PS Lightwave recently upgraded its Microsoft Peering to 100G, creating a faster connection for customers to such popular tools as Azure, Office 365 and Teams. The upgrade comes at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated a transformation of business work to the cloud.
“Cloud usage and demand increased as customers continued to work and learn from home,” Microsoft announced in a release on the results of the second quarter of 2020.
Microsoft Office commercial products and cloud services revenue increased by 6 percent in the quarter ending June 30 with Office 365 consumer subscribers increasing to 42.7 million.
Even in a post-pandemic world, the trend toward the cloud will continue with almost 75 percent of IT decision-makers in a LogicMonitor 2020 study saying that 95 percent of workloads will be in the cloud within the next five years.
Upgrade Creates Faster Shortcut to Microsoft Tools
Peering is an exchange of IP routes between two networks over a private connection. PS Lightwave’s Microsoft Peering occurs over IPv4 and IPv6. With PS Lightwave’s upgrade to 100G Microsoft Peering, customers will use a direct path to Microsoft’s IP addresses and resources rather than the traffic travelling the public Internet.
The upgrade to 100G creates a fast experience for customers with a 100G network typically transmitting packets every 6.7 nanoseconds or 10 times faster than the 67 nanoseconds at 10G.
PS Lightwave’s 100G Microsoft Peering should not be confused with an Express Route into Azure, where customers create a private network extension between their network and Azure.
Advantage of PS Lightwave’s 100G Microsoft Peering
PS Lightwave customers will enjoy an improved user experience when connecting to the Microsoft Edge network, thanks in part to a reduction in network hops and a lower latency.
Advantage of the recent upgrade to Microsoft Peering at 100G capacity include:
- Improves Performance for Customers: Since Peering produces a direct path between PS Lightwave customers and the Microsoft network, it reduces the distances that data must travel with the result being a reduction in network hops and latency. The alternative, IP transit, does not feature a dedicated path, so traffic can be routed over many different points before arriving at its destination.
- Protects Customer Traffic Against Failures: Customers using the Microsoft Peering network are not dependent on public transit providers and failures from routes going down. PS Lightwave has the ability to re-route traffic to appropriate peer networks when problems arise and on a day-to-day basis PS Lightwave’s strong Peering partnership increases routing control for customers.
- Enhances Redundancy and Capacity: While Peering is preferred to transit networks when it comes to performance, PS Lightwave still has the option to utilize the public Internet path for customers linking to Microsoft tools if problems occur with the Peering connection. The 100G capacity provides customers with plenty of bandwidth to connect to Microsoft products.
“Customers that use Office 365, Teams and Azure will benefit from the peering with improved performance and a more direct path between PS Lightwave and Microsoft at 100G capacity,” said Swen Wulf, PS Lightwave’s Senior Director of Engineering.
For more information on how PS Lightwave can help your company create a better cloud experience, contact us today.
