Cisco upgrades enable Colt IQ Network to deliver high-bandwidth connectivity

Cisco said that it has succeeded in upgrading Colt Technology Services' pan-European, Asian, and U.S. packet fiber-optic network, enabling Colt IQ Network to provide further differentiated, high-bandwidth connectivity.

In December 2016, Cisco and Colt announced that they were working on a system-wide, multiple 100Gbps upgrade to Colt's IQ Network using optical transport technology from Cisco (see "Colt upgrades packet fiber-optic network to 100 Gbps"). The upgrade enables it to offer high-performance connectivity for cloud-scale, business-critical applications to its enterprise, carrier, and web-centric customers, says Cisco.

According to Cisco, Colt's IQ Network now benefits from improved convergence time, increased network availability, and topology resiliency, which enables the service provider to rapidly deliver high-bandwidth technology by combining segment routing and Ethernet VPN (EVPN).EVPN delivers accelerated convergence times, and offers the unified control plane protocol Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) for all service types, including Layer 2 VPN and Layer 3 VPN services.

Cisco says the infrastructure is designed to enable digital businesses through the speed, capacity, and flexibility needed to meet application-specific service quality requirements. Using end-to-end segment routing technology to streamline and automate network operation and lower operating costs, Colt's network connects over 800 data centers worldwide, with more than 25,000 on-net buildings. It also supplies high-bandwidth network and voice services for enterprises and wholesale customers in Asia, Europe, and North America.

Segment routing decreases network complexity and minimizes the number of protocols needed, and also delivers the following:

· Improved network availability with 50 ms protection mechanism to cover all potential network topologies using TI-LFA SR.

· Enhanced network utilization with scalable MPLS segment routing traffic engineering for the data plane.

· Advanced network service delivery for on-demand real time delivery capabilities.

Powered by IOS XR, and its segment routing and EVPN, the Cisco's Network Convergence System (NCS) 5500 series and the Aggregation Services Router (ASR) 9000 platforms will be the main components of a unified fabric.

"Colt is focused on providing best-in-class, high-bandwidth connectivity solutions to meet our customers' ever-growing business needs," said Peter Coppens, Colt vice president, product. "Aligning with these overarching goals, we worked closely with Cisco to design a network architecture that is simple to operate, highly available, and capable of delivering innovative network services. This also enables Colt to benefit from faster time-to-market. Segment routing significantly decreased complexity in the IQ Network and helped us start offering differentiated network services such as disjoint path. EVPN further contributed to operational simplification and made the delivery of services much more efficient."

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