Stories about: Level 3 Communications

A small number of Internet users will experience delays or time-outs as they attempt to visit Facebook, Google, Yahoo and other popular websites tonight and tomorrow, due to a 24-hour trial of a new Internet standard called IPv6.

Telecom infrastructure provider Level 3 Communications will acquire Global Crossing, which provides Internet Protocol-based networks and Ethernet services and runs data centers, in an all-stock deal.

With nearly $100 million in new funding, Internet2, the faster, better Internet reserved for research and education, has embarked on an upgrade that will boost backbone capacity to a staggering 8.8Tbps and expand services to hundreds of thousands of libraries, schools and medical centers.

Last summer, about 30 hand-picked IT managers convened in an executive classroom for the third session of CIO University, a leadership development program for would-be CIOs. The agenda was chock-full of sessions covering best practices for stakeholder management along with role-playing exercises to explore the Thomas-Kilmann model of conflict resolution. Guest speakers included C-level executives as well as former attendees who had gone on to become CIOs. A post-session happy hour and dinner gave participants a chance to network, exchange insights and simply blow off steam.

To borrow from John Lennon: Imagine there's no latency, no spam or phishing, a community of trust. Imagine all the people, able to get online.

The spate of hot weather in the UK claimed a notable scalp after a London data centre experienced a cooling failure, which caused several servers to overheat and crash.

The investment company that announced Wednesday it has taken a 21 percent stake in Sun Microsystems believes the market doesn't get one important thing about the workstation and server vendor: It's a software company.

XO Communications will team up with optical vendor Infinera next week to demonstrate how 100 Gigabit Ethernet traffic can be sent over 10 10Gbps wavelengths.

For a decade, IPv6 has been the classic chicken-and-egg conundrum: There has been little North American demand for IPv6, so US carriers haven't introduced IPv6 services; without commercial IPv6 services available from carriers, US government agencies and businesses can't migrate to the next-generation Internet technology.

You might think the network you oversee is big, but consider Chris Robb's new job: network operations manager for Internet2, which in October announced completion of a new research and education network boasting initial capacity of 100Gbps nationwide. Robb takes on his new position as an assigned staff member from the Global Research Network Operations Center (GRNOC) at Indiana University. Network World Editor Bob Brown interviewed Robb by e-mail to get an idea of what lies ahead for him and Internet2.