Internet Solutions (IS) has announced the availability of two carrier grade services, Ethernet Private Network (EPN) and Clear Channel, that provide direct access to the company’s undersea cable investments between SA and the UK.
As global demand for the transfer of large amounts of data increases, many enterprises are looking for ways to control the IP routing and security of data between their core business locations worldwide.
The EPN and Clear Channel solutions will enable businesses that require latency sensitive connectivity to communicate and collaborate through a single network. “In addition to security and reliability, a growing number of clients are starting to see low latency connectivity as crucial for businesses”, says Brett Steingo, Innovation and Technology Manager at IS. “These point-to-point solutions use the shortest path between the UK and SA providing the lowest available round-trip-times. This creates an optimal environment for businesses that want to drive collaboration enablement, for example through the use of video-conferencing, as well as companies where latency is paramount, such as stock trading.
Bandwidth speeds for EPN are available in 10Mbps increments starting at 10Mbps and increasing to 100Mbps. Clear Channel offers businesses a choice of five service speeds: STM-1, STM-4, 1Gbps, STM-16 and STM-64.
Both solutions cater for stringent monitoring and reporting of faults, performance and availability to meet the demands of different businesses. IS has introduced 30 second interval monitoring for EPN and Clear Channel which equates to a near real-time response. Both solutions are supported by an SLA (Service Level Agreement) ensuring business uptime requirements are catered for.
EPN is a layer 2 carrier Ethernet managed service which gives businesses the ability to control IP routing and security over the network. Clear Channel is a layer 1 managed optical transmission service, offering enterprises full control of their network over the transmission layer of the network.
Steingo said, “We have seen a large demand for layer 1 and layer 2 network connectivity coming into South Africa. Both services provide global carriers with the ability to service clients that require a connection to South Africa via the UK. By using the EPN and Clear Channel networks that terminate in South Africa, global carriers can offer services that meet international standards.
Both solutions are offered as either protected or unprotected depending on the organisation’s IT needs. With protected services, IS uses the WACS undersea cable system as their primary transmission route with redundancy provided over the SEACOM undersea cable system. The unprotected services provide clients with a choice of either a WACS or SEACOM undersea cable path.
As part of the protected offering, the Clear Channel service enables two active linear paths over separate undersea cable paths that are managed by the client. The EPN protected service provides automatic failover management across the WACS and SEACOM undersea cable paths.
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