Cirion is a leading digital infrastructure and technology provider, offering a comprehensive suite of fibre networks, connectivity, colocation, cloud infrastructure, and communication and collaboration solutions. Its mission is to advance Latin America´s progress through technology, serving more than 5,500 Latin America-based and multinational customers, including enterprises, government agencies, cloud service providers, wireline and wireless carriers, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and other leading businesses.
Cirion’s extensive network includes over 50,000km of terrestrial long-haul and metropolitan fiber optics, 36,000km of submarine cables, and 18 landing stations, enabling scalable networks that are capable of adapting to the increased number of connected users without impacting their Quality of Experience (QoE).
The challenge:
With SVOD subscribers expected to hit 139 million by 2027 across Latin America – marking an impressive 51% increase from 2023 – Cirion needed to expand and enhace its edge capacity to better deliver video at scale to its ISP clients and their respective subscribers.
“The rapid growth of data consumption and Internet traffic across major Latin American cities has resulted in increased demand on access networks. We must continue optimising and updating our networks to scale and deliver the great digital experiences users expect,” comments Alejandro Girardotti, senior director of products, Innovation and Strategic Alliances at Cirion Technologies.
“Edge-based delivery brings content as close to the consumer as possible. We needed a solution offering capacity, performance, and openness to allow us to adapt to market dynamics and technological evolution. Qwilt’s proven track record with telecommunication service providers and open architecture meets our criteria, allowing us to deploy quickly and at scale.”
The solution:
With these criteria in mind, Cirion deployed Qwilt’s open caching software and web services across every node in the Cirion network. In certain sites, this included new nodes through a partnership with Cisco, combining Qwilt’s innovative content delivery platform deployed on Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS) and Nexus 9000 switches for edge compute and critical networking infrastructure. As of June 2024, Cirion had deployed 113 Qwilt edge nodes across 20 countries with multiple PoPs within major cities, including Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and Mexico City.
These Qwilt nodes create an ‘edge cloud’ that offers 100+ Tbps of throughput. Primarily used for streaming media delivery, this edge cloud can also support other virtual network function (VNF)-based services and edge computing workloads in the future. The nodes use cloud-based open APIs that federate with other Qwilt-enabled service provider edge clouds, resulting in a global, unified content delivery platform. With one connection to Qwilt’s cloud-based APIs, publishers can access the global CDN, ensuring efficient delivery through Cirion’s network and 150+ other service provider networks worldwide.
In addition, the Qwilt media delivery service integrates with the major load-balancing commercial platforms and QoE measurement tools. This seamless integration allows Cirion to participate in Qwilt’s global edge CDN and offers operational deployments directly from local streaming platforms.
The result:
Cirion’s deployment is fully compliant with the Open Caching specifications pioneered by the Streaming Video Technology Alliance (SVTA). Unlike conventional CDNs that rely on centralised caches at regional peering points far from end-users, Qwilt’s Open Caching places caches deep within partner Internet Service Provider networks. This proximity ensures lower latency, reduced network congestion, and significantly improved streaming quality for end-users.
“The deployment significantly increases Cirion’s ability to reliably deliver high-quality live and VoD streaming throughout the region by moving content closer to consumers while reducing data transit across our backhaul links,” explains Girardotti. “In effect, by delivering content from nodes within major cities, we can improve the customer experience for subscribers of ISPs connected to our network. With this Qwilt deployment, we are now one of Latin America’s largest low-latency CDN service providers.”
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