Network Bytes: Level 3, Ritter, RCN, TWCBC, Limelight

Here’s a quick roundup of some news from this week from network operators large and small:

Level 3 revealed some gaming success this morning. Valve has tapped the global network operator for 100Gbps ports in response to demand for its games. Valve’s platform is known as Steam, which delivers some 450-500 petabytes monthly worldwide, and has been seeing traffic growing at 75% annually. At that rate, even 100Gbps will only hold them for a while I’d say.

Arkansas-based Ritter Communications has forged yet another network partnership to expand its regional wholesale reach. They’re teaming up with NewWave Communications, which operates regional fiber networks in the Louisiana-Texas and Illinois/Indiana markets. Ritter has been working hard to make friends in adjacent markets lately, with similar interconnections with iRis Networks and Fidelity Communications last year.

RCN Business is on the move in New York City again this month. They’ve expanded their fiber into Telehouse’s data center at 85 10th Ave. With a newly revamped channel partner program in place, RCN Business has been casting a wider shadow lately as it takes on a wider range of enterprise customers, and Telehouse is a natural data center partner for them to be working with.

Time Warner Cable Business Class is taking to the clouds. With its acquisition by Charter still waiting for regulators to make up their minds, TWCBC has hooked its network up to the Equinix Cloud Exchange. They are now offering connectifity through it to the likes of Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Rackspace. Cable MSOs have been a bit slow on the uptake for enterprise-cloud connectivity, but they’ll be coming on strong now.

And Limelight Networks has a new customer over in the UK sports vertical.  The football (soccer, whatever) club Arsenal will be leveraging their content delivery infrastructure for its team website.  Such team websites have notoriously wild swings in traffic requirements, assuming of course that the club in question is having a decent season — which Arsenal seems to be having.

If you haven't already, please take our Reader Survey! Just 3 questions to help us better understand who is reading Telecom Ramblings so we can serve you better!

Categories: Cloud Computing · Datacenter · Internet Backbones · Metro fiber