DONet Unveils High Speed “Ethernet Express”

May 9, 2008

Dayton-area businesses can now get more very high-speed bandwidth at an affordable price point with Ethernet Express.

Ethernet Express may be the first application of its kind in the country and uses traditional copper lines bonded together to provide much higher speeds and reliability. Service installation normally takes between one and two weeks. Though Ethernet Express is only available in areas with existing broadband coverage, higher speeds are now available to fill the gap in higher commercial broadband speeds without the significant costs.

Mike Bartz, a Senior Network Engineer at DONet, describes Ethernet Express as a simple application of Multilink PPP, commonly used to bond T1 services, applied to widely available ADSL services. Bonding has been available for other types of DSL, but has only been marketed with ADSL in Europe. DONet is using Cisco routers to provision Ethernet Express and can combine multiple types of services to support higher upstream speeds and full duplex features for heavier VoIP and VPN environments.

“We are researching a 25mbps service using the current technology,” says Leigh Sandy, DONet’s Vice President and co-founder. “Our network engineers have some ideas that could provide speeds up to 100mpbs full duplex using innovations on newer broadband technologies and readily available equipment.” The technology could be provided to areas outside our region and licensed to service providers outside Ohio.

Our region has a long tradition of innovation. The demand for broadband is not being met by the national carriers and calls for innovation from within our local community. One local carrier, DONet, also has a tradition of innovation ever since first offering Internet services to the region over 13 years ago. DONet was one of the first service providers in the country offering virus scanning and spam filtering for their customers. DONet was also one of the first service providers in the region to offer bonded dialup services before cable and DSL were commonly available. Now DONet has developed a broadband innovation, branded Ethernet Express, that provides Ethernet speeds of 10mbps to 20mbps at a cost well below current fiber options.