tw telecom and Louisiana Optical Network Initiative (LONI) Establish IPv6 Commercial Internet Interconnection

LITTLETON, Colo., June 7, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- tw telecom (NASDAQ: TWTC), a leading provider of managed services, including Business Ethernet, converged and VPN solutions for enterprises throughout the U.S. and globally, today announced that the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative (LONI) established its first IPv6 commercial Internet connection with tw telecom.  This interconnect occurred out of the Shreveport POP collocated at the LSU HSC Shreveport.  The Internet interconnection capability was established through IPv4-IPv6 dual stack BGP configurations over existing tw telecom service.

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"As our enterprise customers look to the future of IP networking, implementing IPv6 has been top of mind," said Harold Teets, Senior Vice President of Information and Network Technology and CIO/CTO at tw telecom.  "Over the past few years, we have been working with our customers to plan for and implement next generation IPv6 strategies for their businesses."

tw telecom's IP networking infrastructure has long been IPv6 compliant and built for this technology transition from the beginning.  The company has been delivering IPv6 services to its customers since 2008.  tw telecom has focused on efforts around IPv6 supporting customer demand for Dual Stack implementations.  Dual Stack implementation allows the customer to manage both IPv4 and IPv6 addressing across a single port that enables the customer to mitigate costly infrastructure upgrades and is much easier to manage.

tw telecom previously announced its participation in the upcoming World IPv6 Day on June 8, 2011.  tw telecom has made its corporate website (www.twtelecom.com) reachable across the IPv6 networks (IPv6 compatible) to demonstrate its corporate readiness to deliver IPv6 capabilities to enterprises and large organizations.

tw telecom and LONI worked together last November to build one of the world's most powerful networks at the IEEE-sponsored SC'10 Supercomputing show in New Orleans.  Called SCinet, this network delivered over 260 Gigabits per second (Gbps) in bandwidth, which would allow the entire collection of books at the Library of Congress to be transferred in under a minute.

tw telecom has delivered dedicated Ethernet-based Internet access to LONI since 2008 to connect Louisiana's 12 major research universities.  This enables improved collaboration on research projects and delivers results faster, with greater network performance.

"The business relationship we have with tw telecom is integral to LONI's success," said Donald Vandal, executive director of LONI.  "LONI relies heavily on our communications providers to build capacity for the state's researchers. tw telecom's business Ethernet connections positively impact our state's research and academic missions."

"We are pleased to work with LONI to provide them IPv6 commercial Internet interconnection," said Michael Nictakis, Vice President and General Manager for tw telecom in Louisiana.  "Also, our metro area network supports the research and education community's connectivity to national research networks like National LambdaRail and Internet2."

"As IPv6 implementations take hold and continue to grow across the Internet, we are ready to support our customers' needs to build out their IPv6 strategies," Mr. Teets said.  "We are excited to demonstrate our expertise in delivering IPv6 solutions by participating in World IPv6 Day."

For more information about tw telecom, visit www.twtelecom.com.  More information about LONI is available at www.loni.org.

About tw telecom

tw telecom holdings inc., a unit of tw telecom inc., headquartered in Littleton, Colo., provides managed network services, specializing in Ethernet and transport data networking, Internet access, local and long distance voice, VoIP, VPN and security, to enterprise organizations and communications services companies throughout the U.S. As a leading provider of integrated and converged network solutions, tw telecom delivers customers overall economic value, quality, service, and improved business productivity. Please visit www.twtelecom.com for more information.

About LONI

The Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, or LONI, is a state-of-the-art, fiber optics network that runs throughout Louisiana, and connects Louisiana and Mississippi research universities to one another as well as National LambdaRail and Internet2. LONI connects Louisiana's major research universities–Louisiana State University (LSU), Louisiana Tech University, LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, LSU Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, Southern University, Tulane University, University of Louisiana at Lafayette and University of New Orleans–allowing greater collaboration on research that produces results faster and with greater accuracy. LONI provides Louisiana researchers with one of the most advanced optical networks in the country and the most powerful distributed supercomputer resources available to any academic community with over 85 teraflops of computational capacity.

SOURCE tw telecom