Zayo opens new low-latency Chicago to Seattle route

Zayo has added a new route between Seattle and Chicago, giving its financial, content and wholesale customers a new option for low latency services.

Already providing a number of network services between Seattle and Chicago, the new service, which will be available in the third quarter of 2012, claims to improve latency by 5 percent to 15 percent by leveraging various optical technologies and network construction methods.

Dan Caruso, Zayo

Caruso

In addition to reducing the network distance by about 100 miles, Zayo will engineer the 100G system as an express route with add/drop points being limited to about four locations. This new low latency service will complement its existing fiber service that currently provides add/drop points in various markets between Chicago and Seattle.

Dan Caruso, President and CEO of Zayo, said that providing low latency between these two cities is important. "Traffic from Asia terminates in Seattle, and many of the nation's largest data centers are located in Northern Oregon and Central Washington."

While the initial target will likely be financial trading customers that want to reduce latency for real-time trading applications, Zayo said that it is examining how it can also address Dark Fiber customers on this route. But like all of its initiatives, the competitive provider will only move forward with its plans to overbuild the route only if it sees "sufficient demand for Dark Fiber service."

Besides this route, Zayo's pending acquisition of AboveNet will provide Zayo with an expanded set of low latency routes in both North America and London, a major European financial hub. When it completes this deal, it will be able to address low latency capabilities to address customer from Seattle to New York and Washington DC with stops in Chicago and Philadelphia. In addition, traffic that originates in Asian and European cable landing stations to North American cities will also see a potential decrease in latency.

For more:
- see the news release

Special Report: Wholesale provider leaders to watch in 2012

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