Home / Layer 01
Connectivity
The foundation: how sites and users physically connect to the network, and what each access type is really good (and bad) at.
- 01
Underlay Design
Start here, not at MPLS: how to think about underlay connectivity before picking a technology — design drivers, site classification, hybrid transport and migration, with a comparison table filled in as each technology's page is written.
- 02
MPLS
A carrier-delivered private WAN service built on label switching: predictable and well supported, but not encrypted, costly and slow to change.
- 03
Broadband / DIA
Consumer-grade broadband and Dedicated Internet Access: what you get, what you do not.
- 04
4G / 5G (cellular)
Cellular as primary, backup and rapid-deployment access.
- 05
SATCOM / Satellite
GEO, MEO and LEO satellite access, and the latency trade-offs of each.
- 06
P2P / Private circuits
Leased lines and point-to-point Ethernet circuits.
- 07
Co-location connectivity
Interconnection hubs, carrier-neutral facilities and why they matter.
- 08
Cloud on-ramps
AWS Direct Connect, Azure ExpressRoute and Google Cloud Interconnect.
- 09
SLAs & service levels
What carrier SLAs actually promise, how they are measured and what the credits are worth.