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Official Launch -- InternetServiceComparison.net

2008-10-30T20:28:00.000-07:00

This month, I am pleased to inform you the official launch of our new web site: InternetsServiceComparison.net

This website has the newest version of GeoQuote™, the technology developed by the founders of our company, Telarus/Commission River. So our visitors not only can compare DSL and T1 service providers instantly but also comercial services like: SIP Trunking, MPLS and Gigabit Ethernet (Google map included)

If you are looking for affordable DSL service you can compare providers at this new site instantly and for FREE!

This web site also has a section call VarSearch™ For business owners that are looking for PBX phone systems and Network equipment installers or dealers (aka VAR's). It helps them find the right technician for their business in their specific area easily.

If you manage a website and are looking to exchange links feel free to visit our "links" section to add your link to this web site. As you may know the more inbound links your web site has the higher ranking it gets with the search engines. All we ask you is to reciprocate by copying and pasting our link onto your site and keep it there because our spiders will notify us if our link is removed from your site.

In summary, if you want to compare internet service providers, find the right technician for your business or want to exchange links with us please visit: InternetServiceComparison.net

The Power of a Domain Name

2008-09-26T15:30:00.000-07:00

You may think that having your own domain name is expensive or unnecessary but the truth is, a domain name can be exploited in so many different ways than just as a web address. For starters a domain name can give a more professional look to all your marketing tools resume, business cards or any other medium you use to promote yourself or your services for just a few bucks a year!

What can I do with a domain name? you may ask. There are so many uses besides the obvious —having a website behind it, for instance:

URL Redirect/URL Frame:

You don't need to have an actual web site to market yourself or your services. You can set up your domain so when people type it on their browsers it redirects them to a profile you have in a network web site your blog or any other page you have set up with information about yourself or your services. It can also be an affiliate web site. Many affiliate marketers use this powerful tool.

When people join an affiliate program they are given a URL that starts with the company's domain name but ends with a number or code ID for instance:

http//:AffliateCompany.com/?agentid=11254

This ID at the end of the URL is used to tracked the visitor's referrer and compensate him or her if the visitor decides to purchase something from the web site. As you can see this URL would be very hard for potential customers to remember. Moreover they might forget to even include it and just type the company's domain name and the marketer would never receive credit for the sale. All these problems can be avoided by having a domain name that you can use to point people to the specified URL.

With the URL frame feature, your domain name stays on the user's browser's address bar and they never see the actual URL. But the cookies that track the agent are already embedded in their computer.

Email Forwarding:

Email forwarding can help you give your resume or business cards a more professional look. Instead of using a free email from Yahoo or Google which sometimes are not taken seriously by employers, potential clients or associates and can make you lose a job or business opportunity, you could set up an email like this: name@yourdomain.com and set it up to forward all emails to your free email account.

It can also be a virtual email address for temporary use and reduce spam in your inbox. This feature can be used with online forms that require you to give them your email address and you don't trust the site owner completely with your personal email. But still you want to know what the website is about to then trust them with your real email address.

You can set up as many email accounts with your domain name as you want and change the destination at any time.

Domain name with a Gmail account.

Now you can also use a domain name with a Gmail account and use all the features that Gmail offers for free. There a few steps to it but it can be done. To learn how to use your domain name with Gmail click here.

Price :

Domain names range in prices from $3 up to $15 dollars a year. The lower the price the fewer the services included. Some web sites offer domain names for about $3 but they charge you extra for the features mentioned above. T1-Plus Communications just welcomed 1&1.com to its family of telecom providers. Domain names at 1&1.com are only $6.99 and it includes all the features. Plus, for a limited time 1&1.com is giving all its customers a FREE .biz domain name for a year for every purchase.

Sometimes is a good idea to get 2 types of domains with the same name to secure the name of your company for example:

YourDomain.com

YourDomain.net

Visit 1&1.com to secure yours!

Going "Green" with AccuConference.

2008-08-28T19:47:00.000-07:00

Audio and video conferencing are one of the hottest things going right now. Businesses are spending $100 to $1000 a month in usage. The cool thing that conference calling offers is that, it allows companies to continue business regardless of geographical location. They may want to conduct business separately, across the world, across the country or even across the city for number of reasons. And, one of the big topics right now for companies is the “going green” initiative. Conference calling is a huge benefit for companies that want to go green. There are obvious implications there: they don’t have to travel and contribute to the already polluted environment, let alone spend on plane tickets, etc.

One of the vendors that our company works with is AccuConference. The great thing about AccuConference is that they don’t have any kind of set-up costs; there are no monthly fees either. If you set-up an account with AccuConference and never use it you will not incur any charges at all. And there is also no commitment, they don’t require any long-term contracts, in fact, they don’t require any contracts whatsoever.

David Byrd of AccuConference says: “I talk to clients on a daily basis that asked me: ‘Ok, so what’s the commitment on our end or what’s the contractual agreement. Or I talk to somebody who is locked in to a high rate with a company and they can’t get out of that high rate, even if there are lower rates out there. That’s not fair for the client and we understand that. That’s our business model to be fair. So we don’t ask our clients to contractually commit to us. We keep them committed through superior service, through superior features and through superior product and we’ve been doing that for several years and continue to do so”

There are literally hundreds of features on the audio portion of AccuConference. They have developed features based on customers’ requests. “We are not a bunch of smart guys coming up with this stuff. We let our clients tell us what they need. We are smart enough to listen to them and develop those features”, David Byrd comments. So whatever our client needs, if it has to do with a telephone call even if it doesn’t exactly match conferencing per se they already have a solution built for them. Their pricing is extremely competitive in the market. The big telecom guys that sell audio conferencing offer a rate that goes between 10¢ per minute to 40¢ per minute. The structure that they have is 7.9¢ per minute. Which is an extremely competitive rate for audio conferencing and it also includes web conferencing!

You can’t get web conference service unless your company spends 30 to 40¢ per minute. The counter argument I get from client is: Well, it probably isn’t going to meet our needs since it’s so inexpensive. Byrne’s reply to that is: “I’ll tell you what: Try it out for your next meeting and let me know if it works for you. Our conference product will match any product out there”

The web conference part is so easy to use it takes about five minutes to set it up. And, there are several options. You can show PowerPoint presentations, Excel spread sheets or Microsoft Word documents and edit them right on line through the web conference. It’s like you are in the same room together even though you are in different states or even countries.

Try AccuConference for free on your next meeting

VarNetwork — Simplifiying Network Equipment Assistance

2008-08-15T12:06:00.000-07:00

VarNetwork is another project by Adam Edwards and Patrick Oborn the founders of ShopforT1.com, the web site that helps owners of small businesses to compare T1 service, with the most updated prices and availability. VarNetwork.com is designed to help business owners find the right VAR for their business.

The term “VAR” stands for Value Added Reseller. In contrast to a retailer, who can sell you a telephone, an mp3 player, etc., a “value added reseller” is someone who is:

1. Authorized to sell you a specific brand of telecom equipment
2. Certified as a skilled technician to support the hardware he/she sells.

Most business telephone systems are somewhat complex in nature. The vast majority of PBX and VoIP hardware is not “plug and play”. A skilled technician is required to program the system according to the customer’s needs.

Likewise, most new commercial telephone systems cannot be purchased directly from the manufacturer or any other retail outlet – you have to buy them from a local authorized sales partner. This means that VARs in your local area perform both the role of technician and also as equipment dealers.

Telarus understands that sometimes business owners don't know where to go for the services they need. Sometimes the technician that served a business is out of business themselves like the last customers situation I had. That's when the VarNetwork comes in handy.

With VarNetwork.com entrepreneurs can easily find technicians that sell and/or install the commercial telecom equipment they need. When a person uses VarSearch™ with the first piece of information that he/she has to submit is their zip code, in the next step the questions are more specific, such as: if the equipment needed is telecom or information technology. There about 3 steps with specific questions that need to be answered before seeing a list with the most relevant VARs. however the effort is compensated when varsearch shows you the results.
It gives you a list of all the VARS and their capabilities available near your exact location. It shows you a brief paragraph with information about the VAR and a list of features, equipment , brands etc. offered. If for some reason the VAR the customer selected does not have the equipment the business owner is looking for, he will send the lead to another VAR that does, so, the customer is assisted no matter what.

Telarus is a company that specializes in simplifying the search of commercial telecom services. Since the development of GeoQuote™, Telarus has gained important presence in the commercial telecom industry. the VarSearch™ platform matches customers with the right PBX or network equipment dealer the same way The GeoQuote™ platform does with the best Internet service carrier.

T1 Plus Communications is an independent company affiliated with Telarus. To find a VAR for your business visit VarNetwork.com

Packet8 MobileTalk on iPhone Adds VoIP Calling

2008-08-02T11:37:00.001-07:00

8x8, Inc. the provider of the Packet8 VoIP broadband service today announed it has added the Apple iPhone to the list of over 450 mobile handset devices now supported by the Packet8 MobileTalk international calling service. Launched back in November 2007, MobileTalk adds inexpensive calling to the iPhone 2.0 which launched today.

Unlike the truphone iPhone application , the Packet8 MobileTalk is web-based interface, so unlike truphone there is no dialer application to download. Instead, it uses a customized web-based dialer, accessible via a standard data plan or WiFi connection, to route calls to a unique local Packet8 access number and then on to the Packet8 digital VoIP network. Once the call has been initiated, the data connection is no longer engaged and the call is carried to completion over the cellular provider's network with only Packet8's low international calling rates applied. So one advantage of Packet8 over truphone is that it also works over the 3G data connection and not just WiFi.

MobileTalk features mobile international calling rates such as $.01 per minute to China, $.02 per minute to the U.K., $.03 per minute to Mexico and $.059 per minute to India. Not too shabby...

"With the tremendous adoption rate of Apple's first generation iPhone and today's release of the new 3G version, the potential market for the Packet8 MobileTalk service has increased exponentially," said 8x8 Vice President of Sales & Marketing Huw Rees. "The iPhone version of MobileTalk is even simpler to install than our version for other smart phones and our beta users were generally thrilled with its ease of use and quality."

Over 450 Windows, Palm, RIM, Symbian-based and iPhone mobile phone models, including the entire family of Blackberry phones running version 4.0 of the operating system and above, and 25 Nokia models running the Symbian OS, are now supported by the Packet8 MobileTalk service.

Customers can sign up for a Packet8 MobileTalk account at: MobileTalk.Packet8.net

MPLS Overview

2008-08-01T18:24:00.000-07:00

MPLS, or Multi Protocol Label Switching, is quickly replacing frame relay and ATM as the technology of choice for carrying high-speed data and digital voice on a single connection. MPLS not only provides better reliability and increased performance, but can often decrease overall costs through increased network efficiency. Its ability to assign priority to packets carrying voice traffic makes it the perfect solution for carrying VoIP calls.

MPLS Basics
MPLS is a form of protocol, rather than a specific type of service. It can be used to deliver any type of circuit that a customer needs, from IP VPNs to optical connectivity.

Packet Labelling
The key to MPLS is its ability to label data packets. In traditional IP networks, packets are routed based solely upon the data's network-layer header. The arrival of each packet forces a router to "decide" where it should go next with no regard for its actual content.

The Need for Speed
MPLS greatly speeds up the routing process by labeling each packet as it arrives on the network. Each network router stores information on how to handle different packet types, as indicated by their header label. This directly translates to higher efficiency by lightening the load on an organization's routers and freeing up needed resources. Speed of packet transmission is increased as the load on network infrastructure is reduced.

Not All MPLS Traffic is Crated Equal
The inherent advantages of MPLS are most noticeable in situations where real-time traffic is configured to be given preference over data packets that do not require the same amount of speed or priority. With a traditional IP circuit, all traffic is treated equally. This becomes a critical problem when demand for bandwidth temporarily exceeds the capacity of the circuit. The only form of prioritization on most traditional IP networks is "first come, first served", with no special treatment being given to real-time sensitive traffic like voice and video conferencing.

Priority Treatment
As an example, a large e-mail attachment of personal photos being sent to an employee's personal mail account would normally receive the same network priority as a real-time video or audio conference being held by company executives. The result can be phone calls or video transmissions of inferior quality, as the two sources battle against one another for priority. An MPLS network on the other hand will instantly assign a high priority to real-time voice and video. E-mail traffic and other connections that are not as likely to be affected by latency will be pushed to the back of a router's queue to make way for high-priority traffic. This noticeably improves the performance of real-time applications and has a minimal effect on lower priority traffic such as e-mail, where a delay in milliseconds is almost impossible to detect.

Life, and Networks, Require Proper Priority
In a nutshell, MPLS puts your high-priority, mission critical IP traffic in the fast lane to its destination. All of this is done seamlessly, with absolutely no interaction needed on the part of the customer and with no significant changes to their network infrastructure. It's like having a network engineer inspecting each and every packet on your network, and deciding how to load balance the circuit based upon the data's importance. MPLS is truly a value-added service that can pay for itself each and every month

Get a free MPLS quote in under 2 minutes at ShopForMPLS.com our partner site.

Who needs VoIP?

2008-06-25T17:45:00.000-07:00

Who needs voip service? The answer is everybody...that pays for a broadband internet connection and regular phone service in the same house
Tradional phone service nowadays is way to expensive to have it in a home that uses the internet a lot. And that is because you don't need a lot of bandwidth to transmit voice over the internet. You can use your DSL or cable internet connection to make phone calls. All you need is an adapter and a regular phone.
Millions of people are realizing that they can save a lot using voip. Plus, there are so many benefits and things you can do with voip that a regular phone line would never allow you to do. For example:

-Mobility. You can take your phone and your adapter to any part of the world where there is an internet connection and make phone call from there instantly.

-Voicemail online. There's no need to wait to get home to listen to your voicemail. Just log into your account and listen to your messages online.

-Try it free for a month. You can try voip service for a month and if you don't like just return the adapter and don’t even have to pay a penny.

-Easy to set up. No need to wait for a technician to go to your house to do the installation for you. Voip is really easy to set up in less than 5 steps.

-More features at no extra cost. Once you order voip service, you get all the features that you would otherwise pay extra for with a regular phone service company.

-Make phone calls from your laptop. Just download the voip software and you can turn any PC or laptop into a full-functioning telephone.

- Virtual phone numbers. Set up a virtual phone number in a different location and your friends or family will be able to call you for the price of a local call.

View a list of our VoIP Service providers here.

What is GeoQuote?

2007-11-02T11:01:00.002-07:00

This revolutionary voice and data pricing search engine developed by Patrick Oborn and Adam Edwards allows the general public to generate real-time Residential DSL and Dedicated T1, service quotes in seconds. By entering your phone number and zip code into the provided form GeoQuote will show you all the DSL, Cable Internet, and T1 service providers with their detailed plans available in your area. So you can compare rates, transmission speed, contract terms and choose the option that meets your needs.
Try it right here

Besides providing you with Residential DSL and Dedicated T1 quotes, GeoQuote can also help business owners get instant quotes for Frame Relay , Point to Point , Virtual Private Networks (VPN), VoIP , T3 , OC3 and even Gigabit Ethernet

T1andBeyond.com

2007-10-31T00:03:00.000-07:00

Today I anounced the launch of T1andbeyond.com a partner of ShopforT1.com and T1 Plus Communications T1andbeyond.com provides small and medium-sized businesses with T1 quotes in real time by using the now famous GeoQuote software. After business owners enter their information on GeoQuote, they can see all the different T1 service prices available in their exact location.

But, that's not it. GeoQuote also provides residential high-speed internet service quotes. T1andbeyond's partner providers include: XO comunications, Time Warner, Sprint Business, Covad, EarthLink, and many others.