UUNet strengthens its backbone

WorldCom subsidiary UUNet Technologies today announced plans to spend some $300 million to expand and upgrade its network, an initiative that will more than quadruple its available backbone bandwidth and dial capacity.

The expansion is designed to help the Internet service provider keep pace with growth projections for this year. The Fairfax, Virginia-based company said it has seen dial-up access demands grow by more than ten percent a week in recent months, while traffic along its backbone infrastructure has also grown rapidly.

Leveraging its parent company's experience in the telecommunications industry, UUNet will spend the next six months migrating segments of its backbone infrastructure to support the high-speed Internet protocol transmission, OC12, which allows for data transmission of up to 622 million bits per second. The effort will require migration of backbone links to Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) protocol. The company said it will install Fore Systems' ASX-200 and ASX-1000 ATM switches.

To increase the number of dial-access ports, the company will install Ascend Communications' high-density MAX TNT remote access concentrators to support analog and digital dial-up traffic throughout the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico.