Hanover’s Perspective
SummitIG Completes Dark Fiber Project Through Hanover County
SummitIG, a bandwidth infrastructure provider, has completed the construction of its 170-mile dark fiber network connecting the greater Richmond area to key points throughout Northern Virginia including Ashburn, the internet traffic hub and data center capital of the US. A portion of the long-haul network runs through Hanover County along I-95 and I-295.
Dark fiber is optical fiber infrastructure that is currently in place but is not being used. Optical fiber carries information in the form of light pulses so “dark” means no light pulses are being sent.
The entire 170-mile span extends from key points in Northern Virginia including Ashburn, Reston and Manassas through Fredericksburg and Ashland on its way to the Richmond metro area. This strategic dark fiber infrastructure is an ideal solution for customers requiring latency sensitive applications such as asynchronous storage environments, critical cloud platforms and business continuity solutions.
“We are excited to have completed this new regional long-haul network and now offer the most direct route from the Richmond market to Northern Virginia, bypassing Washington, D.C. This is the only all dark fiber network between these markets,” said Bill Cook, chief executive officer, SummitIG.
The new dark fiber infrastructure has allowed for the creation of the Richmond Virginia Internet Exchange (RVA-IX), Virginia’s newest nonprofit Internet exchange point located at Pixel Factory Data Center in Ashland’s Hanover Industrial Air Park.
RVA-IX is structured to act as a connection between multiple IP networks. Its members are able to directly connect with one another over an unmetered Ethernet connection to exchange local Internet traffic. The RVA-IX Internet exchange owns and operates the Ethernet switching platform used to interconnect member networks.
“This represents another key step toward creating a more robust internet for the Richmond area. It keeps our area traffic local and improves our internet performance,” said Scott K. Brown, owner of the Pixel Factory Data Center.
The Pixel Factory Data Center is housed in a state-of-the-art 6,000 square foot building near the Hanover Industrial Air Park. Pixel Factory Data Center caters to small and mid-sized businesses.