I was recently asked by a customer, “so how are you guys connected with Interlinx?” As I tried to explain the big picture, it became obvious that I should spend some time to spell out what our business and technical connections are, and why they matter. Here’s my first attempt - I welcome any questions.
Redundancy
In the spring of 2004, a construction company near Richfield cut through a Qwest fiber optic line that connects Southern Utah with Northern Utah. During the cut, many 911 services, long distance, cell phone and Internet connections in Southern Utah were completely down. Businesses that rely on continuous connectivity were stranded on a virtual “island” in this area for over 10 hours. At that time, there was only one network path between St. George and Salt Lake City.
To prevent future outages of this type, Utah Interlinx built a redundant network connection out of this area. Instead of running their network over the “1-15 corridor” to Salt Lake, they planned to pull a fiber optic cables to connect into a fiber route for the western states that crosses near Gunlock. From the Gunlock location, data can travel either north to Salt Lake, or west to Las Vegas, Los Angeles or Portland, or a number of other points.
InfoWest was the first Internet provider to connect to the redundant Interlinx fiber optic network in early 2005. We connect through the Interlinx line to Broadwing, a wholesale Internet provider. We also maintain high speed connections to other upstream internet providers via our Qwest fiber optic connections. If Interlinx OR Qwest has a fiber cut in the future, we will still be online and able to connect to the rest of the Internet.
Isn’t All of Southern Utah Redundant Now?
No. Most Internet, long distance and cell phone providers only use ONE connection out of the area. If there is another major cut, there will be a loss of service. We have invested in dual connections to ensure we will be up and running in case of another cut in the future.
The Local Fiber “Loops”
The Utah Interlinx fiber optic network has expanded to cover many areas in St. George. We are now able to use this fiber to connect to business clients with very high speed connections (10 megabit up to 1000 megabit). Additionally, we are able to help businesses connect multiple office locations with a combination of Utah Interlinx fiber, Qwest and wireless connections.
Example: Main Street Business Plaza
The new Main Street Business Plaza in St. George has a fiber optic connection to the Interlinx network. We connect over the fiber to our data center to provide over a dozen tenants in the building with high speed access to the Internet. We hope to expand this type of service to more office buildings in the near future.
Types of Connections We Offer
We currently hand our customers 10/100 ethernet connections that will plug directly into their network routers or switches. We are also able to provide T1, DS3, OC3 or even gigabit ethernet connections over the Interlinx network. The capacity of this network is nearly unlimited, and it is built for flexibility as well as speed.
To learn more, give us a call and ask for Mark.
What is next?
We are exploring ways we can use the network to deliver high speed services to homes as well as businesses. We hope to have some great announcements in the near future.
Interlinx is expanding their network to cover more areas of the county, and has plans to head toward the Washington area as well. Whereever Interlinx goes, we’ll be ready to provide high speed Internet with unmatched customer service, redundancy and quality!
Footnote:
In early 2005 (after we connected to Utah Interlinx), Qwest announced improvements in their fiber optic network to provide more redundancy between St. George and Salt Lake. They have not made any guarantees to us as to how much network “traffic” would be allowed on the redundant network in case of a cut. 911 services would obviously take priority, but we have not been able to get a clear answer as to whether Internet services would be protected as well.
We continue to believe that connecting with over two diverse paths to different providers is the best way to ensure maximum uptime and reliability.
September 10, 2006 at 13:36
In response to your “Isn’t All of Southern Utah Redundant Now?” I can’t believe someone as supposedly well informed and connected as you would post such misinformation. If you’d been to any of the multiple Qwest announcements about the redunandant path they announced you could have listened to and talked with Qwest President Jerry Fenn. Stop the misinformation campaign and give Qwest the credit they deserve for investing millions into southern Utah.
Nate
September 11, 2006 at 09:13
Thanks for the comments.
I have sought assurances from Qwest executives as to the complete redundancy of their link and have received no such assurances. I have been told that \”critical services\” would be given priority on the redundant link, but could not receive any guarantee if that included our Internet service. If that has changed, I have not been informed. I have extended an invitation to Jerry Fenn to talk about some of our concerns, and would be glad to bring that up if and when we meet.
If you could please show me specifics about the Qwest redundancy and what services are guaranteed to be redundant, I would be glad to make a correction.
Since I invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in Qwest service every year, the news would be very welcome here!