1. Global and Regional Reachability

Tier 1 ISPs are in the driver’s seat of global and regional Internet connectivity. A Tier 1 network can reach every other network on the Internet with its own infrastructure.

This allows organisations to handle traffic at high volumes, with a stable performance level, irrespective of connecting between two states or two continents. Tier 1 providers are usually large ISPs that can offer robust networking power at affordable and competitive prices.

2. Extensive Points of Presence

Points of Presence (POPs) is where two or more networks or communication devices share a connection.

Partner with a provider who has extensive PoPs and wide reachability. This enables low latency between regions.

The greater number of PoPs a provider has, the more resilient and redundant your connectivity becomes. This also ensures you take advantage of multiple protection paths and diverse routing options.

3. Owns a Single ASN

Autonomous System Number (ASN) is a globally unique number that defines the path to the owner’s network. You need one ASN for global operations. Most of the big global networks operate a single-AS strategy.

Partnering with a provider who has a single ASN enables you to get a direct interconnect with Amazon AWS, or the Microsoft Azure Peering Service (MAPS), or other cloud platforms.

Providers with single ASN have the freedom to control performance settings between two paths and decide which route is faster to reach target networks. This leads to full independence, redundancy, and allows them to choose the upstream most suitable for their—and in turn, yours—own setup.

4. Enables Robust Security with Clean Pipe

The public internet is prone to DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. In fact, worldwide, DDoS attacks are among the top 10 cyber threats.

Clean Pipe is specifically designed to detect DDoS attacks. Clean Pipe defends against volumetric attack and application-layer attacks. On-premise network security, on the other hand, only handles threats once they have reached your network. Clean Pipe detects and prevents them before they reach the network.

For businesses handling sensitive data, Clean Pipe enables DDoS protection and also protects transactions and applications.

5. Provides Direct Peering

When providers partner with other ISPs and directly connect to their networks, they reduce the number of steps or hops they need to reach their final destination.

Direct peering is an interconnection of two separate networks to exchange traffic directly. Essentially, your company’s provider, let’s call this network A, connects directly to another CDN or ISP, such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud, network B. Once Network A and B are connected, these two networks communicate directly with one another.

As the name suggests, Direct Peering connections bypass the public Internet to provide direct access to CDNs and ISPs, reducing latency and improving overall network performance. It ensures your Internet connectivity doesn’t get disrupted despite the usage of popular applications.