DQE Communications Achieves Comprehensive Visibility into Network Traffic

Customer Profile

DQE Communications is one of the leading providers of commercial fiber optic networking to businesses in southwestern Pennsylvania. Offering a level of network service and support that’s unequaled by any other area provider, DQE provides businesses, governmental agencies and carriers the fastest data speeds possible, the highest level of service reliability, and the most dependable support. DQE’s network of fiber-optic cables currently spans 3,247+ miles throughout western Pennsylvania, and on into northern West Virginia. Founded in 1997, DQE is continually working to expand its network. 

The Challenge

Insufficient visibility into their network challenged DQE’s operational readiness and its plans for continued expansion. As the company grew, Patrick Lazorchak, Director, IP Services and Network Engineering quickly realized that DQE did not have the tools necessary to protect its growing network and customers against the increasing risk of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. 

DQE turned to Arbor Sightline and Threat Mitigation System. “We did our research and Arbor’s reputation and footprint in the market was the key motivator for us to take a closer look,” said Lazorchak. “Once we met with the sales and engineering teams, our choice was easy.” 

The Solution

Arbor Sightline provides comprehensive network visibility and reporting capabilities to help Service Providers detect and understand availability threats, and improve traffic engineering, peering relationships and service performance. Arbor Sightline can also serve as a platform for managed DDoS protection services – which DQE plans to offer its customers. 

Arbor Sightline scales on physical and virtual instances to provide comprehensive DDoS detection across an entire service provider network, from the customer edge to the peering edge to the data center edge (or cloud edge) to the mobile edge, including the backbone network in-between. With this unparalleled visibility, Arbor Sightline’s workflows enable quick effective mitigation of any DDoS attack via Arbor Threat Mitigation System. 

Arbor Threat Mitigation System provides a full suite of countermeasures that surgically removes up to 400Gbps of DDoS attack traffic while enabling the flow of legitimate traffic — all without interrupting network services. Proven effective for detecting and removing threats such as high-volume flood attacks, stealthy application-layer attacks and attacks hidden in SSL packets, Arbor Threat Mitigation System safeguards IPv4 and IPv6 infrastructure from distributed denial of service attacks. Automated and proven, Threat Mitigation System works to keep networks and services up 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. 

The Results

DQE had Arbor Sightline and Threat Mitigation System up and running quickly, resulting in an immediate return on investment. Six months after the Arbor Sightline deployment, DQE installed a pair of Threat Mitigation System solutions at its upstream peering points. According to Lazorchak, “We started with the Arbor Sightline deployment and benefited from increased network visibility day-one.” With Arbor Sightline and Threat Mitigation System in DQE’s environment, network operation centers can now respond to events with planned effectiveness. Targeted attacks are now effectively mitigated, relieving DQE of expensive engineering resources and reducing time to mitigate. DQE’s security team has gone from reactive to proactive. Backed by Arbor’s solutions, DQE now has the ability to protect its infrastructure and its customers.