E N D - U S E R I N S I G H T
“ We ’ ve watched Bandwidth IG grow from offering dark fibre to more parts of the San Francisco Bay Area ,” added Peterson . “ We appreciated their team ’ s commitment to serving more corners of the market , as well as their team ’ s knowledge of our business .
“ This level of near-ubiquitous coverage assists with SFMIX ’ s resilience . Not all providers have such a developed footprint ; those that do have the coverage , tend to have limited capacity ,” Peterson said . “ With Bandwidth IG , we found a partner that has the coverage and available capacity to serve our current and future needs .”
The new route provides an alternative to traditional fibre routes in the San Francisco Bay Area . Bandwidth IG ’ s subsea fibre route not only provides physical diversity , but the uniquely built route is also more protected from natural disasters , should the majority of other cables in other routes become impacted . “ Because of our status as a non-profit , we maintain a high level of scrutiny with where we invest our resources . We found the subsea route valuable because it connects two high-traffic areas of the Bay , and because it takes a diverse route ,” said Peterson .
We asked Matt Peterson , President , San Francisco Metropolitan Internet Exchange ( SFMIX ), more about the project .
How significant is it being the only member-owned co-operative Internet Exchange Point in California , and what unique benefits does this bring ?
SFMIX has operated since 2006 and is one of the first 501 ( c ) 12 nonprofit , cooperative IXPs in the Western US . Being member-owned and managed translates to a laser focus on offering and enhancing a core set of interconnection services . We have no other lines of business or distractions that can occur from for-profit or hobbyist-level operators .
As SFMIX prioritises an efficient , uncongested and resilient network backbone , how does Bandwidth IG ’ s fibre network support these priorities ?
Bandwidth IG ’ s modern cable plant supports the latest optical transceivers , including 800Gbps . Other dark fibre providers have outside plants that are well past 20 years of usage , splices can be brittle and physically ‘ crammed ’ cases can be a challenge . Bandwidth IG has chosen alternative physical routes within the region that don ’ t take the major fibre corridor ‘ shared faith ’ routes .
We valued partnering with Bandwidth IG because its entire network in the San Francisco Bay Area is newly built with 100 % underground fibre , and is intentionally placed to avoid heavily used routes . We also liked that they ’ re hyper-focused building routes that serve data centres .
There are fewer splice points because the routes go directly to data centres , which we prioritise , and they don ’ t have to worry about serving enterprise or consumer locations .
www . intelligentdatacentres . com 51