Time Warner Telecom builds multi-point metro Ethernet network for First Tennessee
Time Warner Telecom of the Mid-South LLC, provider of metro and regional optical broadband networks and services to business customers in Memphis, and First Tennessee have announced completion of a new Ethernet metro network. The new network increases the financial services company's communications speeds at its data center facility by 2 1/2 times and increases the communication speeds to local branch financial centers by 100 times.
Time Warner Telecom won a 5-year contract last October to provide First Tennessee with the fiber-based local network. Time Warner Telecom also delivered diverse routing and back-up protection of the 9-node network that can switch communications traffic between the First Tennessee's primary data center and eight remote sites in Memphis at 100 Mbits/sec--fast enough to transmit the entire contents of the Encyclopedia Britannica electronically in approximately 30 seconds, compared to a standard home dial-up Internet connection that could transmit the same content in more than 16 hours, say company representatives. In addition to improved speeds and connectivity, the switched capabilities and architecture of First Tennessee's new Ethernet network improves its flexibility to deliver data traffic and reduces latency.
Time Warner Telecom also provides connectivity to Sunguard, the bank's disaster recovery host site, via a private line connection. Additionally, Time Warner Telecom provides the bank with two 'burstable' Internet connections that are flexible enough to handle various amounts of data on-demand, out of the main data center and one of its remote sites.
"This dual Internet application provides us with equipment and site redundancy," explains Joe Sanders, FTN Financial executive vice president and chief information officer. "It's important that we have access to the Internet at all times because our customers have come to rely heavily on our on-line banking services and they expect them to be available, and secure, any time--day or night."