6connect Helps Regional Service Provider Eliminate Network Provisioning Headaches While Expanding Client Base
“Our architecture provisions IPv6, which enables our customers to manage network complexity for their growing high capacity networks and data centers.”
— Aaron Hughes, CEO, 6connect
OVERVIEW
Over the last decade, a leading regional network service provider (SP) has developed one of the most robust, dense, and reliable fiber networks in the country. With over 10,000 route miles of fiber and more than 4,000 buildings served, the SP offers unparalleled regional density, performance, and reliability as the premier metro fiber and bandwidth provider in its service area. Its footprint encompasses over one third of Fortune 500 companies, as well as telecommunications carriers, wireless carriers, financial services companies, health care organizations, schools, universities, governments, and other enterprises.
CHALLENGE
The main goal of the SP is to deliver best-in-class dark fiber while providing the highest quality of service. Service reliability is of the utmost importance to its clientele. In many cases smaller SPs generally use spreadsheets for IP address management (IPAM) and DNS information required to provision services for its customers. However, provisioning and configuring networks in this manner is a very manually intensive and time-consuming process. As a SP grows larger and its footprint begins to rapidly expand, manual configurations become burdensome and constrain growth.
The SP was using a legacy platform that lacked integration and could not scale to fit its needs. “We had staff spending 45 minutes to grab and enter data for each customer address,” explains one of the SP’s senior engineers. “And they would be doing that all day.”
Manual network provisioning is limiting because it is done in isolation rather than across systems, and it only addresses vendor specific hardware or software elements rather than entire networks. Using a legacy platform that lacks integration and cannot scale to fit a growing footprint forced the SP to look for a better solution in order to ensure network reliability for its customers. Specifically, it was looking for a flexible, scalable, and automated solution that would most effectively address its rapidly changing provisioning needs. It also wanted a solution that had DNS control capabilities so that it could offer customers managed update capabilities.
SOLUTION
In order to achieve a faster, more flexible solution that reaches across the entire network architecture and offers management control of complex IP address space and DNS zones, the SP chose 6connect’s ProVision Suite. Offering the industry’s first fully-automated suite built from the ground up to support the discovery, planning, provisioning and management of IP networks, ProVision provides portals and templates that offer better control and faster access to fully automated tools that provide a unified interface to manage IPv4/IPv6, DNS and assets.
One of 6connect’s strengths is the ease of its implementation process. With legacy provisioning solutions, service providers would have to execute a complex mass extraction of its existing customer database and its existing IPAM database. 6connect’s tool made it easy to make the extracted information usable almost immediately. “The implementation was virtually painless. It is a very easy and straightforward tool,” says the senior engineer.
“Unlike its competitors, 6connect was willing to go the extra mile with roadmap requests on its unified IPAM solution,” the senior engineer added. “We couldn’t find another vendor that offered this service as part of an already feature-rich package.”
“ProVision is a fully integrated solution that solves address management challenges in minutes after it is initiated,” notes 6connect’s CEO, Bill Bien. “Our unique architecture provisions complex network protocols and credentials like IPv6 now and for the future, allowing our customers to reduce network complexity and maximize its benefits for their growing networks and data centers.”
RESULTS
“ProVision offers a consistent interface and the ability to scale more effectively. It is now very easy for SP users to allocate an address for an IP router,” explains the SP’s senior engineer. “Instead of staff spending up to 45 minutes to grab and enter data per customer address, it is now automated and only takes about 20 to 30 seconds.”
In addition, ProVision’s DNS module gives the SP the ability to offer a convenient portal to its customers where they can login and make changes to their own accounts. This means reallocating engineering resources away from provisioning requests to more strategic projects. ProVision’s built-in support for ISC BIND infrastructure also meant no additional work for integration into their existing DNS environment. .
“If it wasn’t for 6connect, our IPv6 transition would have been very painful,” added the senior engineer. ”Using 6connect’s features, we are able to set forth a very clean, aggregated layout for LAN addresses. It became very easy to allocate an address for an IP router.”
In addition to saving time and money, ProVision helps the SP to better control its network, offer a convenient self-service option to its customers, and provide the kind of excellent service reliability that meets and exceeds its reputation.
ABOUT 6CONNECT
6connect is the leader in software defined network control. 6connect’s unique Dynamic Network ProVisioning (DNP) platform enables the discovery, configuration, and control of physical and virtual devices across distributed and mobile networks, cloud platforms, web-hosting platforms and data centers. Innovative customers like GoDaddy, DukeNet, Amazon, EMC, Aruba Networks, iLand Cloud Infrastructure, and CyrusOne utilize DNP to accelerate service delivery time, accurately provision complex network protocols, and dramatically reduce network complexity and costs, while achieving industry change management and compliance requirements.
