Dark fiber usage continues to expand throughout the country, and news of this nascent community is everywhere.

For example, InfoRelay has upgraded its private dark fiber networks in the regional markets of Los Angeles, Calif., and Reston, Va. Part of a larger infrastructure project InfoRelay began in August, this capacity enables customers to send and receive data from other network providers on fully-private fiber connections. These new connectivity options were made available to InfoRelay’s new and current customers from May 12, 2014.

“After deploying four 10 GigE waves between the LAX1 and LAX3 data centers, we tested them and found zero loss,” said Joseph Vajda, director of Network Operations at InfoRelay. "With this success, we proceeded to turn up six more 10 GigE waves between our LAX2 and LAX3 data centers. Following those, we rolled out a similar setup in our Northern Virginia data center network.” InfoRelay's dark fiber networks leverages Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology.

Jefferson City, Tenn., is getting on board as well, and it all started with a traffic signal project. The city had planned to rewire some traffic lights when engineers for the project came up with a plan to connect the eight signals in question through fiber optic cable. As a result, the city can hit two birds with one stone, improving various facilities' data connections. The project will be managed by On Trac, a fiber optic connectivity provider that had previously completed a project in the Tennessee city. The company has offered to do this at an asking price of $150,000.

Back out West, the IPv6-native Internet backbone provider known as Hurricane Electric has expanded its global IPv4 and IPv6 network to vXchnge’s data center in Santa Clara, Calif. vXchnge is a software-defined, intelligent data center services company that operates data centers across the U.S. This is expected to serve customer demand for a new point of presence. As IPv6 will become the major networking protocol for new devices and services, aligning with Hurricane Electric (News - Alert) will suit the needs of vXchnge, as it will provide access to several global network providers.

There’s always news in Dark Fiber, so be sure to check back frequently.