Global Crossing rolls out service enhancements and network upgrades

This week Global Crossing made a handful of announcements including enhancements to its IP VPN, VoIP services and upgrades to its MPLS backbone.

On Tuesday Global Crossing announced an enhancement to its Application Performance Management reporting tool. Customers can upgrade their existing platforms with the service provider’s VoIP Integrity performance reporting tool. The new module allows users to design and troubleshoot their network to better support VoIP by drilling down performance to specific locations, such as the CEO’s office, says Anthony Christie, chief marketing officer at Global Crossing.

Customers can see, in real-time, how VoIP traffic is performing over their network with jitter, latency and packet loss metrics in 1 second increments.

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

This week Global Crossing made a handful of announcements including enhancements to its IP VPN, VoIP services and upgrades to its MPLS backbone.

On Tuesday Global Crossing announced an enhancement to its Application Performance Management reporting tool. Customers can upgrade their existing platforms with the service provider’s VoIP Integrity performance reporting tool. The new module allows users to design and troubleshoot their network to better support VoIP by drilling down performance to specific locations, such as the CEO’s office, says Anthony Christie, chief marketing officer at Global Crossing.

Customers can see, in real-time, how VoIP traffic is performing over their network with jitter, latency and packet loss metrics in 1 second increments.

The carrier’s Application Performance Management platform is supported using Fluke Networks (formerly Visual Networks) gear. Fluke’s new UpTime Select VoIP Module is used to support the carrier’s new VoIP Integrity tool.

Global Crossing also announced on Tuesday that it has upgraded its MPLS backbone with Juniper Networks T-640 routing platforms at all of its core switching locations. Christie says the upgrade allows the carrier to support up to a Terabit worth of data across the core of its network.

Customers can also order 10Gbps pipes from the carrier, Christie says. The benefit to customers is more bandwidth. He says the upgrades put the carrier in the ready to offer up to OC-768 speeds.

Global Crossing Monday announced enhancements to its IP VPN service with support for Multi-Link Point-to-Point Protocol (MLPPP), which improves the carriers ability to support load balancing across customer VPNs.

The carrier is now using compressed Real-time Transport Protocol (cRTP), which allows customers to send more VoIP traffic across their VPN making better use of their existing bandwidth, Christie says. The compression does not negatively impact performance, he says, and customers can sometimes see a 60% improvement in bandwidth utilization when using cRTP.