Anatomy of an Edge Deployment: The Components of a Stacuity Edge Site

By Tom Dougherty – Pre-Sales Solution Architect

When people hear “global network expansion,” they tend to picture months of planning, complex builds, and large teams on the ground. The reality at Stacuity is very different. Our edge network now spans four continents – with active sites in Virginia, Frankfurt, Singapore, and Johannesburg – and we have São Paulo, Sydney, and more on the way. We’re expanding fast because we’ve made edge deployment a repeatable, streamlined process. Here’s what actually goes into standing up a new Stacuity Edge site.

It Starts With a Rack and Power

There’s no ground-up construction involved. We utilise Equinix as our preferred global data centre partners  whom provide us  with colocation rack space and power in Tier 4 accredited  global facilities that  meet the physical requirements for carrier-grade infrastructure – cooling, redundant power feeds, physical security. Our hardware footprint is deliberately lean. Modern network infrastructure packs serious capability into a compact form factor, so we don’t need rows of equipment to deliver production-grade performance.

This keeps our lead times short and our deployment economics fundamentally different from traditional approaches that require significant capital investment in physical infrastructure.

A rack with power is just a box in a room. What makes it an edge site is connectivity, and this is where the real work and value lies. Every Stacuity Edge site needs three things:

IPX Peering

IPX peering connects us into the mobile ecosystem. We utilise multiple IPX partners and our edge locations are deliberately positioned at major IPX peering points – the places where mobile operators already come together to exchange traffic. This isn’t a coincidence. It means we can integrate with mobile networks efficiently, without needing bespoke arrangements at every new location.

Internet Transit

Internet transit provides broader IP reachability, essential for routing traffic to cloud platforms, enterprise endpoints, and the wider internet. We establish resilient, multi-provider transit at each site to ensure there’s no single point of failure.

Core network connectivity

Core network connectivity ties the new site back into the Stacuity Core utilising resilient  Equinix Fabric . This is what makes every edge location part of a single, coherent, software-defined network rather than an isolated island. Traffic policies, routing decisions, and security controls are consistent across every site because they’re all part of one fabric.

Getting these three layers in place quickly and reliably is a capability that comes from experience and established relationships. We’ve built a process and a network of partners that lets us light up connectivity in a fraction of the time it would take if we were starting from scratch each time.

Here’s the part that surprises people: once the hardware is racked and cabled, we don’t need engineers on site to bring it to life. Our infrastructure is designed for remote provisioning and configuration from day one. The hardware gets physically installed by local hands – racked, cabled, powered on – and from that point, our network team takes over remotely.

This is a deliberate architectural decision, not a shortcut. Our platform is software-defined, which means the intelligence lives in the software layer. We can deploy and configure a complete edge site – packet gateways, security controls, monitoring – without anyone needing to board a flight. It also means that every site is configured consistently, following the same validated process, eliminating the variability that comes with manual, on-site engineering.

The practical impact is significant. It decouples our deployment speed from the availability of specialist engineers in any given geography. Whether we’re launching in Johannesburg or São Paulo, the process is the same.

Traditional packet gateway deployments can take months. They involve procurement cycles, complex integration with existing network elements, dedicated on-site teams, and lengthy testing phases. Stacuity Edge sites don’t follow that model.

Because we own and control the full stack – hardware selection, network architecture, software platform, and operational tooling, we’ve compressed the deployment lifecycle dramatically. The timeline from “rack installed” to “serving production traffic” is measured in days, not months. That’s not a one-off achievement; it’s the standard. Our fifth site followed the same playbook as our first, and our tenth will be no different.

This matters for our customers because it means we can respond to demand quickly. When a customer needs a bespoke local breakout in a new region – whether driven by latency requirements, data sovereignty regulations, or simply growing their global footprint – we can deliver. We don’t need to tell them to wait for the next quarterly infrastructure cycle.

Our ability to deploy edge sites quickly has a direct impact on the reach and value of the Stacuity Edge network. Today, we have active sites in North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. We’ll soon be live in South America and Australia, extending our coverage to six continents.

Every new site doesn’t just add a point on a map – it strengthens the whole network. Each location inherits the full set of Stacuity capabilities: programmable routing policies, real-time traffic control, granular security features, and full API and portal access. For our customers – mobile operators, MVNOs, connectivity solution providers – each new edge site is immediately usable, immediately consistent with their existing setup, and immediately adding differentiation and value to their customers.