REDWOOD CITY, Calif. and FREMONT, Calif., Oct. 20, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Equinix, Inc.  (NASDAQ: EQIX), the global interconnection and data center company, and Hurricane Electric, a leading global Internet backbone, today announced that Hurricane Electric is extending its global IPv4 and IPv6 network to Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers in Asia and Europe. This expands Hurricane Electric's global footprint to a total of 17 IBX deployments in anticipation of rapid global Internet traffic growth and the widespread migration to IPv6 as the Internet of Things becomes fully realized.

Highlights / Key Facts

• While IPv6 traffic is currently just over four percent of global IP traffic, it has grown exponentially over the last few years.[1] This trajectory will only accelerate as IPv4 addresses dwindle, leaving IPv6 as the only option[2] for addressing the 40 billion Internet-connected devices projected to go online by 2020[3].
• Global adoption of IPv6 varies worldwide with certain countries far ahead of others. Hurricane Electric stands to benefit greatly from its multiple global colocations through Equinix to support this migration. In particular, Germany has doubled its IPv6 penetration over the last six months[4], making Hurricane Electric's latest Equinix deployments in Munich (MU1) and Frankfurt (FR5) timely.
• In addition to Frankfurt and Munich, Hurricane Electric most recently deployed in Hong Kong (HK1), building onto its existing points of presence (PoP) in Chicago (CH1), Dallas (DA1), Los Angeles (LA1), New York (NY9), Paris (PA2), Seattle (SE2), Silicon Valley (SV1 and SV8), Singapore (SG1), Tokyo (TY2), Toronto (TR1), Washington, D.C. (DC2) and Zurich (ZH1).
• Hurricane Electric and Equinix are leaders in Internet infrastructure. Hurricane Electric's first IBX deployment was at SV1 in 2002, before the advent of smartphones and social media. Then, Internet traffic was 4,860 petabytes annually. Today, the Internet generates that traffic in roughly three days.[5] With the emergence of the Internet of Things, infrastructure will need to scale to keep pace, considering that 57 percent of IP traffic is projected to originate from devices by 2018.[6]
• Since 2002, Equinix and Hurricane Electric have collaborated on growing the Internet: Equinix by promoting a higher density of networks and companies in its chosen data center locations, and Hurricane Electric by providing those customers with lower latency and higher quality peering options in market. Each of Hurricane Electric's IBX deployments was determined by Equinix's ability to bring a high density of networks and Internet companies to a particular metro or region, providing a rich pool of potential customers for Hurricane Electric to serve with local market connectivity, reducing latency and improving cost per megabit.
• To reduce latency and optimize performance for a variety of Equinix customers, Hurricane Electric cross connects with more than 1,200 customers. As a result of Hurricane Electric's extensive deployments across Equinix's global footprint, it is a prime user of the Equinix Internet Exchange, home to more than 1,000 networks, content and cloud providers peering via an Ethernet switching fabric to gain network efficiencies.

Quotes

• Mike Leber, president, Hurricane Electric:
  "Hurricane Electric has seen a number of massive changes to Internet infrastructure over the years, and has negotiated this consistent need for rapid scalability through our data center strategy. Today, we are finally on the true cusp of a widespread migration to IPv6, which we have prepared for with our latest IBX deployments. We are live in 22 countries now, many through Equinix, and look forward to realizing our goal of being present in 100 countries by continuing to proliferate our offerings through strategic colocations."
• Jim Poole, vice president, services providers, Equinix:
  "Throughout our relationship with Hurricane Electric, we have seen waves of innovation begin in our data centers and become widely accepted. Over a decade ago, we introduced the Equinix Internet Exchange for peering, and together with Internet backbone providers like Hurricane Electric, we educated the market on its vital importance in the operation of the Internet. Today with the Equinix Cloud Exchange, we are witnessing a similar path of acceptance and support for our newest platform for performance optimization. We look forward to continuing to work with Hurricane Electric in helping them discover more customers as ours benefit from its breadth of connectivity options."

About Hurricane Electric
Fremont, California-based Hurricane Electric operates its own global IPv4 and IPv6 network and is considered the largest IPv6 backbone in the world, as measured by number of networks connected. Within its global network, Hurricane Electric is connected to 80 major exchange points and exchanges traffic directly with more than 3,500 different networks. Employing a resilient fiber-optic topology, Hurricane Electric has no less than four redundant paths crossing North America, two separate paths between the U.S. and Europe, and rings in Europe and Asia.

In addition to its vast global network, Hurricane Electric owns and operates two data centers in Fremont, California, including Fremont 2, its newest 208,000 square foot facility. Hurricane Electric offers IPv4 and IPv6 transit solutions over the same connection at speeds including 10 Gbps and 100 Gbps Ethernet.

For more information on Hurricane Electric, please visit http://www.he.net.

About Equinix
Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), connects more than 4,500 companies directly to their customers and partners inside the world's most networked data centers. Today, businesses leverage the Equinix interconnection platform in 32 strategic markets across the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific. www.equinix.com.

Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from expectations discussed in such forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause such differences include, but are not limited to, the challenges of acquiring, operating and constructing IBX centers and developing, deploying and delivering Equinix services; unanticipated costs or difficulties relating to the integration of companies we have acquired or will acquire into Equinix; a failure to receive significant revenue from customers in recently built out or acquired data centers; failure to complete any financing arrangements contemplated from time to time; competition from existing and new competitors; the ability to generate sufficient cash flow or otherwise obtain funds to repay new or outstanding indebtedness; the loss or decline in business from our key customers; and other risks described from time to time in Equinix's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In particular, see Equinix's recent quarterly and annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, copies of which are available upon request from Equinix. Equinix does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking information contained in this press release.

Equinix and IBX are registered trademarks of Equinix, Inc.
International Business Exchange is a trademark of Equinix, Inc.

[1] https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html

[2] http://www.zdnet.com/finally-ipv6s-killer-app-the-internet-of-things-7000027644/

[3] http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/01/07/how-many-things-are-currently-connected-to-the-internet-of-things-iot/

[4] http://www.networkcomputing.com/networking/ipv6-sweet-spots-of-adoption/a/d-id/1234689?

[5] http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/sp/vni/vni_forecast_highlights/index.html

[6] http://www.techradar.com/us/news/internet/broadband/the-internet-of-things-will-cause-ip-traffic-to-skyrocket-300-by-2018-1252812

 

 

 

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SOURCE Equinix, Inc.