Boosting Speed, Reliability, Performance and More for Ongoing Educational Support
FiberLight’s cloud and dark fiber solutions helped this online education services company empower its mission-critical applications and supported the company as it launched itself into a new era of accelerated growth.
Profile
One Florida-based online education program services provider partnering with top universities across the U.S. and reaching more than 50 campuses provides a great example of how enhanced networking is key to success.
Online Education Management Services Company
Solutions: Dark Fiber / Cloud Connect
- Two-tiered network
- Accelerated performance
- Augmented control
- Increased scalability
- Better security
Once we had 10Gbps to play with, email servers…were no issue. I knew that FiberLight was the best way to go. [Deploying a dark fiber ring] has been the best thing that we’ve done.
Dual, 2-Part Network Solution
Dark Fiber and Cloud Combine for Ultimate Control
CHALLENGE:
Network Constraints Hinder Business Success
With a team of over 500 employees across two locations, the company found that its operational and call center network, which featured Digital Signal 3 (DS 3) coaxial cable connecting to its remote data center and dark fiber to connect to the company’s individual locations, was being taxed by an influx of daily email. The use of differing types of connectivity, together with dark fiber, was unregulated and un-permitted, and the varying bandwidth speeds from one type of network to another resulted in data traffic choking and creating a bottleneck to its data center, hindering operations and business performance.
This interruption led the digital learning provider to transition its network to Ethernet for multipoint connectivity over a metropolitan area network (MAN), but it still experienced issues with network performance, particularly when the ethernet provider’s network interface device (NID) failed, interrupting their operations even further. After a period of trial and error, the company determined that it was in need of a solution partner that could help them achieve a ‘control-your-own-destiny’ network approach, leveraging a reliable mix of dark fiber, dedicated internet access (DIA) and fixed wireless connectivity solutions.
SOLUTION:
Dark Fiber and Cloud Combine for Ultimate Control
FiberLight provided a two-tiered network approach to help the online education services provider achieve accelerated performance, augmented control, increased scalability and better security. To start, FiberLight helped the company switch over to a privately-operated dark fiber ring. This dark fiber solution allowed the company to customize and future-proof its network, gain control of the equipment it was using, and leverage 10 Gbps capacity as opposed to their previous 100 Mbps. Additionally, the company set up a thorough disaster recovery plan to ensure business continuity with internet carrier diversity, implementing Border Gateway Patrol (BGP) management between providers for improved performance and failover assurance. FiberLight’s fiber network ring included a 24-count fiber link to the back parking lot at one of the company’s locations that, in the event that the network was disrupted for any reason— something extremely important to the hurricane-prone Florida area—offers the option to bring trailers in to hook everything up on-site to bring the network back up.
The second part of the solution involved shifting the company’s telephony operations to the cloud. By utilizing a hybrid cloud solution featuring Azure site recovery services for disaster recovery and Amazon Web Services (AWS) for long-term backup storage, the company reduced their storage infrastructure costs from $1.6 million to $200,000 annually. To get to their cloud, the company turned to FiberLight’s Cloud Connect for a low latency, secure and private connection to their public clouds. Cloud Connect enabled the company to experience greater peace of mind with more secure operations while opening up opportunities for new international clients that can leverage AWS servers throughout the world.