The Equinix Express: London To New York In 30 Milliseconds

Global data centre stalwart Equinix has opened a new cable system between its New York NY4 and London LD4 data centres that provides a round-trip latency transmission of 58.95 milliseconds. That’s data travelling at over 200 million mph between Slough and Secaucus, New Jersey.

The Hibernia Express Cable System, which lands at Cork in Ireland, now boasts Equinix’s lowest latency route between London and New York, and will connect Equinix’s International Business Exchange data centres which serve as carrier-neutral landing locations for Hibernia Networks.

Five millisecond saving

According to Hibernia Networks, the cable shaves off five milliseconds from its previous build, and is the first of the company’s new generation of transatlantic systems.

Hibernia Express has been engineered to meet customer demand for fast, high capacity international connectivity solutions to enable split-second financial transactions and efficient access to media rich content and cloud applications,” said Joe Hilt, senior vice president at Hibernia Networks.

The cable system is made out of Corning EX2000 grade pure silica core fibre, which helps it achieve the sub-58.95ms transatlantic latency. Whilst currently operational at a 200Gbps service, the system should soon be upgradeable to 400Gbps and more.

“Equinix remains committed to providing fast, secure and interconnected routes between the world’s most significant financial centers,” said Jim Poole, Equinix’s vice president of global service providers. “This new transatlantic connectivity gives Equinix customers further opportunities to driving business advantage in today’s global economy.”

The news comes as data centre land owner Digital Realty partnered with Aqua Comms and its new transatlantic fibre optic cable system America Europe Connect (AEConnect).

AEConnect is currently expected to be available in Digital Realty’s data centre at 32 Avenue of the Americas by the end of 2015, and the company plans to expand availability to its two other New York facilities at 111 8^th Avenue and 60 Hudson Street as well.

“Digital Realty’s combination of 60 Hudson Street, 111 8^th Avenue and 32 Avenue of the Americas creates a market-leading trifecta for data centre and colocation services in the New York metropolitan area,” said Anthony Rossabi, managing director at Telx.

“With AEConnect linking New York and London, we are excited to offer enterprises, carriers and mobile operators access to private network bandwidth between two of the largest commercial centres in the world.”

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