Verizon's EVPL Dynamic Bandwidth Offers Bandwidth On Demand

Verizon's Ethernet Virtual Private Line (EVPL) service, which delivers Carrier Ethernet to customers in point to point or point to multi-point offerings, is now giving organizations the ability to dynamically control the available bandwidth on demand. Dynamic Bandwidth is available in the US with plans to offer the service internationally in 2010. Verizon is the first tier 1 provider to provide a service like Dynamic Bandwidth and certainly gives their EVPL customers the ability to design their WAN based on average case requirements with the option of easily and quickly managing the bandwidth, versus static worst case scenario. Still, the service is somewhat rigid in upgrades and downgrades which we expect to change in the next few years.

Dynamic Bandwidth is self provisioned through Verizon's management portal, Verizon Enterprise Center. Using the portal, customers are guided through the upgrade/downgrade process. One upgrade or downgrade can be schedule in a 24 hour period per EVC and upgrades and downgrades can be scheduled a year in advance.  Verizon's time to deliver the change to the Ethernet Virtual Circuit (EVC) is within 60 minutes.

The Dynamic Bandwidth can be changed on in fixed increments based on your current bandwidth and your target bandwidth. The target bandwidths between 1Mb/s thought 1Gb/s are based on Verizon's current EVC availability.

There are limits to upgrades and downgrades based on the maximum bandwidth of the Ethernet Access at each peer location and the contracted bandwidth of the EVPL.  Bandwidth  upgrades can only raised to the highest bandwidth supported by the slowest peer. For example, if you had an 70Mbps EVC in NY and a 100Mbps EVC in LA which you wanted to upgrade with a contracted EVC bandwidth of 10Mbps, you could increment to 70Mbps in 10Mb/s increments. Trying to provision more than 70Mbs, the slowest bandwidth, wouldn't make sense because you can't get more bandwidth out of the 70Mb/s peer. Similarly, you can't downgrade below your contracted bandwidth, in our example, 10Mb/s.

Dynamic bandwidth management is one of the promises of Carrier Ethernet and it has been a long time coming. The ability to access more bandwidth when needed translates into dollars saved. Verizon's example is an organization  with 5 locations which occasionally needs 200 Mbps of bandwidth. The monthly recurring charges for all 5 EVC is $5,584. However, the recurring monthly charges for EVC's at 100Mbps is $3728 is a $1856 saving each month or $22,272 per year.The one feature we'd like to see is the ability to set high and low thresholds where service is upgraded or downgraded automatically.  For example, allow the customer to define limit, say 85% utilization, which when met, adds additional bandwidth dynamically. Similarly, of a low threshold is met, remove bandwidth. Automated upgrades and downgrades is something Verizon has thought about, but it the first iteration of Dyanamic Bandwidth, they wanted the customer in the loop for all changes. Based on customer feed back and experience with how Dynamic Bandwidth is used, they may add it to their service roadmap.