columbus networks : connecting the americas

The ARCOS cable network interconnects the United States and 18 countries in the Pan-Caribbean Central America providing the regions only fully redundant, ring protected cable network.

Design features of the ARCOS ring ensure optimal performance, reliability and efficiency for fast, flexible, and scalable service to clients. These features include:

• State-of-the-art Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology

• Fully protected true ring topology incorporating redundant electronics and optical signal paths

• Sub-sea network with the advantages of a terrestrial system such as timely on demand provisioning

• Advanced network management support systems providing centralized Service monitoring & control

• Network Operations Center (NOC) with round-the-clock bilingual support

• Scalable design capacity to exceeding 1Tbps

• Compliant with International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and Telecom industry standards

• Industry leading Service Level Agreements (SLA)

• Traffic on the system benefits by transport latency of < than 50 milliseconds under normal operation conditions

The ARCOS design combines a diverse-route undersea fiber cable ring along with the latest in terminal technology to create a fully redundant network. In the event of a network or cable fault, automatic network recovery is achieved via SNCP (Sub Network Connection Protection) switching. This ITU standard protection scheme provides the fastest switching time, as network equipment simultaneously monitors the status of both signal paths (working and protect) and if errors are detected, signals automatically switch to the protect path immediately (<50ms) leaving services unaffected unless the system suffers multiple simultaneous failures.

ARCOS is an 8,600 km fully redundant fiber optic ring network, combining both repeatered and non-repeatered cable segments using state-of-the-art Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing ('DWDM') and Synchronous Digital Hierarchy ('SDH') technology.