Level 3 Vyvx Connects The Super Bowl

While you are busy dipping chips in salsa, screaming at the refs, cheering the plays and rolling on the floor laughing at the commercials, there is one thing you won’t have to think about on Super Bowl Sunday. That’s how the broadcast is getting from there to you. It’s not magic. It’s a carefully engineered service called Level 3 Vyvx VenueNet+

VenueNet+ is a bundled service for special event broadcasters. It’s already installed in every major-league stadium in the United States. That includes Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. The fiber optic network is lit, the termination equipment installed, and everything is managed by dedicated Vyvx staff.

So, what’s Vyvx and why would you want to order VenueNet+ service? If you’ve ever been involved in a broadcast “remote”, radio or TV, you know that it can be a hit or miss proposition. You need to bring your own transmitter truck and hope you can get the antenna over any obstacles between you and the station or skyward to the “bird.” Otherwise, you need to install a permanent antenna or contract with the phone company for line service (radio) to get the broadcast out of where you are and to the studio intact.

In the age of HD television, this gets even dicier. There is massive bandwidth involved in providing a clean signal that can display high speed action without turning the picture into pixel mush. Can you afford glitches and maybe an all-out outage on game day? Ha! Last year’s Super Bowl was viewed by more than 110 million people, few of whom are in a mood to be patient with technical issues. With multi-million dollar budgets involved in giving you 30 second commercials of clever animal antics that you’ll talk about for weeks, can you afford even a second’s dead air? Nope. Whatever you lose you’ll never get back. There are no re-dos on the Super Bowl.

This is were Level 3 steps in to make life easy. Forget trying to raise an antenna mast or get a leased line connected. The Level 3 fiber network is already in-place at the venue and ready to transport your streaming video. The fiber network has been set up to transport high-definition video optimized for sports events. Vyvx supports HD-SDI, SD-SDI, DVB-ASI and MPEG2/4 and JPEG 2000 encoding. Some venues even support uncompressed HD video. In addition to video encoding and transport, VenueNet+ also provides high speed Internet and telephone service.

The VenueNet+ panel connects to a Level 3 Gateway that gives your video access to the Level 3 MPLS video and data network cloud that can deliver HD video with more than three times the bandwidth currently available by satellite. The fiber network connects to Level 3’s television operation center, broadcast networks, teleports to international and cruise ship destinations, and Level 3 CDN (Content Delivery Network) streaming. Once you hand the raw video to Level 3, they get it where it needs to go, properly encoded.

Level 3 has been delivering the Super Bowl for nearly 25 years. It’s also carries the pre-game and post-game feeds to NFL operations centers in Mt. Laurel, N.J., Culver City, California and NFL Network master control facilities in Atlanta.

The Super Bowl is certainly a showcase for the quality and reliability that Level 3 Vyvx video services can provide. It’s perhaps the best advertising they can have to demonstrate the capability of fiber optic video transport. Even if you are not involved in the Super Bowl or anything of that magnitude, Vyvx can make your life easier for video transport from stadiums and event venues. They’ll get your video to from here to there with the highest quality and least fuss. If you have a project in the works or just want to compare services with what you have now, get pricing and options for video transport and related services now.

Vyvx and Genesis Offer Worldwide Video Transport

If you are involved in video production, distribution, news reporting or TV sportscasting, you have an immediate and ongoing need for video transport services. Satellites have long been used for this purpose, but worldwide fiber optic networks have benefits that include almost unlimited bandwidth, low latency and availability for many popular venues. The merger of Level 3 and Global Crossing has combined their video transport operations into an impressive array of service options.

Level 3’s Emmy Award winning video service is called Vyvx. They offer broadcast fiber services, managed video network services, teleport and satellite services and venue services. Their venue service, called VenueNet, offers dedicated access points at every major league stadium in the US. In addition to accessing the Vyvx fiber optic network, Level 3 provides high quality video encoding, Internet, telephone access and dedicated support for each venue.

The heart of the Vyvx system is a IP MPLS network with extensive reach. What MPLS brings to the table is inherent VPN security, the ability to reroute video connections on the fly if a fault occurs in the network, and rapid set up and tear down of video connections. You can plan ahead to book the service you need or get a connection at the last minute through the Vyvx 24/7 booking center. This is more difficult to do with limited bandwidth satellite services and unheard of with dedicated point to point fiber connections over traditional switched circuit telecom networks.

Within the last year, Level 3 has added uncompressed high definition video transport services between Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and New York City at 1.5 and 3.0 Gigabits per second. This offers video producers and broadcasters the opportunity to deliver live video feeds in their native, pristine form without any compression.

Another Vyvx service is Managed Video Network Service (MVNS). This is a fully managed distribution system that provides both fiber optic connectivity and the necessary equipment. With MVNS, you can distribute video feeds to multiple destinations using a web-based booking system. These feeds can be broadcasts or prerecorded content.

With the acquisition of Global Crossing, Level 3 has picked up Global Crossing’s Genesis Solutions, a formerly competing video transport service. Genesis offers global HD video over IP transmission, portable bandwidth that you can book as you need it, and point to multipoint access that can be set up immediately.

Global Crossing’s converged IP network connects 700 cities in 70 countries worldwide. The Genesis Solutions uses that network to offer specialized managed video services with compressed and uncompressed transmission options. Dedicated bandwidth is available in any increment between 2 Mbps and 270 Mbps. MPEG 2/4 compression equipment is available for encoding, decoding transcoding and compression to deliver the desired bit rate and format needed.

As you can see, there is a lot of compatibility between Level 3’s Vyvx and Global Crossing’s Genesis. The combination of the two networks adds capacity and extends the reach of the combined system to every major broadcast market in the world via fiber optic transmission. There are also eleven satellite teleports for those odd locations where fiber still doesn’t go.

Do you need full time or occasional video transport services for broadcast or program distribution? If so, don’t assume that the cost is prohibitive or that there isn’t the capacity available for the locations you have in mind. Level 3 Vyvx Solutions has both the capability and experience to handle whatever you need and whenever you need it. Check prices and options for video transport services now to confirm that your project will meet schedule and budget.

The Coming Level 3 Global Crossing Juggernaut

If you believe that the future of business is high bandwidth connections to clouds, customers and suppliers worldwide, then the next step toward this future is the melding of Level 3 Communications and Global Crossing. Combine their assets and you have a network map that spans the world.

Level 3 Communications is actually purchasing Global Crossing for $2 billion. When this merger is complete, their combined fiber optic assets will reach 70 countries on 3 continents.

Level 3 has an extensive long haul network with metro fiber in many US cities. Their transatlantic undersea fiber connects to a European network to link the USA and major European cities with low latency fiber connections. Level 3 is a major player in the high speed financial trading space, as well as providing other high bandwidth fiber services for global business needs.

Another strength of Level 3 is video transport. Their Vyvx service carries both high definition and standard video programming for studios and networks. For the highest in transmission feed quality, Level 3 Vyvx offers uncompressed high definition video transport services between Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and New York City at 1.5 and 3.0 Gbps. The Level 3 Content Delivery Network (CDN) has 35 strategically placed cashing locations to keep the content as near the customer as possible.

What Global Crossing does is complement rather than compete with Level 3’s US/Europe network. Global Crossing has over 100,000 route miles of fiber optic cable installed around the world. This includes US and Europe network fiber that overlaps Level 3 to some extent. But it also brings trans-pacific undersea fiber and connections to Japan, China, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. Connected to its North America network is an extensive fiber optic networking serving the major cities in South America.

Global Crossing is true to its name. Their fiber really does span the world. Add Global Crossing’s network to the Level 3 network and you have extensive connectivity throughout North America, South America, Europe, Australia and Asia, with some facilities extending to the Middle East and Africa.

What does this mean for you, the business user? It certainly means more availability of converged IP network services worldwide and specialty services, such as low latency routes and video transport. Both Level 3 and Global Crossing have been serving major enterprise customers and carriers. They’ve got the expertise and facilities to accomplish whatever you will ever need in the way of connectivity.

Level 3, especially, also caters to smaller and medium businesses in the US. Their T1, bonded T1 and Ethernet over Copper solutions offer dedicated bandwidth at very reasonable prices. For companies that need to link multiple locations, Level 3 MPLS can create a company network that spans the country and extends to include offices, factories and warehouses worldwide.

Fiber optic networks are enjoying a new renaissance, as businesses move to cloud processes and automation that increases employee productivity. You see more fiber going into the ground in both major cities and rural areas. If you’ve been affiliated with Level 3 or Global Crossing, your connection capabilities are about to be increased significantly.

If you are looking to increase your connection speeds, you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised by the wide range of services available and the cost reductions that have come about in recent years from these and other competitive carriers. Don’t assume that you can’t get or afford higher bandwidth, even fiber, until you get prices and availability for business bandwidth services appropriate to your facility locations.



Note: Image of Earth from over the Atlantic Ocean courtesy of the U.S. Government on Wikimedia Commons

Level 3 Shows How The Converged Business Network Saves Money

Network convergence has been an initiative for larger organizations since IP became accepted as the default network protocol. But smaller companies, with smaller or non-existant IT staffs, have paid little attention. That’s all changed recently. Now, convergence is for everyone.

Why the big change? The primary driver is cost savings, as it has always been. Cost savings has become an ongoing business process in this era of continuing austerity. But the real enabler is the availability of managed convergence. The carrier becomes your partner rather than simply a vendor. This relieves you of the burden of network management, especially WAN network management.

Level 3 has entered this space with its Converged Business Network solution. The idea is to use one bandwidth pipe for voice, Internet and VPN instead of three separate pipes. In one example, Level 3 replaces three separate T1 lines at 1.5 Mbps each with a single 3 Mbps connection that handles everything. That 3 Mbps link could be bonded T1 lines, or it could be one of the newer Ethernet services. They show stand alone services at $ + $ + $ being reduced to converged services for $.

A 3 to 1 reduction? That’s not unreasonable. After all, 3 Mbps Ethernet over Copper services are often priced about the same as a single T1 line.

How can you get a 3:1 line cost reduction without destroying quality of service? The answer is in two pieces. First of all, the bandwidth reduction isn’t that dramatic. You are going from 4.5 Mbps to 3 Mbps. Cost is going down faster than bandwidth. Second, the question assumes fully loaded line services. That’s seldom the case. Many companies have T1 lines because that’s the smallest commercial grade line service available to them. They wind up ordering 3 lines in order to keep voice, Internet and VPN applications separate so they won’t interfere. In reality, only a fraction of that available 4.5 Mbps is needed at any given time.

This is how a converged 3 Mbps WAN network can do the same job cheaper. QoS or quality of service controls are maintained on that connection so that time sensitive voice packets have priority over less time-sensitive data packets. At times when there are fewer telephone conversations in progress, that bandwidth is released for use by the broadband Internet or VPN services. This is called dynamic bandwidth allocation. In a situation with separate lines, any unused capacity simply goes to waste. It is not available for any other use.

A converged voice and Internet service called Integrated T1 has been on the market for years. However, its availability has been spotty and its focus has been on traditional analog and PBX telephony rather than the more advanced features of enterprise VoIP systems. Level 3’s service goes way beyond Integrated T1 with Ethernet connection speeds up to 100 Mbps as a standard package. That makes it an attractive service for medium and larger companies that long ago outgrew their T1 lines.

Is your company on the lookout for ways to save money while preserving quality of services? If so, you should inquire about the cost and benefits of network convergence. You could be missing out on a major advantage for your business.