September 2017 Newsletter

SEPTEMBER 2017 Helping organizations achieve greater value through the advancement of fiber optic telecommunications

CEO’S MESSAGE In a recent presentation, Microsoft’s President Brad Smith said, “That broadband access has become a necessity of life.” A necessity of life…

That is truly a profound statement. According to Google: A Necessity of Life is: a thing that a person must have in order to survive. Now…I guarantee if you ask either of my two teenage boys, they are convinced that their life may end if our internet goes down while they’re in the middle of an online game of Madden Football with their buddies. But in all seriousness, the internet has become such a critical component of every aspect of our lives.

Some experts predict that by 2020 there will be 200 billion connected things. Cars, planes, homes, cities, and even animals are being connected. We are putting software everywhere. This is changing the way we live and how we behave and interact with the world around United States.

Here in North Dakota we have been blessed to have visionary leaders, both public and private… who’ve recognized the need for broadband service and have supported investment in broadband infrastructure. In fact, Governor Burgum had a public call for action back in 2012 to make North Dakota the most connected state in the US. I can tell you that DCN, and our 15 owner companies are working to make sure that every North Dakotan has access to broadband service. It gives me great pride to let you know that as of today, North Dakota has over 288 communities with access to Gigabit internet access.

DCN ANNOUNCES NEW INITIATIVES On Wednesday, August 16, 2017, DCN announced the construction of a new 14,000-square-foot data center at the State of Technology conference held in Fargo. The new data center will be an addition to DCN’s existing data center located at 3901 Great Plains Drive South in Fargo, North Dakota.

The annual State of Technology conference is hosted by the FargoMoorhead-West Fargo Chamber of Commerce and Sen. John Hoeven and highlights innovations throughout the state of North Dakota.

DCN’s Board of Governors approved the approximately $5 million project that will increase the facility’s server floor space by six times and is expected to be completed by the end of 2018.

In addition to protecting its data centers from physical threats by adhering to strict construction specifications, DCN continuously invests in the most up-to-date technologies to provide top-level cyber security for its customers. Most recently, DCN partnered with security solutions providers A10 Networks and Kentik Technologies to provide the latest DDoS (distributed denial of service) protection to its data center customers. The service allows DCN to continuously monitor data as it enters the client’s servers and quickly re-routes suspicious data.

“Cybercriminals are constantly inventing new methods to hack into customers’ data, so businesses must have access to the latest security measures in order to stay one step ahead of them,” DCN CEO Seth Arndorfer said. “As a data center operator, we can partner with the best security providers and pass that technology along to our customers, which, in turn allows DCN to better protect customers’ data.”

But we’re not done!!! Until we have every customer in North Dakota served with broadband service, and every customer protected from cyber-attacks we will not rest.

Seth Arndorfer, CEO.

Seth Arndorfer, DCN’s CEO www.DakotaCarrier.com

DCN FARGO DATA CENTER EXPANSION DCN is planning on breaking ground this fall on a 14,000-square-foot expansion to the current hardened data center located at 3901 Great Plains Drive South, Fargo, North Dakota. The new data center is expected to be completed by the end of 2018.

Border States Electric has already signed on to be the newly expanded center’s first anchor tenant. “The complexity of designing and maintaining a redundant data center built to withstand all of the natural and cyber threats that exist in our world today is not cost effective, even for large companies like ours,” said Ryan Stall, senior vice president Strategy Enablement & IT at Border States Electric. “When we weighed the pros and cons, it was clear that colocation offered the most secure, efficient and economical solution to meet our data center needs.”

This will be DCN’s second data center expansion project in two years, and its fourth data center project in the last 11 years.

Earlier this year, DCN held a ribbon cutting event for its newly completed data center expansion located at 4202 Coleman Street in Bismarck, North Dakota. American Crystal Sugar Company, and United Sugars Corporation were the first customers to utilize Bismarck’s new data center addition.

All DCN facilities are designed as carrier-grade and hardened to withstand F4 tornadoes with winds up to 200 mph, along with N+1 redundant power and cooling systems. State-of-the-art security is incorporated throughout its data centers, including keycard access, biometric fingerprint scanners, personalized combination locking cabinets and suites, and 24/7 monitoring with a closed caption TV Video surveillance system.

Rendering of an upcoming 14,000-square-foot expansion of DCN’s data center facility located at 3901 Great Plains Drive South, Fargo.

DCN’s current Fargo data center facility.

Bismarck’s new data center addition first customers. Pictured above from left to right: Jamie Eckart, DCN’s Facilities Maintenance Tech; Jesse Heck, DCN’s Director of Operations; Randy Bakken, United Sugar’s Network Administrator; Corey Weisz, American Crystal Sugar’s Manager of Infrastructure and Operations; and Neil Budke, American Crystal Sugar’s Network Specialist.

16TH ANNUAL DAKOTA CARRIER CLASSIC DCN hosted its 16th Annual Dakota Carrier Classic on an absolutely perfect for golf, summer afternoon, Tuesday, July 18, 2017. The event took place at the picturesque and well-manicured Hawktree Golf Course in Bismarck.

Over 100 people participated in an enjoyable day of golf, fun, and camaraderie. After the round of golf everyone gathered back in the clubhouse for a delicious meal, along with the presentation of numerous awards and prizes.

NETWORK PERFORMANCE MONITORING TOOL Customers can now access their own dashboard with DCN’s Network Performance tool. The Network Performance tool, is a web based tool that allows customers to view utilization and performance charts of their network services provided by DCN. Performance charts include statistics such as frame loss, two-way jitter, and two-way delay from the Y.1731 tests that are run on the network. Customers can view their network performance in various date ranges from the current day to the previous week, month, or quarter. The Network Performance tool is a good place to see the current throughput as well as a historical report of alarms generated from bandwidth thresholds.

The Network Performance tool has a very user-friendly interface that is simple to learn over a quick webex session. If you are a current customer and would like access to DCN’s Network Performance tool, please contact your account representative.

All Services Summary screenshot.

Individual Service screenshot.

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P.O. Box 2484 Fargo, ND 58108-2484 800.814.3333 www.DakotaCarrier.com

(If you would like to be removed from our mailing list, please e-mail Laura Walz at lwalz@dakotacarrier.com)

TENDERHOLT IS OC-P CERTIFIED

DACAR JOINS TEAM

Daniel Tenderholt, a Transport Technician at DCN’s Fargo office, received his Optical Communications Professional (OC-P) certification. Through self-study and hard work, Daniel has successfully completed the OC-P course which focuses on analysis of optical communications components, devices, and protocols used in optical transport networks. Daniel received an educational bonus check for his achievement.

Sheldon Dacar has been hired at DCN’s Bismarck office as an Ethernet/IP Technician I.

Jesse Heck, Director of Operations (left) with Daniel Tenderholt, Transport Technician.

Sheldon Dacar

Dacar was previously employed at West River Telecommunications. He graduated from North Dakota State College of Science in 2010 with an associate’s degree in computer information services. He is also CompTIA N+certified.