Deliver Superior Internet Access Performance

Have you ever been frustrated by how long it takes to upload a file to SharePoint or Dropbox? What about a sub-optimal user experience for an important video conference? You’re not the only one. In fact, think of all the users in your IT domain who experience that kind of frustration on a daily basis. Fortunately, that experience is not inevitable. It is, in fact, very preventable with the right internet access solution.

Keeping your internet-access stakeholders happy is a matter of adopting the best solution available. Having said that, internet access is rarely solved with a one-size-fits-all approach. The critical elements for optimizing internet access experiences are resilience, high performance, deployment flexibility, agility and scalability. Equinix Internet Access internet access solution offers all of these and more.

For context, consider how traffic on the internet is evolving and growing. While 2020 was (hopefully) an anomalous year for the world’s digital landscape, the pandemic (and resulting work-from-home and self-isolation effects) clearly accelerated the growth and scope of internet traffic demands.

A few statistics illustrate this point.[i] According to data aggregator Broadband Search, Google currently processes roughly 3.5 billion searches each day, that’s 1.2 trillion searches per year and 40,000 per second. The analysts at Broadband Search further assert that some 306 billion emails are sent every day and that by 2022 that number will increase to 333.2 billion. That’s the traffic-dense world you face when trying to improve the internet access UX for your stakeholders.

Digital transformation, digital commerce and changing expectations of customers and employees are leading to booming business in internet-based software deployment and content usage. In a recent press release, Gartner analysts suggested that software as a service (SaaS) “is forecast to reach $122.6 billion in 2021[ii].”

The combination of growing traffic pressures and elevated demand for services such as SaaS are making the choices you make for internet access increasingly important.

For an enterprise user of popular SaaS applications (such as Microsoft 365), network performance—along with device/client performance—drives the overall user experience (UX). Degradation in network performance negatively impacts the UX and lowers productivity. Let’s look at how Equinix Internet Access can offer superior performance to influence both.

How Equinix Internet Access enables superior internet access performance

First of all, customers in any given metro can take advantage of local interconnection (peering) on the Equinix Internet Exchange®), to segregate local traffic and improve performance for end customers. That’s a significant advantage because it eliminates the need to incur additional hops and directly leads to lower latency—resulting in consistently superior performance. Consider the following comparison.

The following scenarios contrast two situations—one of which (Scenario 2) illustrates how Equinix Internet Access can help you provide a consistently superior internet access experience.

• Scenario 1 (Without Equinix Internet Access)—In this case, the customer is not using Equinix Internet Access for Internet Access. Consider an Equinix customer with an existing presence in an Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center. To access the SaaS applications (such as Microsoft 365), the connectivity path traverses outside of the Equinix IBX data center to the internet and then to the SaaS provider cloud. The following illustration depicts this situation.

• Scenario 2 (With Equinix Internet Access)—Now consider a customer with presence in an Equinix IBX data center that does leverage Equinix Internet Access for internet access. When companies connect directly with each other via fiber or switched connectivity within a data center campus, they increase performance by reducing physical distance between resources and simplifying all the intervening network connections (refer to the following illustration).

By integrating with the Equinix Internet Exchange where available, direct fast-path connections to many popular SaaS providers enable lower latency.  SaaS providers such as Microsoft 365, Dropbox and Zoom are part of the Equinix content-provider ecosystem available via the Equinix Internet Exchange infrastructure.

As suggested by the preceding diagram, the paths between customers and providers are all within the Equinix IBX data center and there’s no need to add the extra hop(s) required in Scenario 1. The result? Lower latency and superior performance.

Equinix Internet Access has other benefits as well. It is a resilient internet access solution that is available globally. It’s resilient because Equinix handles upstream multihoming—resulting in a resilient service downstream​. In addition, each Equinix metro hub has at least two Tier 1 upstream providers (large internet service providers), thereby reducing the risk of access being unavailable. Are you a global enterprise with multiple locations? No problem. Equinix Internet Access is available in 40+ metros globally, allowing you to manage and grow quickly.

Why Equinix Internet Access?

What does this mean to you? It means you can have a high-performing, resilient, agile and scalable internet-access solution for all your global locations. There is no need to have multiple contracts with local ISPs and you gain inherently superior performance due to direct fast-path connections to major SaaS providers.

Equinix Internet Access represents a clear, sustainable solution to the challenge of increasing workloads across the complex internet landscape.

Proven digital infrastructure backs performance promise

Equinix is the world’s digital infrastructure company. Our global platform enables businesses to simplify the deployment and interconnection of foundation digital infrastructure building blocks. Equinix offerings on Platform Equinix, such as Equinix Fabric, Network Edge and Equinix Metal™, capitalize on virtual capabilities at the edge. Together, our integrated interconnection capabilities simplify accessing and integrating provider and partner ecosystems over direct and secure private interconnection.

Learn more about Equinix Internet Access.

You may also like to read:  “Addressing Today’s Internet Connectivity Challenges.”

Or watch our spotlight video about Equinix Internet Access:

[i] Broadband Search, “Key Internet Statistics to know in 2021 Including Mobile,” 2021.

[ii] Gartner Press Release “Gartner Forecasts Worldwide Public Cloud End-User Spending to Grow 23% in 2021.” April 21, 2021.