Data Centre Interconnection

E-Line provides a point-to-point Ethernet connection between two locations, creating a private dedicated link. Ethernet frames are passed fully transparently including all VLAN tags and layer 2 control frames. This is a simple and high performance service for directly connecting two data centres, or your rack to a cloud provider:

E-Lines are point-to-point circuits, and while it is possible to connect more than two sites, this requires separate circuits for each pair of endpoints, or rely on a central hub which is less resilient. Where multiple buildings, racks or cloud providers need to be connected together, E-LAN (below) may be a less complex and lower cost solution to implement.

E-LAN (a more general term for VPLS) provides seamless Ethernet connectivity across multiple racks, data centres or cloud providers, creating a virtual LAN over a wide area. A single connected port at each location can be used to create a full-mesh of connectivity with resilience as standard across our proven high-availability fabric:

Ethernet E-Line or E-LAN are highly scalable, flexible and cost-effective methods of extending your network across a wider area. To benefit from economies of scale, E-Line and E-LAN reserve virtually-isolated paths on a shared underlying switched fabric, ensuring private secure communications but without physical separacy.

Occasionally a requirement may need the additional security or resource guarantees of physical isolation. One option is dedicated fibre, but this can be impractical and expensive for smaller requirements, particularly over longer distances. Optical wavelengths or waves provide a midway solution by creating optically-isolated physically-dedicated channels over shared fibre.

Each wave represents a specific light wavelength carrying its own data channel, and by a property of physics known as wave superposition, multiple wavelengths of light travel down a single fibre independently, without interfering with each other. This allows multiple data signals to coexist, physically separated.

This is achieved through a process called Wave Division Multiplexing (WDM):

Under WDM, an organisation can be assigned a specific wavelength across the core network, utilising existing shared fibre paths to avoid the cost, delays and maintenance overheads of installing dedicated fibre cables. To facilitate simpler connection, we hand-off waves using common "grey" 1310nm optics at each end, hiding the complexity of the underlying network and simplifying integration with your systems.

Waves are by their nature point-to-point and use a single fibre path only, which offers no inherent resilience unlike standard Ethernet E-Line or E-LAN services. Waves are also generally more expensive due to the additional optics required along the path, and the need to physically connect the bespoke path for each order. Unless there is a specific regulatory or operational need for a wave, we therefore generally recommend Ethernet: