Written by Dan Crawford, Marketing Manager

Customers demand their Internet to always be on, and service providers -especially those serving businesses -strive to meet this with "five nines" of availability. That is to say they aim for a service level that only allows for about 5 minutes per year of downtime. Achieving such  performance is no simple task, but is a key differentiator for 123Net, a Michigan based company offering premium voice, data, and colocation infrastructure services.

As 123Net has built out a 2400+ mile fiber network powered by Cisco optical technology. Mostrecently they deployed the Cisco ASR 9000 series, aiming to bring affordable carrier class speed and reliability to small and medium businesses throughout the state of Michigan.  Such customers often lack dedicated IT and depend on providers such as 123Net for their network needs.  Building and managing a network that customers can rely on is critical for a service provider's success.

Since 123Net's inception in 1995, they've leveraged Cisco solutions.  As networking technology has evolved and the Michigan based business has grown, 123Net has remained committed to using Cisco platforms.   When asked why they haven't changed, 123Net's CTO, Ryan Duda responded with "As a service provider our customers have come to expect 100% network uptime. With our routing and switching infrastructure we are able to achieve this goal".

What's next for 123Net? The company is excited about their prospects, as more services are delivered out of the cloud. The company's growing data center infrastructure and expertise has them well positioned to grow their business as enterprises, school systems, universities, hospitals and municipalities migrate to cloud-based solutions.

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