Reliance Globalcom extends global Ethernet reach

Reliance Globalcom today said it is extending Global Ethernet Services to 17 new countries and 48 cities, offering a full portfolio of managed private line, point-to-point and meshed Ethernet offerings. By leveraging its global network, Reliance Globalcom intends to offer multinational enterprise customers greater reach than they can find on other carriers' Ethernet services.

"Enterprises are looking to Ethernet to simplify their networks, especially as they go global," said Craig Waldrop, senior product manager of Reliance Globalcom's network services portfolio. "With our portfolio of Ethernet services and our global reach, we can offer bandwidth granularity and scalability, as well as a consistent look of the service. We offer a competitive [service level agreement] which has metrics and guarantees for availability, packet delivery,  jitter and latency. And it's the same service in Bahrain that it is in Wilmington, Delaware."

Reliance Globalcom has 176 points of presence across all major Indian cities and a fully meshed network serving the United States – where Reliance Globalcomm operates the former Yipes network – as well as China, France, Germany, Japan, Singapore, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, and the UK.

The Reliance Globalcom service portfolio includes Enterprise Global Ethernet, with end-to-end fully managed metro, wide area network point-to-point and virtual private LAN services (VPLS); wholesale Ethernet over MPLS-based point-to-point services; layer-one Ethernet private line services, using Ethernet-over-SDH and traditional longhaul Ethernet for both large enterprises and carriers; as well as both layer-three and infrastructure offerings such as collocation.

"We also have a more specialized product, Financial Connect, which is a low-latency electronic trading extranet," Waldrop said. "This is Ethernet for companies looking to connect to specific exchanges for trading and financial clients. It's a niche market that we have been very strong in for the last couple of years."

As Ethernet has become a de facto standard for service provider networks, enterprise bandwidth demands have increased due to growth in IP applications including voice and video, Waldrop said. Enterprises now need highly scalable networks which Ethernet can more easily deliver, and Reliance Globalcom is offering 1 megabit to 1 gigabit per second scalability in 1-Mb/s increments.

Waldrop also pointed to developing standards for network-to-network interfaces (NNIs) which the Metro Ethernet Forum, the IEEE and other groups are developing as a technology trend that is aiding the extension of Ethernet services.

"Standards are developing," Waldrop said.  "This will make Ethernet carrier-class. MEF has not standardized the E-NNI yet, but it will come this year, hopefully. We have been on the forefront of this, we have many Ethernet interconnects around the globe, which enable us to extend our reach. There are technical issues, and it can take several negotiations and detailed meetings. We will continue to pursue the driving of the standards, but we will also partner with key providers in the meantime."

Reliance Globalcom is offering wide-area services in point-to-point, multipoint or fully meshed configurations and is access-agnostic, Waldrop said. "We provide Ethernet over anything – fiber, copper, T1 or DS3 lines -- any kind of access."

Security is provided using virtual LAN tags and VPLS technologies.