The Three Rivers Optical Exchange (3ROX) high-speed academic network has improved its reliability by upgrading its connection to Cogent. The connection with the commodity network provider has increased from 1 to 2 Gigabits per second (Gbs).

“We now have more total bandwidth with full redundancy to the commercial or commodity Internet,” says Michael Lambert, PSC's and 3ROX's GigaPoP Manager. Cogent is one of two commodity Internet connections maintained by 3ROX. Each connection is always in use to provide increased bandwidth to the commodity Internet. In the case of failure of one of the links, all commodity traffic could be routed over the remaining connection. The change, Lambert explains, will enhance network robustness without users needing to take any action.

3ROX offers commodity Internet as well as private peering with major content providers and other regional networks, and connectivity to major research and education networks such as Internet2, National LambdaRail, and ESnet. Current members include Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania State University, West Virginia University, the West Virginia Network (WVNET) and the Allegheny and Beaver Valley Intermediate Units of the Pennsylvania Department of Education.