Backbone Directory: Mzima Networks

Mzima maximizes the efficiency of its nationwide network by focusing on routing and traffic delivery.

by Jeff Goldman [February 16, 2005]

Mzima Networks is an operating unit of Mzima Corporation, which was founded in 2001. The company's name comes from the Kiswahili word for "alive" or "stream." In order to improve the flow of that stream, Mzima uses a number of different methods to move traffic, including its own nationwide backbone network, peering with

According to Grant Kirkwood, Mzima's CTO, the company's aim from the beginning has been to provide connectivity solutions competing directly with those of Internap. "We're similar to Internap in that we have upstream connectivity with several different Tier 1 backbone providers," Kirkwood says. "The difference is that we connect all of our cities together, we have a network, and we encourage private direct peering with other networks."

The goal, Kirkwood says, is to get customer traffic to end-users as efficiently as possible. "We have route analysis software which looks at different routes to different destinations and picks the best one based on performance metrics," he says. "If we have somebody on Earthlink in New York that's accessing one of our customers' content in LA, we can take it across our own network in New York and hand it directly to SBC or whoever the provider might be for that particular person."

Mzima Networks focuses solely on its bandwidth services, which Kirkwood sees as a key differentiator for the company. "Some of the other networks out there have gone and bought data centers, done managed hosting, or any of those kinds of divergent but related activities," he says. "We decided fairly early on that we weren't going to do that, so we could partner with companies doing things like that and sell to them—so it wouldn't be a conflict for us or them."

Key features of Mzima's network include:

• Fully redundant architecture
• Multi-gigabit backbone with over 20 Gbps of transit/peering capacity
• SONET transit connections for self-healing fault-tolerance
• Multi-layer network design
• Customized routing policies for customers
• BGP best-path routing
• Automatic detection and re-routing around network failures
• Open peering policy allowing for local data delivery
• Carrier fault-tolerance
• Non-oversubscribed bandwidth
• Quality of Service monitoring and analysis

Mzima Networks' service locations include the following:

Corporate contact information: