Your Leased Line Circuit Options: Speeds, Technologies and Topologies

Leased line circuits provide you with a dedicated symmetric connection between two locations.

They are ideal for linking an office to the Internet, or to your company's corporate WAN.

Leased line circuits come in a number of different sizes. 2Mbit/s, 10Mbit/s and 100Mbit/s are common choices, though it is possible to get 1Gbit/s and 10Gbit/s connections as well.

Most leased line circuits use fibre-optic cables to transmit your data. These connections are the most reliable, and offer the highest speeds.

Some lower-bandwidth leased line circuits make use of DSL variants such as SDSL and ADSL2+Annex M. However these are not quite as reliable or scalable as fibre leased line circuits. However they may sometimes offer quicker installation times.

A leased line that links two offices is seldom a point-to-point leased line circuit. Instead,  there are usually at least two circuits, one from each office to your provider's core network, and a bit in the middle that links those two circuits.  This network topology enables your leased line provider to directly monitor both leased line circuits, and add additional services that may be desired, such as Internet access and telephony.