Hurricane Electric marks first expansion into Africa with launch of new POP in Teraco Johannesburg and peering at NAPAfrica

Issued by Watt Communications: for Teraco Data Environments
Johannesburg, 21 Jul 2016

Hurricane Electric, the world's largest IPv6-native Internet backbone, has continued its global expansion with the opening of its most recent point of presence (POP) in Johannesburg, located at Teraco's Isando JB1 data centre, 5 Brewery Lane, Isando, South Africa. This is Hurricane Electric's first POP on the African continent.

With a nationwide presence, Teraco is one of the largest data centres in Africa as well as the first provider of resilient, carrier, cloud and vendor-neutral data environments in southern Africa. Clients benefit from the cost savings and improved resilience of securely housing their information systems and networking equipment in a colocation facility that operates to global best practice.

With the launch of this latest POP, networks and Internet service providers will now have the opportunity to exchange IP traffic or "peer" with Hurricane Electric's robust global network via Africa's largest Internet eXchange Point (IXP), NAPAfrica.

The new POP will also provide businesses based within southern Africa with access to the company's IPv4 and IPv6 network through 100GE (100 Gigabit Ethernet), 10GE and 1GigE ports, and as a result, both new and existing customers will be able to experience increased throughput, reduced latency and improved reliability. In addition, clients will enjoy improved fault tolerance, load balancing and congestion management infrastructure capabilities in the delivery of next-generation IP services.

Lex van Wyk, CEO of Teraco, says clients will ultimately benefit from access to an Internet backbone provider: "Hurricane Electric is connected to over 135 major exchange points and exchanges traffic directly with more than 5 400 different networks. As a result of this new POP, Teraco's clients will have direct access to Hurricane Electric's network, which spans across the world."

"Hurricane Electric is excited to be expanding into Africa with our first point of presence, and is well-positioned to meet the needs of the growing southern African ICT sector," said Mike Leber, President, Hurricane Electric. "Going forward, Hurricane Electric looks forward to opening additional sites to remain ahead of the incredible growth in IPv6 traffic in this emerging market."

Teraco

Founded in 2008, Teraco (www.teraco.co.za) is Africa's only vendor-neutral data centre. Teraco builds and operates data centres for the most demanding IT infrastructure requirements. With 24x7 monitoring, Teraco guarantees 99.999% uptime and is staffed by colocation and facility management specialists. Teraco has three state-of-the-art data centres in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg. It is also home to NAPAfrica (www.napafrica.net), Africa's largest Internet exchange (IX) point. In 2014, Teraco received the backing of global investment firm, Permira Funds, when it acquired 100% of the equity in Teraco in partnership with management.

Hurricane Electric

Fremont, California-based Hurricane Electric operates its own global IPv4 and IPv6 network and is considered the largest IPv6 backbone in the world as measured by number of networks connected. Within its global network, Hurricane Electric is connected to over 135 major exchange points and exchanges traffic directly with more than 5 400 different networks. Employing a resilient fibre-optic topology, Hurricane Electric has no less than four redundant paths crossing North America, two separate paths between the US and Europe, and rings in Europe and Asia.

In addition to its vast global network, Hurricane Electric owns and operates two data centres in Fremont, California, including Fremont 2, its newest 208 000 square-foot facility. Hurricane Electric offers IPv4 and IPv6 transit solutions over the same connection, at speeds including 10Gbps and 100Gbps Ethernet.

For more information on Hurricane Electric, please visit http://he.net.

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Hurricane Electric marks first expansion into Africa with launch of new POP in Teraco Johannesburg and peering at NAPAfrica

Housed within Teraco, Africa's only vendor-neutral data centre, the new POP will meet the growing demand for high-speed connectivity in southern Africa's emerging economy.