Hurricane Electric, the world’s leading IPv6-native Internet backbone, has announced that it has added a new point of presence (PoP) in Nairobi at the East Africa Data Centre. Located at the Sameer Industrial Park, Mombasa Road in Nairobi, Kenya, this is Hurricane Electric’s first PoP in Kenya and third in Africa.
The East Africa Data Centre is one of the most connected facilities in the region and boasts long distance fibre routes to Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Ethiopia and Somalia. Covering 2,000m2 across four floors, the carrier-neutral data centre offers N+1 cooling and power for its tenants as well as parallel UPS systems and N+1 diesel generators to maintain uptime. Additionally, the facility has been designed to meet International Data Centre Standards as outlined by TIA-942.
With the launch of Hurricane Electric’s newest PoP, customers of the East Africa Data Centre and others in the area now have a variety of new connectivity options as well as the ability to improve fault tolerance, load balancing, congestion management and transit of next-generation IPv6 traffic. Additionally, tenants at the East Africa Data Centre are able to exchange IP traffic with Hurricane Electric’s vast global network, which offers over 19,000 BGP sessions with over 6,500 different networks via more than 160 major exchange points and thousands of customer and private peering ports.
The Nairobi PoP also provides access to Hurricane Electric’s extensive IPv4 and IPv6 network through 100GE (100 Gigabit Ethernet), 10GE (10 Gigabit Ethernet) and GigE (1 Gigabit Ethernet) ports and as a result, both new and existing customers will be able to experience increased throughput, reduced latency and improved reliability.
“Hurricane Electric is delighted with the continued growth of our global network through this new point of presence and we remain committed to further expanding into even more African countries in 2018,” said Mike Leber, President, Hurricane Electric. “Because the region is so well connected, Nairobi has proven itself to be an important technological hub for Kenya and beyond. Our newest site will allow customers of East Africa Data Centre to tap into the bandwidth and reach of Hurricane Electric’s rich global network and we are grateful for the opportunity to support them.”
In August, Hurricane Electric announced that it became the first backbone in the world to connect to 4,000 IPv6 (Internet Protocol version six) networks. This milestone can be attributed to the company’s global strategy of expanding to more countries and cities in order to provide existing customers with more direct routes while also reaching new customers that are in need of additional connectivity options. Due to the proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT), which has dramatically expanded the volume of Internet aware devices, the next generation IPv6 is a necessity to support the long-term growth of the Internet.
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