Dropbox expands global private network to improve performance for users

Plans to launch six new points of presence across four countries in 2018

Leverages Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric^TM to ensure fast private connection to its network

Dropbox today announced plans to continue expanding its global private network by offering its global collaboration platform on the Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric^TM, and by launching six new points of presence across North America and Europe that will improve performance and reliability for users globally.

“By rolling out network infrastructure across the globe over the last two years, we’ve improved performance and reliability for all of our users by allowing them to get more direct access to our data centers,” said Akhil Gupta, Vice President of Infrastructure, Dropbox. “The enhancements that we’re announcing today will extend these benefits to even more users around the world.”

The new points-of-presence are expected to go online in Atlanta, Denver, Berlin and Toronto in the first half of 2018, followed by Stockholm and Oslo in the second half of the year. By the end of 2018, Dropbox expects to have an infrastructure footprint that spans 29 facilities in 12 countries on four continents including North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. 

By establishing network infrastructure in regions where Dropbox is seeing increased adoption, the company can carry its traffic using dedicated bandwidth. Each accelerator is based within co-location facilities that also house infrastructure from other ISPs; many of which connect directly into the Dropbox network through a process called peering. 

Peering allows Dropbox customers to avoid sending their traffic over the open internet, where it could travel through a web of different ISPs before finally reaching the Dropbox data centers. The greater number of ISPs the traffic travels through, the greater the risk of increasing latency, which can lower reliability and also negatively impact performance. 

By peering with Dropbox, customers gain access to fast, reliable bandwidth owned by Dropbox and dedicated exclusively to their use; ultimately improving their performance and reliability. Dropbox offers peering for free and currently has thousands of peering partners around the world.

Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric improves access to Dropbox private network

While peering connectivity to Dropbox remains available for customers such as NSPs or enterprises that operate more advanced networking protocols, today Dropbox is offering a second option by participating on ECX Fabric. ECX Fabric is an on-demand platform that will enable Equinix customers to discover and dynamically connect to any other customer likeDropbox across any Equinix location globally, including cloud service providers and users.

By offering its global collaboration platform on ECX Fabric, Dropbox will enable fast, private connections to users via the Equinix global platform of more than 190 data centers in 24countries. For companies that were unable to peer with Dropbox before due to a variety of technical constraints, ECX Fabric offers a way to plug into the Dropbox network to improve performance and reliability. ECX Fabric is available today in Equinix International BusinessExchange™ (IBX®) data centers in the U.S. and EMEA where Dropbox is based and will be rolled out globally in the coming months

Additional resources

• Dropbox will host an event at its data center on Wednesday March 7 where it will provide a deep-dive into its infrastructure. View the live steam starting at 4pm PT here
• Read more about the Dropbox edge network here
• Read more about the Dropbox backbone network here
• Follow Dropbox on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
• Read more about how Dropbox Business is helping companies embrace collaboration

About Dropbox

Dropbox is a leading global collaboration platform that's transforming the way people and teams work together. With more than 500 million registered users across 180 countries, we’re on a mission to unleash the world’s creative energy by designing a more enlightened way of working. Dropbox is headquartered in San Francisco, CA, and has 12 offices around the world. For more information on our mission and products, visit dropbox.com.