Carrier Ethernet: private L2 circuits in Riga

CloudHosting's Carrier Ethernet circuit is a private Layer 2 path that never touches the public internet, while a VPN rides the internet and shares the path with everyone else. A VPN therefore inherits whatever congestion, packet loss and jitter that path has on a given day, and encryption adds tunnelling overhead on your routers. On a circuit, latency stays where you measured it, and the contract sets availability and repair terms instead of best effort. A VPN is still fine for occasional remote access or offices where cost matters most; when VoIP, replication or trading traffic needs predictable behaviour every day, a private circuit is the right tool.

CloudHosting can end the circuit in its Tier 3+ data centre in Riga, and that is the most common design: a point-to-point link from your office straight to where your servers, backups and cloud resources run. In practice your office network and your hosted equipment behave like one local network, without tunnels and without exposing anything to the public internet. Day-to-day work such as replication and moving large backups also gets simpler, because that traffic stays on the private path. Name your office address in the quote request, and during the feasibility step we confirm reach and media all the way to your site.

CloudHosting delivers Carrier Ethernet from modest branch-office links up to multi-gigabit trunks, and the achievable speed depends on the two endpoints. Reach, the media available at each site and the capacity on the route set the ceiling, which is why we run a feasibility check first. Tell us the two sites and the target speed, and we confirm what is actually deliverable before you commit to anything. If you are not sure what speed you need, describe the workload, for example backup windows or replication volume, and we will size the link together with you, so it fits the real need rather than a guess.

CloudHosting monitors every Carrier Ethernet circuit with alerting on circuit health, so a fault shows up on our side without you having to notice it first and call. The SLA terms agreed in your contract define both availability and repair times, so a fault is worked against agreed deadlines rather than whenever convenient. Monitoring covers the circuit itself, the path between your two ports; everything behind the ports, your VLANs, routing and equipment, remains your responsibility. If you see anything odd, write to support and we tell you the current state of the circuit and what is being done about it.

CloudHosting's E-Line circuit is the point-to-point service type of the MEF Carrier Ethernet framework: a private Layer 2 Ethernet connection between exactly two sites. You get an Ethernet port at each end, and everything you send into one port comes out of the other, which is why it is often described as one long cable. Because the service works at Layer 2, there is no routing on our side: your VLANs, your IP addressing, your routing protocols and your equipment stay entirely under your control. The limitation is in the name: it connects two sites, so a design with three or more locations needs more than one circuit.

CloudHosting quotes each Carrier Ethernet circuit individually as a monthly price, because the two endpoints and the bandwidth drive most of the cost: how far apart the sites are, what media is available at each and how much capacity you want on the route. That is why the process starts with a quote rather than a shop page. Send us your two sites and the target speed, and you receive the circuit design, the monthly price without VAT and the SLA terms in one offer. Requesting a quote does not commit you to anything, so it is also a practical way to compare the offer with your current connectivity.

CloudHosting's circuits are VLAN transparent: the tags you send into the port at one site come out unchanged at the other, so your existing segmentation keeps working end to end. You do not renumber anything, you do not register your VLAN plan with us, and you do not coordinate changes: add or remove VLANs on your own schedule and the circuit simply carries them. This matters because office and server networks usually already have a VLAN structure, and a circuit that forced you to rebuild it would cost a lot of time. Your switches and routers at both ends remain yours to configure.

CloudHosting upgrades bandwidth within the capacity of the delivered ports and the route as a configuration change on our side, not a new construction project: no new cabling, no site visit, no second installation. In practice you write to support, we confirm the new speed and the adjusted monthly price, and the change is applied to the existing circuit. That is why it makes sense to start with the bandwidth you need today instead of overbuying for the future. If a requested speed ever goes beyond what the current media can carry, we tell you during the feasibility check and offer a design that can.

CloudHosting offers both between sites in Riga: a Carrier Ethernet circuit gives you a ready Ethernet port at each end with the bandwidth you order, while dark fiber gives you a bare strand that your own optics light. Choose Carrier Ethernet if you want a working Layer 2 link without running optical equipment, with monitoring and repair terms from us. Choose dark fiber if your team has network engineers who want to set their own speeds and encryption and are ready to watch the optics themselves. Both are quoted from the two endpoints, so one request can compare them for your route.