New high-count fiber-optic ring improves capacity, speed, and latency for high-bandwidth commercial industries throughout Oregon
Kirkland, Wash. (October 28, 2021) – Ziply™ Fiber today announced the completion of its new high-count fiber-optic ring connecting 11 major data centers in Hillsboro to one another and into downtown Portland, OR. The project, which began in 2020 and which Ziply Fiber nicknamed its Silicon Forest Ring, included the installation of approximately 61 kilometers of 864-count fiber-optic cable and 30 kilometers of 1728-count fiber-optic cable. The ring enables high-density interconnectivity both amongst data centers and Ziply Fiber's own facilities in the region, providing more cloud connectivity for businesses in high-bandwidth industries.
“Our goal with this project was to make it so that companies no longer need to worry about their data, where it sits or how it moves around, but rather can focus on what they do best – pursuing their mission and driving results for their business,” said John van Oppen, Vice President, Network, at Ziply Fiber. “Our new Silicon Forest Ring and the direct interconnection that it supports will benefit businesses throughout the region, and will give them the capacity, reliability and redundancy they need.”
Ziply Fiber’s ring is both carrier and data center neutral, offering direct access to the company’s unique long-haul network that offers terabits of capacity on multiple routes out of the Portland metro area. Locally, the ring provides efficient, high-capacity connectivity, and gives businesses the ability to utilize Ziply’s secure dark fiber between data centers to meet each business customer’s individual needs.
Ziply Fiber also can offer customers access to its services out of each of the data centers in the ring without being dependent on any particular combination of data centers to deliver those services. This makes Ziply Fiber unique among area ISPs, where services delivered to customers in one data center are neither required or relied upon in another, giving Ziply’s enterprise customers maximum flexibility.
Additionally, the network is interconnected with Ziply Fiber’s extensive fiber footprint in the Portland region to offer both lit and dark connectivity options, which allow customers an express path to the region’s most prominent data centers from any location inside Ziply’s fiber footprint. This means that whether a business wants Ziply Fiber to manage its internet services or simply provide a dark fiber private connectivity option, both are readily available within the Hillsboro and Portland area.
Ziply Fiber has coupled the completion of its Silicon Forest Ring with the announcement of multiple new long-haul, diverse transport options up to Seattle, providing increased redundancy and reliability for internet and private traffic between the two cities. Ziply Fiber currently is the only regional provider offering high-capacity wavelength services between Seattle and Portland with full diversity on two separate direct routes. These routes, when combined, offer fully-diverse options that allow customers to build their own rings on our infrastructure that can bypass major regional carrier hotels/colocation centers like those at the Westin in Seattle and Pittock in Portland, giving them more control over the path their data travels and the reliability of their services.
Ziply Fiber is local in the Northwest, headquartered in Kirkland, Washington, and has major offices in Everett, Washington; Beaverton, Oregon and Hayden, Idaho. Most of Ziply Fiber’s executive team, which consists of former executives from AT&T, CenturyLink, and Wave Broadband, either grew up in the Northwest or have spent the better part of 30 years living here. That local ownership and market familiarity is an important part of the company mindset and culture.
Media Contact:
Dan Miller, Curator PR for Ziply Fiber
206-979-4055