Dedicated Network Services
CenturyLink® has become the primary provider of network services to the AWS re:Invent 2017 currently taking place in Las Vegas. As one of the best internet service in the country, this new position as a provider for such an event will surely help it to extend its network and services. Besides, the Telco is also looking forward to gaining new footholds by providing its network connectivity and technologies for the event. For the last four consecutive years, CenturyLink® has provided dedicated network connectivity to the AWS event.
It began in 2012, and after that, the event has grown, with a large capacity of both onsite and live streaming viewers. Chris McReynolds, VP of cloud and data product management for CenturyLink® said, “We began supporting this event in 2012 and it was all at the Sands and now it’s grown to five different venues and there’s over 40,000 attendees. The demands of what they have requested for us have grown in parallel with that.”
CenturyLink® has combined its connection onto the hub site located at the Sands. The Telco provides internet access and dedicated network connectivity to the attendees for the event as well as for powering the Wi-Fi access offered by Amazon. For the event, CenturyLink® has set up different routes in the network connectivity for its hubs located in different places.
McReynolds further stated, “We go to a Northern cloud onramp for the East region and a Southern onramp with a diverse path on our long-haul network. Also, we do the same for AWS West. AWS has a couple of big needs: internet access to the 40,000 attendees, but they also have their boot camps, hackathons, and live streaming events that they’re managing through AWS Compute.”
Live Streaming Viewers
CenturyLink® not only offers network services to the attendees but to the complementary events of AWS as well. However, CenturyLink® has already made plans for gaining major footholds in the Las Vegas region. It has decided that it will leave the network circuits intact after the commencement of the event, in order to cater the needs of any future events.
“Las Vegas has so many different conventions at the Sands and other venues and it’s such diverse and powerful internet connectivity we have built,” McReynolds said. “Even with those internet connections, we connect all of those facilities and take it out with diverse directions to two different internet points of presence and that’s something that should be of value to other conferences.”
