The Coming Level 3 Global Crossing Juggernaut

If you believe that the future of business is high bandwidth connections to clouds, customers and suppliers worldwide, then the next step toward this future is the melding of Level 3 Communications and Global Crossing. Combine their assets and you have a network map that spans the world.

Level 3 Communications is actually purchasing Global Crossing for $2 billion. When this merger is complete, their combined fiber optic assets will reach 70 countries on 3 continents.

Level 3 has an extensive long haul network with metro fiber in many US cities. Their transatlantic undersea fiber connects to a European network to link the USA and major European cities with low latency fiber connections. Level 3 is a major player in the high speed financial trading space, as well as providing other high bandwidth fiber services for global business needs.

Another strength of Level 3 is video transport. Their Vyvx service carries both high definition and standard video programming for studios and networks. For the highest in transmission feed quality, Level 3 Vyvx offers uncompressed high definition video transport services between Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and New York City at 1.5 and 3.0 Gbps. The Level 3 Content Delivery Network (CDN) has 35 strategically placed cashing locations to keep the content as near the customer as possible.

What Global Crossing does is complement rather than compete with Level 3’s US/Europe network. Global Crossing has over 100,000 route miles of fiber optic cable installed around the world. This includes US and Europe network fiber that overlaps Level 3 to some extent. But it also brings trans-pacific undersea fiber and connections to Japan, China, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. Connected to its North America network is an extensive fiber optic networking serving the major cities in South America.

Global Crossing is true to its name. Their fiber really does span the world. Add Global Crossing’s network to the Level 3 network and you have extensive connectivity throughout North America, South America, Europe, Australia and Asia, with some facilities extending to the Middle East and Africa.

What does this mean for you, the business user? It certainly means more availability of converged IP network services worldwide and specialty services, such as low latency routes and video transport. Both Level 3 and Global Crossing have been serving major enterprise customers and carriers. They’ve got the expertise and facilities to accomplish whatever you will ever need in the way of connectivity.

Level 3, especially, also caters to smaller and medium businesses in the US. Their T1, bonded T1 and Ethernet over Copper solutions offer dedicated bandwidth at very reasonable prices. For companies that need to link multiple locations, Level 3 MPLS can create a company network that spans the country and extends to include offices, factories and warehouses worldwide.

Fiber optic networks are enjoying a new renaissance, as businesses move to cloud processes and automation that increases employee productivity. You see more fiber going into the ground in both major cities and rural areas. If you’ve been affiliated with Level 3 or Global Crossing, your connection capabilities are about to be increased significantly.

If you are looking to increase your connection speeds, you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised by the wide range of services available and the cost reductions that have come about in recent years from these and other competitive carriers. Don’t assume that you can’t get or afford higher bandwidth, even fiber, until you get prices and availability for business bandwidth services appropriate to your facility locations.



Note: Image of Earth from over the Atlantic Ocean courtesy of the U.S. Government on Wikimedia Commons

More Ultra Low Latency Bandwidth For Europe

If you’ve harbored any hope that the speed of business would slow down to a leisurely pace, consider one of the hottest new technology offerings. It’s the ultra low latency WAN network connection. If you are involved in the financial services industry, you need to keep a keen eye on what your competitors are implementing in the way of higher bandwidth/lower latency connections. If you are involved in any other business field, expect that latency will be important to your business sometime soon.

Level 3 Communications is a leader in the field of low latency transport services. Once of their niche services is fiber optic lines optimized to reduce latency between financial centers. They’ve just added London to Madrid and Frankfort to Madrid routes with circuit speeds up to 10 Gbps. These join the existing routes of Chicago to Washington DC, Chicago to New York, New York to London, and London to Frankfurt. The newly added European connections will improve latency on the Madrid to New York and Madrid to Chicago routes also.

Why is low latency such a hot topic as opposed to, say, bandwidth? Actually both latency and bandwidth are important characteristics of long haul fiber optic networks. What’s given latency the spotlight in recent years is the rise of high speed financial trading. This is a process where computers generate market trades far faster than humans are capable of. With thousands of trades executing in milliseconds, even very small moves in a market can result in huge profits or losses. If your trading platform is running even a fraction of a second behind your competitor’s, you could be on the losing end of those trades.

Latency can be minimized, but not eliminated. That’s because latency is nothing more than the length of time that elapses between when a signal is sent and when it is received. The fastest that an optical or electrical signal can propagate is set by the speed of light at 186,000 miles per second or 300,000 kilometers per second. If two locations are separated by 186 miles, you’ll never get below 1 millisecond of latency. A 1,860 mile route can do no better than 10 milliseconds. However, it can be much, much worse.

What sort of characteristics can slow down a speeding laser pulse? The mere fact that the data modulated light beam is traveling through a glass fiber rather than the vacuum of space will slow it down. According to Level 3, the propagation delay in optical networks is approximately 4.9 microseconds per kilometer. In free space the delay would be about 3.3 microseconds. That 4.9 microseconds can be degraded further by electronics that can’t keep up with the speed of the traffic. In other words, any bandwidth limitation will manifest itself as an additional delay as packets queue up in a buffer chip. Even with the fastest electronics, fiber routes must be as straight as possible. Any meandering through the countryside or to pick up other cities adds fiber length and, thus, latency.

Global trading has been increasing in volume at the rate of 30 to 50% annually. It is expected that automated trading will soon account for fully two-thirds of equity trades. Level 3 Communications has carved out a position as a key provider of high bandwidth ultra low latency connections to serve the financial industry. Unprotected Ethernet Private Line services are available at 100 Mbps. Unprotected Wavelength services are available at 1 GigE, 2.5 Gbps, 10 Gbps, 10 GigE and 40 Gbps. They can also provide customized global latency solutions for specific physical routing and diversity.

Are you in need of ultra low latency connections or merely low latency for time sensitive applications? If so, you should check out the availability and pricing of latency sensitive high bandwidth connections for your needs.



Note: Map of Spain graphic courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.