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Network News: Level 3, Brocade, Juniper, Riverbed

Level 3 (LVLT) enhances enterprise networking solutions with Brocade (BRCD), Juniper Networks (JNPR) selected by London Internet Exchange, Riverbed (RVND) provides Steelhead appliances for Alsco.

Here’s a roundup of some of this week’s headlines from the network sector:

Level 3 enhances enterprise networking solutions.  Level 3 Communications (LVLT) announced that it has enhanced its data center networking portfolio to simplify service deployment for its customers. Working with Brocade (BRCD), Level 3 will provide an end-to-end solution for connecting two or more geographically dispersed data centers using the fibre channel, FICON (fibre connectivity) and fibre channel over Internet protocol (FCIP) SAN protocols. "Level 3 is dedicated to providing enterprises with a comprehensive suite of options to best meet their network service needs, and our data center networking portfolio clearly demonstrates this," said Paul Savill, senior vice president of Transport and Infrastructure Services for Level 3. "Working with Brocade, we are able to expand this already robust portfolio to provide our customers with the ability to ensure their advanced SAN protocols service is compatible with their essential network hardware." As a part of its professional services, Level 3 is working with Brocade to act as the consolidator for its data center networking customers. Level 3 also announced that it has signed an agreement with 52Eighty, a wireless tower infrastructure company, to develop 200 new wireless tower access sites near Level 3's strategic Extended On-Net (EON) sites.

Juniper selected by LINX.  London Internet Exchange Ltd. (LINX) and Juniper Networks (JNPR) announced that LINX, a mutually-owned membership association for operators of Internet Protocol networks and one of the world’s largest Internet Exchanges, is building a new network based 100 percent on Juniper Networks technology. During the first phase of the project LINX will use MX Series Ethernet Services Routers and Junos Space, a MPLS network automation application. Phase two in the first half of 2012 will include Juniper PTX Series Packet Transport Switches and will run on Junos OS. "We believe a huge proportion of the UK's traffic passes across our infrastructure, with LINX passing approximately 1.5 Terabits per second of traffic at peak, and our members expect consistent, reliable throughput," said John Souter, LINX's chief executive officer. "The architecture will allow us to offer a sophisticated carrier platform from which we can launch new services such as VLAN tagging and 100G ports. We've chosen Juniper as our desire to build a layer three platform led us to a vendor with a reputation for robust, carrier-grade networks, and their ability to provide high-performance at scale.

Riverbed selected by Alsco.  Riverbed Technology (RVBD) announced that Alsco, a commercial textile services company, has deployed Riverbed Steelhead appliances in its primary data center and disaster recovery site. With the deployment of Steelhead appliances, Alsco doubled the amount of data transferred from its data center to its Atlanta DR site and met its goal of improving the security of the company’s data and operations without increasing costs. “Our replication times were peaking for hours and stressing the network to recover when there were interruptions,” says Darin Regis, Alsco’s network manager. “After the seamless integration of the Steelhead appliances, those peak periods have dropped by 75 percent. We have been able to double the amount of data transferred from Salt Lake City to Atlanta (from 700GB to 1,400 GB) without increasing the backup window.”

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