Well, there’s good news if you need to connect to French enterprises. One the major worldwide telecommunication carriers, Level 3 Communications, recently announced and expansion of resources, infrastructure and services for enterprise customers in France. A key piece in this initiative is expanded network reach and access from increased deployment of carrier Points of Presence (POPs) in Paris and the surrounding area. They are also extending core network capabilities in and around Lille, Lyon, and Toulouse. This gives businesses in these metro areas more access to the Level 3 network for connection to global markets.In addition to the expansion of network connectivity, Level 3 is now offering enterprise services that include converged voice, VPN, high performing websites, content distribution networks (CDN), managed DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) mitigation for network security, and collaboration services to the expanded markets in France.
Paris has long been a major on-net fiber optic hub for Level 3, including Metropolitan Area Networks (MAN) and a colocation data center. It is connected across the Atlantic by undersea landing sites on the West coast, at Saint-Brieuc and Lannion. On the other side of the pond, these fiber cables terminate in the New York and New Jersey area. This is important for companies needing low latency connections for very high performance applications like automated financial trading.
In addition to France, Level 3 Communications offers extensive network connectivity in 23 countries of Europe, including Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The service portfolio includes metro and long haul services for transport, data, voice, Internet, content and media delivery.
What kind of international connectivity are you seeking? At the low end, the classic private lines are T1 in the United States running at 1.5 Mbps and E1 in Europe running at 2 Mbps. Other than the speed difference, these are essentially the same technology standard and easily interfaced. Higher bandwidths within the TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) family of standards include DS3 at 45 Mbps and SONET/SDH fiber optic services that range from OC-3 at 155 Mbps on up to OC-192 at 10 Gbps or perhaps OC-768 at 40 Gbps. Newer technology services are provided by Ethernet over Copper (EoC) and Ethernet over Fiber (EoF) based on Carrier Ethernet standards. Ethernet connectivity options are highly scalable and available up to 10 Gbps.
MPLS networks are becoming the international network service of choice for companies needing to link more than two locations. MPLS can support most any desired protocol and provide you with meshed network connectivity to connect your multiple sites in an any-to-any communications arrangement. A specialized service running on MPLS is VPLS or Virtual Private LAN Service. This gives you layer 2 Ethernet connectivity to create an international bridged network that joins your LANs worldwide.
Does your business need to connect to France or other locations in Europe, The Middle Ease, Africa Asia Pacific, Latin America or North America from the United States? If so, get pricing and features for international network connectivity from Level 3 and other high performance service providers.
Note: Map of France courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
