Supporting Ukrainian Networking: Our Efforts in Ensuring Internet Connectivity

Back in 2022, after the outbreak of war in Ukraine, there were many ways in which the international community including many businesses responded to help Ukraine. And the network industry is no exception. From a media PoV, the rise of Starlink as a critical service in Ukraine is best known. While of course the war in Ukraine is by necessity largely a human story, it has also highlighted the importance of modern Internet connectivity. That’s why we are glad to play our part in helping Ukraine’s Internet connectivity. This post gives a little context and an update on our efforts. 

The importance and resilience of Ukrainian Internet Connectivity 

 Any modern society relies extensively on Internet connectivity just to function, and Ukraine, even in the midst of war, is no exception. Beyond the obvious war front use cases, Internet connectivity enables Ukrainian citizens to stay safer and to conduct their daily lives, and allows global citizens to see what’s happening, keeping the country and its travails visible to the wider world. 

When war broke out, there was a huge surge in attacks not only on the physical infrastructure of Ukraine, but also on the cyber-infrastructure. There was speculation that the attacks would wipe out the country’s connectivity. That didn’t happen and analysis early on explored the reasons, such as this article from the Washington Post.  

Due to Ukraine’s robust connectivity and interconnection with external providers, the country has been able to maintain generally strong Internet access. But it has not come without tremendous effort. A Time article covered the battle for control of Ukraine’s Internet. Modern connectivity and freedom of communication are essential to human freedom today. 

A year into the conflict, Cloudflare published a fascinating analysis of Ukrainian Internet connectivity. Sadly, that was already a year ago, and the network community still needs to keep doing its part to support free-flowing Internet connectivity in Ukraine. 

Our small part in this big story 

When war broke out, we reached out to multiple ISPs in Ukraine and offered sponsored IP Transit connectivity. We were glad to hear back from one large ISP, UARNet.  With some support from Equinix and NTT, we were able to set up and provide a sponsored 100Gbps port with IP Transit service to UARNet in Frankfurt. 

As an update, we recently heard from Ukraine Telecommunications Group (UTG) that they would like to take advantage of our offer, and we’re gratified to say that we’ll be providing them a sponsored 100Gbps port with free 10Gbps Committed Data Rate (CDR) in Frankfurt. 

We’re grateful that we can play this part in supporting Ukrainian resilience.