Renesys: Level 3 Now Largest IP Network

What company has the world’s largest network? Strong growth in November and December has lifted Level 3 Communications (LVLT) past Sprint and into the top spot, according to Internet routing specialist Renesys, which has published data on the 13 largest network providers. Regional growth trends loom large in the shifts seen in the network ecosystem in 2008, according to the Renesys analysis.

“It’s pretty clear from this narrative that the providers who are moving up in the rankings are doing so thanks in large measure to Asia,” writes Earl Zmijewski of Renesys. “This should come as no surprise. With more than half the world’s population and only 15% of them online, it’s pretty clear there is enormous potential here.” See the Renesys blog for the full story.

Level 3 Will Cut 450 Jobs

The job news has been pretty brutal of late, and Level 3 Communications (LVLT) is the latest company to announce layoffs. The Denver-based  telecom and content delivery provider will cut 450 jobs, or about 8 percent of its workforce. The company said the cuts would occur before the end of the year and be made “across multiple levels in the organization and multiple locations in North America only.”

Level 3 will take a restructuring charge of $12 million to $15 million in the fourth quarter 2008. For more analysis, see the summary at Telecom Ramblings.

Roundup: Level 3, Internap, HavenCo, The Planet

Here’s a roundup of some data center news announcements from today:

• The Moody’s Investor Service has downgraded its rating on Level 3 Communications (LVLT) after the company announced plans to raise $400 million in new debt to  refinance existing convertible debt. The credit ratings agency lowered Level 3’s probability of default rating by three notches to “Ca” from “Caa1″ and also placed the company’s debt ratings on review for a possible downgrade.
• Internap suffered power problems at its New York data center Sunday, leaving some customers offline for about two hours. The company informed customers that the downtime was related to a utility power outage that caused “a loss of connectivity to some equipment.”
• HavenCo, the offshore ”data haven” housed on a former World War II anti-aircraft military fortress in the North Sea, has apparently gone offline. The company started in 2000, offering hosting services from SeaLand, which declared itself a ”sovereign principality.” The company was briefly famous when it was featured on the cover of Wired magazine in 2001. See Slashdot for more discussion.
• The Planet said today that it has opened a 12,000 square feet of expansion space in its Dallas D6 data center. The Houston-based provider now has a data center footprint of 167,000 square feet.

Level 3 Extends CDN Infrastructure Into Asia

Level 3 Communications (LVLT) is expanding its content delivery network (CDN) into Asia, including three network nodes in mainland China, the company said today. Level 3 said the move is a response to customer demand for CDN capacity in Asia.

“As global demand for online video and other content continues to accelerate, the need to store and deliver content locally becomes increasingly important,” said Grant van Rooyen, president of Level 3’s Content Markets Group. “The expansion of our CDN service capabilities in Asia reinforces Level 3’s commitment to continue investing in our global CDN business.”

The expansion also helps distinguish Level 3 in an increasingly crowded market for content delivery services, according to Graham Williams, Senior Director of Product Management for Level 3’s Content Markets group. ”The top tier of CDN providers - Akamai, Limelight and Level 3 - now have an Asian presence,” said Williams. “That really is a differentiator between major tier one players and everyone else.”

Update: the BBC, Akamai and Level 3

Yesterday we linked to a post from ThinkBroadband which reported that the BBC had switched the primary CDN provider for its iPlayer from Akamai to Level 3. Dan Rayburn updates and corrects the story, noting that the BBC continues to work with Akamai (AKAM) and has added Level 3 as a second CDN partner.

For more information, see the BBC’s post providing an explanation of its rationale for the change in its iPlayer delivery scheme, emphasizing the importance of H.264 video compression in its decision.

Is it a good reflection on Akamai that the BBC has added Level 3 for the H.264 business? No, but for Akamai it’s a far sight better than losing the entire iPlayer business, and we wanted to make sure we corrected that impression.

CEO Crowe Discusses Level 3’s CDN Strategy

Dan Rayburn has a Q&A with Level 3 CEO James Crowe about the company’s content delivery network and strategy, in which he talks about the company’s plans for CDN infrastructure. An excerpt:

We continue to make significant investments in our platform. We have expanded into Asia and continue to make capacity augments on all three platforms (streaming, storage, and caching) in North America and Europe. In addition, we have been investing in the infrastructure within our Level 3 colocation space where we locate our CDN nodes so that we can do “just in time” capacity deployments to uniquely serve the growth needs of our customers.

See Dan’s post at The Business of Video for the entire interview.

Level 3: Our CDN Business Is Growing

Level 3 (LVLT) has increased the capacity of its content delivery network by a factor of 30, according to Lisa Guillaume, VP at Level3 who spoke to Beet.tv last week at Streaming Media East. “We have a cost advantage in the marketplace, because we own all layers of the network we’re operating our CDN on,” said Guillaume. This video runs about 3 minutes, 30 seconds.

For more news about LVLT, visit our Level 3 channel. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

Level 3 Targets ‘Long Tail’ Content Delivery

Level 3 (LVLT), which continues to sharpen its focus on the content delivery market, is launching a new service combining mass storage and content delivery for audio and video portals. The new product offering, Content Delivery for Extended Libraries (CDXL), will be of particular interest to sites with large libraries of user-generated digital content. CDXL allows audio and video hosting sites to outsource their storage, and use Level 3’s content delivery technology to monetize “long tail” archived content that suddenly becomes popular.

A particular challenge for these portals is recognizing that a piece of older content has suddenly “gone viral” and is generating unexpected demand. “Our system can instantly detect that a piece of content has become popular, and move it to the edge of the network,” said Ric Poland, Director of Product Management for the Content Markets Group at Level 3.

“Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are transforming how people gain access to rich media, and the network has to be about more than moving lots of bits quickly,” said Gerry Kaufhold, principal analyst with In-Stat. “Level 3’s Content Delivery for Extended Libraries brings a new level of network performance, storage capacity and economic efficiency to the CDN market.”