When it comes to purchasing Optical Wavelengths, there many important factors to consider. Three of the most important are diversity, latency, and location.

Diverse routing is critical for redundancy. Since waves have deterministic routing, you want to ensure your waves follow unique routes – so that you can add redundancy to your network. Cogent’s wave network offers multiple wave route options between major markets such as Chicago, Seattle and Atlanta – allowing you to select redundant diverse paths from the start.

Not only can Cogent offer diverse routing within our wave network, we also provide physical diversity from wave routes offered by other carriers. Cogent’s wave network leverages railroad rights of way, rather than highways like others. Further, as Cogent’s fiber is buried deep underground along these railroads, the chance of fiber cuts is minimized.

Locating our network along railroads offers another benefit to our customers. Railroads tend to offer straighter and shorter paths between locations – and the shorter the path, the lower the latency. Latency is critically important for applications such as AI, financial trading, and streaming media.

The third key is locations where you can connect to your provider’s wave network to transport your data. In most cases, you will want to connect your transport network (waves) to a more traditional (IP) network, at some point – to connect data to applications or reach end-users. Therefore, having a multitude of options for wave connectivity – local, regional, or long-haul – provides you the greatest choice.

Cogent’s extensive interconnections between our IP and Wave networks allows us to connect to less conventional locations like Wichita, KS and Bakersfield, CA for better redundancy for companies operating in those areas.

We also offer more wave enabled data center locations within a metropolitan area than any other leading long haul wave provider, thus enabling our customers to buy end-to-end waves, rather than piece-meal solutions by bonding together metro and long-haul waves from different providers.

Cogent has nearly 1,100 wave enabled locations that support up to 400 Gbps per wave – with multiple options in key tech hubs like Ashburn, Dallas and Silicon Valley, international submarine cable landing stations like Miami, Portland, and Los Angeles, as well as key cities in Canada such as Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary; and in Mexico, such as Querétaro, Monterrey and Mexico City. Cogent also provides wave enabled locations in growth areas like Salt Lake City, Austin, and Charlotte and smaller cities like Boise, Cheyenne and Midland.

These three keys come together in the introduction of our newest route – an optimal alternative path from Cogent’s best-selling Northern route from Chicago to Seattle, via Portland, Boise and Salt Lake City. The Salt Lake City to Chicago leg of this route is some of the straightest and fastest fiber available – enabling customers in the key financial markets in New York and Chicago to reach the Pacific Northwest on a shorter and very unique path. Further, our wave-enabled locations in Portland / Hillsboro also provide direct connectivity to key Asia Pacific markets via our global IP network.

In blue, is our best-selling Chicago to Seattle route on the shortest pathway available. In pink is the optimal alternative route, going through Portland and Salt Lake City, which is highlighted in red

We are continuously adding to our wave capabilities, enabling new locations with the latest wave technology, and delivering new routes to ensure our customers have the option to get unique routes, lowest latency, and best bandwidth between any A and Z points on our network.