PPL Telcom, a Pennsylvania-based transport provider serving wholesale carriers and large enterprises, has added Shadow Port service to its IP product line. The company describes Shadow Port as an IP back-up technology that meets no-single-point-of-failure requirements.

Typically, a company pays for connections to multiple entrances into the building, with two local loops and two physical IP ports, both of which are always active, explains Nitin Krishna, product line manager for PPL Telcom. With Shadow Port, there are still diverse entrances with the same number of local loops and physical IP ports, but only one IP port is active at any given time, he says. The Shadow Port will respond automatically if the active port fails.

PPL Telcoms pricing includes regular charges for the local loops and an active IP port, and a separate Shadow Port charge. The company says this provides the necessary redundancy and availability levels, but keeps costs low by avoiding an extra full-priced IP port. Initially, we designed the Shadow Port product to meet the unique requirements of a specific customer, says Charles Boddy, marketing director for PPL Telcom. But quickly realizing the demand for this type of service, we made the necessary modifications to roll it out on a larger scale.

Shadow Port service includes a 99.999 percent availability service level agreement, an IP block per port, and DNS and mail bagging services if needed.

PPL Telcom is an unregulated subsidiary of PPL Corp. that provides broadband connections to telecommunications companies, ISPs, and large businesses and institutions.