Level 3 Communications has announced that it has been selected as the primary provider of colocation services and high-speed Internet Protocol (HSIP) service over IPv6 for the Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network (ARE-ON), a statewide consortium focused on education, research and economic development. The two-year agreement expands on an existing agreement in which Level 3 delivered infrastructure solutions to ARE-ON.

ARE-ON will use Level 3 services to provide its member institutions -- which include all of the state's comprehensive four-year public universities, the university division of agriculture and the medical center -- with access to high-speed networks and high-performance computing resources. Services will support research and education applications, as well as health care and emergency preparedness.

The advances in research and education applications supported by ARE-ON require an infrastructure that delivers high bandwidth, network flexibility, low latency and security. As a network that delivers advanced functions, ARE-ON is required to provide IPv6 support throughout its entire network to meet its members' present and future needs for IP addressing.

"By selecting Level 3 for more of our services, ARE-ON will be able to reduce its networking costs while still empowering its members to make advances in research and education," said Edward Morche, senior vice president of Level 3's Federal Markets. "ARE-ON will get the reliability and security of our colocation service and will be prepared to migrate to the next generation of IP, IPv6, by using Level 3's high-speed IP service."

With approximately 54,000 long-haul fiber route miles and 27,000 metro fiber miles spanning 190 markets in 22 countries, Level 3 offers a broad portfolio of telecommunications services, including voice over internet protocol (VoIP), enterprise wide area network (WAN), metro and long-haul transport, data, colocation, and content delivery.