With the middle mile emerging as one of the next major topics of interest for global enterprises, we thought it would be useful to develop a comprehensive explanation of this new market segment.
What's the Definition of Middle Mile?
Broadly, we outline the middle mile like this:
- Last mile: Local access connects an enterprise location to the nearest colocation facility. Traffic may cascade through local aggregation points.
- Middle mile: Switching and transport that shepherds traffic between the local access colocation and the cloud service provider network.
- First mile: This is the cloud provider or other destination network. Traffic is now on-net with the application host.
In other words, the middle mile refers to the segment of network infrastructure that lies between the core network of a telecommunications operator or internet service provider (ISP) and the local network that directly serves end-users (the "last mile").
It's the crucial link that aggregates traffic from various last-mile networks and transports it to the high-capacity backbone of the internet.
What Problem is the Middle Mile Trying to Solve?
We wrote all about this over here.
There are some notable use cases for middle mile, as vendors look to optimize traffic flow, provide discrete circuits, offer flexible commercial terms, and enable agile deployments.
Middle-mile providers distinguish themselves from telcos by offering more flexible transactions, simplified pricing, agile provisioning, user-friendly portals, and transparent network performance visibility.
However, middle-mile operators face challenges, including limited reach compared to global telcos and reliance on other telcos for last-mile connectivity. Despite these challenges, telcos remain capable and are the incumbent option, especially with their integrated access networks and established infrastructure.
What Do Real-World Middle Mile Use Cases Look Like?
Coevolve CTO Ciaran Roche visitied our podcast to discuss just this. Ciaran explores how middle mile solutions are selected to solve real-world enterprise WAN issues. ⬇️
