protection” path. It is most useful for TDM connections that can’t go down. For example, if you have more than 28 T1 trunks feeding a call center, then using an OC-3 as a transport is a viable method for handing off the trunks from a “reliable” infrastructure.

Furthermore, T1/DS1 and T3/DS3 dedicated circuits are focused more as point-to-point connections. SONET is a self-healing ring topology that prevents single-point issues if brought on premises properly. Thus SONET is a better choice for high capacity, high security, high performance network infrastructures.

Personally, I would say it isn’t a specific “type” of application that’s most important per se, so much as is the total “volume” of traffic. If, for example, you have a website that generates (or is expected to generate) 80-100Mbps of traffic, you’d probably want an OC3. If you have a sufficient number of users, even email or casual web browsing could eventually add up to the sufficient traffic to necessitate that large of a connection. But generally the volume…..especially for more “complex” activities (e.g. medical imagery, supply chain management networks, high security financial transaction storgae/networks, technical research and data manipulation, complex CAD projects, sophisticated high risk security systems)……is the more crucial part of the equation for deciding on a SONET solution.

Now if you flip the question…..just how important is data transmission, storage and back-up to your organization? How much data is involved, what is a geographically acceptable disaster recovery distance, and so on…..become the decision points. This makes more sense. The rest is simply algebra.

But I guess most companies only get to the algebra bit when it’s too late. One could argue that all networked applications are appropriate for OC3, OC12, OC48 etc…..it’s just a question of scale and security versus cost.

Consider future expansion needs as well when you make your decision. An OC3 may be your best bet given that as with other optical carrier levels (12, 48, etc), an OC-X (3 in this case) is burstable. In essence, you can start small in regards to your financial commitment of the bandwidth purchased and add capacity as your needs increase.

Given the above discussion….generally you’ll most likely find high end network connections are for (examples):

- Server farms
- Video distribution (VoD, IPTV etc)
- Feeding super computers
- Interconnection with other networks
- Very high quality Imaging
- Big Business
- Banks
- Universities

- Hospitals
- Stock Exchanges
- Defense Networks
- Government

In short…the crux of the question is really that it’s definitely a bandwidth (volume) issue over an application issue. You’re talking huge amounts of bandwidth in use before you really need to move to an OC3+.

Now, for the vast majority of today’s infrastructure…. much is still delivered over SONET/SDH infrastructure and Ethernet based services are still in their infancy. Once the far cheaper Ethernet based 100meg/GigE services are commonly made available…..the landscape may change. Yet again.

Michael is the owner of FreedomFire Communications….including DS3-Bandwidth.com and Business-VoIP-Solution.com. Michael also authors Broadband Nation where you’re always welcome to drop in and catch up on the latest BroadBand news, tips, insights, and ramblings for the masses.

Once you have made your website you’re still far away from making a successful site. You need to market it to the right audience in order to get a regular flow of traffic to give it authority other the rest.

The first step is to get valuable back links which will boost your sites performance in the major search engines. When getting back links make sure they have certain relevance as it will cut down on the time and effort needed to make it successful, it is better to get 10 PR 4-5 links rather then hundreds of PR 0-1. The higher the sites PR the more authority it will pass down making the search engine think your site is better. You can also get additional boosts if you manage to get any .edu or .gov sites linking to you as these are not available to the general public.

Make sure you put the research in and find the best niche and keywords to target, find one that is not heavily saturated as the competition will be harder to fight. If you can target a specific small undeveloped niche then you’re on a winner if you go about it in the right way. Make sure that all your pages have unique titles and descriptions and more importantly, unique content! If you copy and paste content, you will be severely punished and your pages will most likely go into the supplemental results pages, which means it will have no chance of outranking its competition.

If you’re no good at writing unique interesting content it’s strongly advised that you pay a professional as you will benefit in the long run, if you pay money upfront in the development stages of your website, you will get it back once it has becomes established.

There are many ways in which you can make your site successful, read up on the tips and tricks in many webmaster forums/sites to ensure you are doing everything the right way. The more effort you put in at the early stages, the less you will have to do once it’s indexed which will make your life a whole lot easier. Be sure to keep your site updated with fresh unique content on a daily basis and you will do just fine! Once you get the hang of how the search engines work you will be able to outrank your competition for any keyword. The basic principle is to get many back links to your site with the keyword as the anchor text of the link.

Andy Tao
Search engines friendly web hosting hostgator reviews and bluehost reviews

Finding a school without any computers in Britain these days is rare. Most schools have computers and broadband connectivity, some even have wireless broadband. However, it is one school that has caught the eye of education boards across Europe.

A school from Islay, the most southern island of the Inner Hebrides (Scotland) may have revolutionised the way we teach at school with use of advanced technology and broadband connectivity.

Islay High School has provided ultra-light, compact laptops to all 245 pupils at the school. These laptops are more powerful and expensive than your average laptop, consisting of the latest software, multi media applications and technology.

The laptops aren’t used for just broadband internet and web design classes, but also the way the teachers teach and classes are held. The laptops are used as the pupils jotters, even out of school, the pupils can do their homework and email it to their teacher. The use of wireless broadband and new technology, this school has seen productivity rates of the pupils increase at a great rate.

The funding has come from the Scottish Executive’s Schools of Ambition programme which began in 2005 by then First Minister Jack McConnell.

The great success has come as a big surprise for the island considering the fact that none of the islands households had a computer in it or any broadband available. Giving the pupils access to broadband is a great opportunity for them to learn about the world and help learn about their subjects.

This programme doesn’t just stop at benefits of having new technology or broadband internet, it also helping cut costs and paper waste. By having an almost paperless environment, the school can save on many school items used by the pupils like jotters, pencils etc.

This school is a great example of the way forward for education in schools and brings some fun into doing your homework.

If you are interested in taking advantage of current broadband technology, then you should compare all the broadband providers available in your area.

DSL service providers in Toronto are no different than any other DSL service providers anywhere else. The only thing that you are going to need to decide is which service provider is going to suit your needs the best.

There is nothing worse then getting a DSL service provider in Toronto and it not performing up to your demands. So always look at the bandwidth that they are offering. Bandwidth is how fast your internet connection is going to be. If you plan on downloading large files such as pictures, music or video’s then you want to be sure that your bandwidth is good. You don’t want to wait for ten minutes for your files to download. Our lives now a days is all about speed, we no longer have the patience to wait that long for something that we want. And this is a result of our advance in technology we don’t have to.

When you are looking at the different DSL service providers in Toronto it’s a good idea that you look for the many specials that are being offered. But never ever select a provider based on price only. Some good DSL service providers are going to be Yahoo and Verizon. They are both always having some really great deals.

The good thing about Yahoo DSL is that you have many different packages to choose from and they are a great company. But Yahoo DSL has it’s own unique advantage, you can access your internet connection from anywhere. So if you enjoy doing your work outside of your home then you can.

Verizon is also a great company they too offer different packages that you can choose from and you can get a good price if you use them for different services such as your home phone, and for your TV provider if it’s offered in your area of course.

You should stay away from many of the smaller DSL service providers in Toronto, these companies often surface and then disappear. There are so many other companies that you can use that you don’t need to use a small provider.

Before you go searching for your DSL service provider in Toronto you should first determine what your specific needs are and also what your budget is. This will help you to make a wise choice.

P Abbey owns and operates http://www.dslserviceproviderslist.com/dslserviceprovidersintoronto.html

DSL High Speed Internet

When designing your LAN or WAN, the logical solution for your business is to figure out your expected bandwidth usage. If your company has more than 50 employees or it uses a lot of bandwidth for various applications such as VOIP, videoconferencing, CRM, this may often indicate that you may need to get multiple T1 lines, which is often referred to as bonded T1’s. A bonded T1 just means that the you have two T1 lines (from the same provider) which have been joined together in a special way so that you can use the combined total of 3.0 Mbps of Internet data or the 46 channels for voice/phone use. You cannot bond T1’s together if they are not through the same provider. The best technology these days is through MLPPP (Multi-link point to point protocol). Multilink is a bandwidth-on-demand protocol that can connect multiple links between two systems as needed to provide bandwidth on demand.

If you were to have two T1’s, unbonded, then you could not use the full 3.0 Mbps of bandwidth all at once. For example, if you did a speed test, you wouldn’t be able to get a result of “3.0 Mbps”, the max you could download/upload at any one time would be 1.5 Mbps, even though you had two T1’s. That’s why it’s important you get the T1’s from the same provider and that they use MLPPP to bond the T1’s together.

You can bond quite a few T1 together, up to 8 of them together to make 12 mbps (equivalent to fractional DS3). However, if you go beyond 4 bonded T1’s it makes more sense to start looking at a fractional/burstable DS3 because sometimes the DS3 loop pricing is similar so the DS3 service would allow you to scale much easier, up to a full T3 line.

It’s best that you use the services of a company such as www.shopforbandwidth.com to walk you through all of your choices for network design utilizing a bonded T1. If you need more than what a bonded T1 can provide, such as a fractional or full DS3, they can assist you in figuring out what the best solution is going to be for your business. They will do this at no cost to you since they are paid by the providers to refer business to them.

Many small to midsize businesses have used the service Shopforbandwidth.com offers. They offer bandwidth pricing on T1 lines, T3 lines or DS3 lines, OC3 service, MPLS or Fr