By Kimberly Caisse
Network World, 09/24/01

Yipes Communications offers its Ethernet metropolitan-area network service for a starting price of $165 per month, per location for 1M bit/sec of bandwidth. Yipes charges $450 per month for 1M bit/sec for Internet service, and WAN service costs $1,300 per month, per location for 1M bit/sec. As customers increase bandwidth, Yipes' prices drop. Yipes' MAN service falls to $32 per megabit, per second when a customer buys 100M bit/sec. Users can scale up to 1,000M bit/sec in 1M bit/sec increments.

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Yipes can offer these prices because its network is based on Layer 3 enterprise switches, says David Passmore, research director at The Burton Group. Yipes says its network, which spans 21 U.S. markets, runs on Ethernet equipment from the customer premise to its points of presence.

Cogent Communications offers an Ethernet service in 20 cities, but it's operating IP packets over SONET rings. Cogent charges "retail tenants" $1,000 per month for 100M bit/sec Ethernet and service providers $3,000 a month for a 100M bit/sec Ethernet connection. Customers can scale up to OC-192 (10G bit/sec) connectivity, but don't get a price break on the higher bandwidth.

Gig E

Telseon, which sells Ethernet connectivity to service providers in 20 cities, offers 10M bit/sec for $600 a month. Telseon's price per megabit, per second drops as a customer scales up to a maximum of 700M bit/sec.

The incremental scalability offered by Yipes and Telseon provides users with an alternative to overbuying bandwidth at exorbitant rates to meet their companies' needs. "If you outgrow a T-1 line, you have to throw it out to get a T-3 line," Passmore says. With Ethernet service, "there's no truck rolls or hardware swaps."

10G

Although it's often viewed as a point-to-point service, multipoint connections are possible in MAN environments if the Ethernet carrier creates a virtual LAN to link multiple sites, Passmore says. The carrier can also provide an Ethernet connection to a customer's ISP to gain multipoint access.

- Kimberly Caisse

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