Cogent Speeds Up its Backbone

The optical ISP says it has finished more than 75 percent of its planned expansion which involves converting lines from one wavelength to eight wavelengths—10 Gbps to 80 Gbps.

by Roy Mark of www.internetnews.com [August 16, 2001]

Optical Internet service provider (ISP) Cogent Communications Inc., a privately held company based in Washington, D.C., said it has completed more than 75 percent of its planned 80 Gbps bandwidth expansion on its long- haul backbone. The increase speed comes as demand for broadband services stays high, according to a top Cogent official.

The remainder of the expansion on the 12,400 mile route will be completed by the end of October, officials also said.

Since late April, Cogent has steadily increased the capacity on its OC-192 backbone from one wavelength (10 Gbps) to eight wavelengths (80 Gbps). This makes Cogent's backbone one of the nation's largest for IP data traffic and enables it to accommodate the equivalent of over 150 billion e-mails per second, company officials said in a statement.

Cogent's backbone now runs to 45 of the 50 largest metropolitan service areas (MSAs) in the U.S., and is fully operational. Cogent currently provides service in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Kansas City, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Santa Clara, and Washington, D.C., with plans to provide service in 20 cities by the end of the year.

Cogent said its national IP backbone uses OC-192 long haul dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM), and is currently operational via two large, interconnected Eastern and Western rings connecting major cities across the country. Cogent's metropolitan networks utilize OC-48 DWDM technology.

"We have not seen the demand for high bandwidth at affordable pricing diminish in any way whatsoever, said Cogent Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dave Schaeffer, in a statement. "In actuality, uncertain economic times such as these make Cogent even more attractive to carriers and service providers as they look to save substantial sums of money on their transit and transport costs."

Privately held Cogent has secured nearly a half-billion dollars in capital in the past 18 months to fund its aggressive nationwide network build. It currently services customers in 11 metropolitan markets and plans to add an additional 9 markets before the end of 2001.

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