Connectivity Articles

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a powerful technology that relies on connectivity to acquire and analyze vast amounts of transmitted data in order to quickly identify patterns and provide insights that improve decision-making, automation, problem-solving, productivity, and much more.

According to Grand View Research, 35% of companies report using AI in business already. Among them, 79% have deployed three or more types of AI. An additional 42% of companies report that they’re exploring the technology for the first time now. You’re likely already encountering AI every day, whether you’re staying safe during football games (thanks to AI-powered security monitoring), accessing a chatbot, or receiving telehealth-detected diagnoses.

Although there are many types of AI applications, they all have one thing in common: they rely on the transmission of vast amounts of data to fuel AI’s ability to learn, adapt, analyze, and make decisions. That’s why it is imperative to have reliable, efficient, scalable, and secure connectivity, especially if data is time-sensitive or proprietary.

Data Connectivity is Key
Real-time dynamic data acquisition (DAQ) processes regularly update and refresh data to ensure AI results remain relevant, effective, and attuned to evolving situations. To work optimally, connectivity must support constant uptime and bandwidth demands to move and process vast amounts of data in real time so that results can be acted upon. Transmission must also be secure so that there aren’t opportunities to compromise sensitive information or increase risk. This is especially important for the many applications and data that reside in the Cloud.

For data to flow effectively, a robust, purpose-built connectivity infrastructure is needed that can provide resilient, reliable, scalable, and secure data flow that is easy to manage in order to maintain the connectivity and uptime required to support DAQ so you can benefit from AI.

Choosing connectivity that can best power AI’s dynamic data transmission is the first step when implementing AI-powered solutions. Dedicated fiber is a good option because it provides resilient, secure connectivity with no contention whether data transmissions are one-to-many or many-to-one. To provide secure and reliable transmission of data used by AI, many organizations select private networks or dark fiber for the most reliability, security, and control with virtually limitless bandwidth. These types of solutions provide:

• Bandwidth that can scale easily to support increased data traffic without congestion
• Security without bottlenecking performance
• Reliable access to real-time data and the capability to support dynamic data acquisition
• Connectivity to data in the Cloud with secure bandwidth for simple scalability and management
• Connectivity to big-data applications to process collaboration and gain insights.

Real Examples of Connectivity Powering AI Data
Here are examples of how Lightpath connectivity helps to successfully power data transmission used for AI across verticals:

Government: Protecting People and the Environment
A large government agency relies on Lightpath connectivity for 100% secure uptime for their AI technologies that control and support data acquisition and analysis for their pump stations, water treatment stations, water towers, and reservoirs.

“Lightpath connectivity reliably powers data acquisition while alleviating contention points,” explains Rob Schrage, Director of Sales Engineering at Lightpath. “It allows them to gather critical data from sensors and use that data to enhance supervisory control.” This is critical to decrease outages and provide increased security, protecting the integrity of the water supply that serves millions of people.

Real Estate: Powering Building Management Systems
A Building Management customer relies on Lightpath connectivity to collect a constant stream of heating and cooling data from sensors. AI uses this data to monitor, track, and analyze power consumption changes, which enables them to proactively take actions to respond to these changes and mitigate outages.

Healthcare: Improving Timely Imaging Reviews
Radiology customers rely on Lightpath to provide reliable, dedicated, and secure connectivity for the transmission of medical images. These images are often transmitted directly to the Cloud, where they are retrieved by AI imaging applications to conduct pre-assessments that help doctors evaluate images for faster results.
Transmission security is imperative for compliance with HIPAA regulations since images can be vulnerable to intruders during transmission or could become corrupted, leading to incorrect diagnoses.

Education: Securing Networks from DDoS Attacks
AI applications are currently used by educators and students alike to analyze data. One way that Lightpath customers in the education sector use AI is to protect against volumetric DDoS attacks that can immobilize networks and websites and shut down Internet access. The Cloud-based DDoS Protection solution monitors the data entering the network and provides proactive detection, automated mitigation, and alert mechanisms to protect against malicious attacks without service interruption. The assessment can stop attacks and reroute traffic, preventing costly downtime and service interruption.

Financial: Answering Financial Questions 24/7 for Consumers 
In the Financial sector, AI has long been used for algorithmic trading analysis, decision-making, customer recommendations, fraud protection, and more. Since time is actually money for these customers, they are especially concerned with reliability, resiliency, and latency and rely on Lightpath for a competitive advantage. Understanding their needs, we provide a dedicated next-generation 100% fiber-optic network with connectivity designed for security and reliability that includes the shortest routes for improved latency and geographic diversity to ensure communications remain up and running.

Lightpath is Here for You
As your strategic network partner, Lightpath can help you navigate the data connectivity complexities and opportunities that come with current and future AI implementation and transformation. To learn how Lightpath’s fast, reliable, and secure solutions can help your organization, visit lightpathfiber.com or call 877-544-4872 today.