CDN: Enter Amazon!

September 18th, 2008
 

Amazon entered the CDN business today, as usual Dan Rayburn has the inside scoop.   Basically, Amazon will be leveraging its distributed hosting and storage systems for basic CDN services.  Not video, yet, and no add-on services, just do-it-yourself caching and download really.  But that’s enough, if they succeed at all with this offering it will probably annihilate the 40+ small fry that are still seeking a foothold.

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Where RCN Metro Is – Lit Buildings

September 18th, 2008
 

Continuing further along my lit building thread, I looked at the smaller regional footprint of RCN Metro.  This of course is a division of RCN rather than a standalone company, however they are kind enough to publish their lit building list.  Once again, I shoehorned their data into the appropriate MSAs so that the data is comparable to others.  With no further ado, here are their top 10 markets by MSA: [Read more →]

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Arnold on Making VoIP a Killer App

September 17th, 2008
 

Jon Arnold has an interesting article over on TMCnet about harnessing VoIP going forward.  The problem with VoIP applications have always been that they has only really served to replace other voice applications: Vonage replacing your home line, IP-PBX’s replacing older PBX’s, etc.  Unique features that actually caught on have been few and far between.  [Read more →]

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SHV Video, Now That's Bandwidth

September 17th, 2008
 

Over on Contentinople is an article on SHV, or Super Hi Vision, which is seen as a successor to HD.  What is it?  Think resolution of 33M pixels (7680 X 4320) and 22 channels of sound.  Think 24Gb/s uncompressed, maybe 1Gb/s compressed.  One hour of SHV video would bust that Comcast usage limit.  Of course, we’re just barely seeing HD video go anywhere now let alone via the internet, so this is far far away.  [Read more →]

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XO as an Acquirer?

September 17th, 2008
 

Over on TelecomStraightShooter, Dave Rusin posted yesterday that he sees XO more as an acquirer than as an acquiree right now.  This is of course in direct contradiction of the unscientific poll of my readers  over the past month (summarized at the bottom of this post) in which XO is the runaway favorite to be bought next, but then Dave doesn’t ever fear holding a contrarian view.  While he makes some good points, let me say why I don’t think it will happen: [Read more →]

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Is Internap's CDN Making a Comeback?

September 16th, 2008
 

Internap has announced a flurry of small CDN deals this month, is this a recovery?  First there was Million Dollar Round Table after Labor Day, then Synacor last week , and today we have TV Worldwide’s FedEdTV.com.  None of these deals are huge obviously, but Internap’s niche has always been the [Read more →]

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Zayo/Adesta: We Were Close!

September 16th, 2008
 

Last week, when we heard that Zayo had made another deal for some conduit assets and fiber to cable landing stations but weren’t told who they were being bought from, readers of this blog quickly came up with the name Adesta.  Caruso eventually piped in and demurred, but with Zayo’s PR today it turns out we were really quite close. [Read more →]

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Offshoring Network Operations

September 15th, 2008
 

Telephony Online has an article today discussing the trend of carriers offshoring parts of their network operations.  This certainly is going on, one only has to listen to what networks like Colt and Level 3 have to say in their earnings calls.  And it’s unstoppable, like heat flowing from hot to cold and water running downhill – if it can be done somewhere else cheaper then sooner or later it will. However, [Read more →]

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Another Wall Street West?

September 15th, 2008
 

DataCenterKnowledge has an article detailing an effort to build another Wall Street West in Binghamton, for backup sites for wall street.  Of course, it is Pennsylvania that started such an effort a while back that has been slow to get started.  I have two thoughts on this. [Read more →]

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Where Cogent Is – Europe

September 14th, 2008
 

Following up on my Cogent-North America post, let’s now look at Cogent’s European assets.  Once again one is able to derive the total buildings, Cogent-owned datacenters, and neutral datacenters for each city they serve.  With no further ado, here are their top 20 markets by number of lit buildings: [Read more →]

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Where Cogent Is – North America

September 13th, 2008
 

Continuing in my series looking at metro assets and lit buildings, I took a look at Cogent.  If you’re willing to keep clicking, their website yields plenty of information – buildings, addresses, and whether each is a neutral or Cogent-owned datacenter – the rest I assume to be enterprise buildings for the sake of analysis.  For this post, let’s save [Read more →]

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Fiber Maps, Lit Buildings, and Disclosure

September 12th, 2008
 

After his return from a trip, Dan Caruso found my Zayo Lit Buildings post and kindly offered avenues for more information should I be interested.  Who knows, I might!  He also asked how Zayo’s public maps and data stack up compared to others, and I thought about it and voila it turned into a blog post.  After all, I’ve looked at all of them, all I had to do was put them side by side – so I took the data I had on [Read more →]

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Rackspace Reports Q2

September 12th, 2008
 

Rackspace Hosting, which IPO’d in August, released its Q2 earnings today.  I guess when you are a new listing, they relax the SEC reporting requirements as you settle in, considering how Q3 will be over in just a few weeks.  The market was unimpressed by Rackspaces’s results just as it was unimpressed by its IPO, but I think they just don’t understand the business. [Read more →]

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Global Crossing On the Prowl?

September 11th, 2008
 

At the Jefferies conference on Tuesday, Global Crossing was unflaggingly optimistic about its growth prospects.  Economic headwinds or not, they flat out refused to back off from their guidance and said things remain good.  Controversial?  Perhaps, but the most interesting comment came in response to a question on consolidation opportunities: [Read more →]

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Bits and Pieces

September 11th, 2008
 

Lots of interesting but small stuff to comment on today, so let’s go through them: [Read more →]

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Level 3 Finally Pulls Its MPLS Together

September 10th, 2008
 

After what seemed like ages, Level 3 today announced that it has finally consolidated its many data services onto a best of breed MPLS platform.  There was a time, all of Q4/07 actually, when the company stopped selling ethernet private line entirely because they couldn’t provision it at all, let alone slowly.  When they started the integration, most of these services were [Read more →]

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Zayo Buys #10?

September 10th, 2008
 

Zayo gave a presentation at the Jefferies investor conference yesterday, in which it discussed yet another acquisition made recently – yes, since Columbia Fiber Solutions just a couple weeks ago.  Who was it?  Well, they didn’t put a name on it, they only described it as [Read more →]

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Which IP Network Will Enter the CDN Biz Next?

September 9th, 2008
 

So far, there are four IP network providers which have entered the CDN business.  AT&T has its own offering whose effect remains hard to gauge.  Level 3 bought Savvis’s CDN assets and has made lot of noise lately.  Internap bought VitalStream and Reliance Globalcom partnered with them.  Yesterday, Tata unveiled its new CDN and increased its ties with BitGravity.  That makes [Read more →]

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TW Telecom Sees More Softness Coming

September 9th, 2008
 

TW Telecom today filed an 8-K with the SEC, warning that economic weakness may be spreading and may affect their growth in the near term.  As readers may recall, I spent some effort trolling through the earnings reports for Q2 looking for signs that network providers are feeling economic pressure.  A few saw pressure, most seemed ok but cautious, and a couple just shrugged it off.  Well, TW Telecom was one of those that [Read more →]

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Tata Enters CDN Space Via BitGravity

September 8th, 2008
 

I suppose after Reliance Globalcom made its deal with Internap, it was inevitable that its erstwhile Indian rival Tata Communications would respond.  Today Dan Rayburn reports that Tata has in fact made its move.  Simultaneously investing $11.5M in BitGravity and launching its own CDN network based on BitGravity’s technology, I’d say they have called Reliance’s bluff and raised them a bit.  Tata and BitGravity were already allied, having partnered back in April, so this move should come as no big surprise. [Read more →]

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Zayo's Lit Buildings Footprint

September 8th, 2008
 

After messing around with Level 3’s public information about its lit buildings, I decided to look at  another company that also provides nice quantities of information about its lit buildings: Zayo Bandwidth.   Zayo, one of Dan Caruso’s companies, also provides detailed maps of its extensive regional and metro fiber plus an on-net building list, and it is possible to glean [Read more →]

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Google's Data Center Barges

September 7th, 2008
 

Over on Data Center Knowledge there is a nice article detailing Google’s plans for datacenters floating out at sea.   The speculation is based on a patent for a water-based datacenter that Google just updated in the last week or two.  I have to say, the idea is really, really fascinating.  Here are some thoughts: [Read more →]

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Where Level 3 Wholesale Is

September 6th, 2008
 

Last week I posted a summary of where Level 3’s enterprise footprint is concentrated, this week it is the wholesale footprint – again gleaned from the new Level 3 interactive map.  From their breakdown, I count as their wholesale footprint all wireless switching centers, neutral colocations, carrier hotels, and local central offices.  This is the more traditional Level 3 footprint and [Read more →]

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