| CompuServe soups up European network | 17 June |
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CompuServe is quietly "souping up" its European network, as well as its global backbone network, Newsbytes has discovered. The move is in preparation for a roll-out of a special national local call access number for the UK within the next 60 days, as well as enhancements in other European countries. The upgrades primarily affect CompuServe's global Internet service, which has been criticized by many users for being sluggish at peak times since the beginning of the year. The company is well into the process of performing massive bandwidth and hardware upgrades to its US/Europe backbone, as well as PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol) server farms in London, England, Munich, Germany, and Paris, France. According to officials with CompuServe, plans are in hand to install more Internet server farms for intelligent routing to European Web sites from the CompuServe network, no matter where the user is located. The company claims to have invested more than $8 million in Cisco equipment over the last four months on Internet network improvements in the US and Europe. In the US, CompuServe has added the MAE (metropolitan area exchange) West and East Internet interconnects to its Internet service, as well as connections in the PacBell network access point (NAP) and the Ameritech NAP peering point. These are in addition to the online giant's existing links into the Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX) and other US interconnects, Newsbytes notes. Dennis Brouwer, CompuServe's director managed data network service, claims that the Internet is strategic to every line of business at CompuServe. "These moves are the latest initiatives to speed us towards delivering a global, broadband IP (Internet Protocol) network that will ride across our ATM (asynchronous transfer mode)-based backbone," he said. According to Brouwer, the ATM backbone network that CompuServe now has in place will provide the foundations for the company's growing 28,800 bits-per-second (bps) dial-up network which now has almost 100,000 ports worldwide. "We are laying the foundation for future enhancements and additional IP-centric products," he said. He added that the end result will be "unmatched network performance for CompuServe's corporate networking customers, as well as for users of the CompuServe Information Services." (Sylvia Dennis/19960613/Press Contact: CompuServe Press Office, Paris, +33-1-4714-2173; Reader Contact: CompuServe Germany, +49-89-6657-4012)
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From the NEWSBYTES news service, 17 June |
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