Definition
A leased line is a private, static transmission channel that provides consistent bandwidth between multiple sites. Telecommunication organizations lease dedicated lines to businesses for an agreed-upon price.
Every point on the line is usually active and permanently linked to the others. Leased lines can be used for data communication, internet, and telephone services.
Nowadays, the phrase ‘leased line’ typically refers to an ‘Ethernet leased line’ or ‘internet leased line,’ which is a symmetrical permanent and high-speed uncontended online connection.
Internet leased lines are normally run on fiber optic cables for speed and bandwidth. They are leased directly by ISPs to corporations that need enhanced connection speed, resilience, and availability.
Characteristics of Real Internet Leased Line
- Symmetrical: The leased line’s download and upload speed should be the same. Unlike separate users, organizations may need to upload significant data quantities, which requires increased upload speed.
- Uncontended: Leased lines are not communal, meaning their bandwidth is not shared among users in an area. So, unlike consumer broadband, leased lines do not have peak-time performance problems.
- Point-to-point: A leased line directly links two or more sites, including the leased line provider and the organization.
- Guaranteed: Leased lines include a solid and binding service level agreement (SLA) that ensures the connection is always active and the download and upload speeds are fast, as specified in the contract.
How Does a Leased Line Work?
A leased line functions like a fiber optic broadband connection. The same technology sends light pulses through a fiber optic cable to develop a binary code, represented by the light being on or off. Sensors detect the light states and convert them into the zeroes and ones of digital data.
With a leased line, the light travels via silica glass instead of a vacuum while bouncing, slowing it down. Since fiber is faster than copper wire, the primary restriction is how quickly the equipment at both ends can share and decipher the light signals.
The potential speeds in leased lines are astronomical since only one organization uses each line without competing traffic. Rather than measuring speed in megabits per second, you can measure speed in gigabits per second with a leased line.
Besides being fast, a leased line is guaranteed. This is because your package always delivers what it specifies, regardless of whether you upload or download data. Moreover, you may customize your package accordingly if you do not require such high speeds.
