[SOLVED] Understanding Leased Lines

[Terpinator]

Hello everyone,

I am new to the networking world and have a question regarding leased lines. If I am understanding correctly, if I have a site in Seattle and another site across the country in Miami, I can pay an ISP to provide a WAN connection between the two sites via a leased line. Is this correct?

If this is the case, lets say Seattle is the main office, and the leased line connects Seattle to Miami. Does the Miami office traffic now route through the same ISP provided to Seattle? (This is where my main confusion is)

 

[bill001g]

Think of a leased line as a wire you rent from the telco providing it. You hook equipment to each end of the wire and the 2 devices are directly connected.

Used to be they would setup a actual physical connection between the 2 sites. The wires would be cross connected in multiple telco building across the country. They would amplify the signals so they could make it to the next office but you still pretty much has a wire end to end.

They eventually migrated to simulated circuits over fiber. A actual leased line has clocking on it which means little for data but used to be used to switch telephone calls.

Now days they sell you data paths over the provider network. This is similar to the internet but has guarantees to the latency and bandwidth. They more or less sell you a vpn connection between the sites. What they use is MPLS rather than a vpn. MPLS can guarantee latency end to end.
This is the key difference between buying one of these leased lines and running a vpn over the internet. There is a guarantee to the latency and the bandwidth. Your will never see spikes in the latency due to other people traffic like you do on vpn.

 

[Terpinator]

Think of a leased line as a wire you rent from the telco providing it. You hook equipment to each end of the wire and the 2 devices are directly connected.

Used to be they would setup a actual physical connection between the 2 sites. The wires would be cross connected in multiple telco building across the country. They would amplify the signals so they could make it to the next office but you still pretty much has a wire end to end.

They eventually migrated to simulated circuits over fiber. A actual leased line has clocking on it which means little for data but used to be used to switch telephone calls.

Now days they sell you data paths over the provider network. This is similar to the internet but has guarantees to the latency and bandwidth. They more or less sell you a vpn connection between the sites. What they use is MPLS rather than a vpn. MPLS can guarantee latency end to end.
This is the key difference between buying one of these leased lines and running a vpn over the internet. There is a guarantee to the latency and the bandwidth. Your will never see spikes in the latency due to other people traffic like you do on vpn.

Ah ok. So in a leased line scenario, both sites would have their own ISP connections out to the Internet and the leased line would facilitate the communications just between those two sites?

 

[jsmithepa]

Ah ok. So in a leased line scenario, both sites would have their own ISP connections out to the Internet and the leased line would facilitate the communications just between those two sites?

It doesn't have to be one way or another. Each site can have their own Internet gateway or use a single Internet gateway at the main site. U choose base on needs.

SINGLE GATEWAY Pro: Ease of maintenance and management of a single firewall. Centralized security. Con: Robs bandwidth from lease line.

MULTIPLE GATEWAY can provide some Internet redundancy while off-loading lease pipe.