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Data Center
Industrial Strength Equipment Provides Performance and Reliability
We realize that down time is not an option for a client's server. We have invested heavily in hardware and facilities to ensure that our clients' sites will remain up and running on the web 24
hours a day, seven days a week.
Physical Facilities
The state-of-the-art Network Operations Center (NOC) is equipped with raised flooring, which
allows for easily cabling and reliable channeling of conditioned air to maintain a uniform room temperature. The floors also help to reduce static and ensure a professional, computer grade environment.
The facility is equipped with a Halon fire protection system which allows for the immediate extinguishing of fire while equipment and personnel remain unharmed. The command center is
separated by automatic doors to further secure and protect the equipment.
Finally, the NOC itself is located in a secure, monitored, class A building with only a minimum
number of approved personnel allowed to access the highly sensitive areas and equipment. A detailed record of which employees have entered is kept on file as well as a record of all visitors.
Smooth, Clean, Redundant Uninterruptible Power System
To guard against local power failures, we have invested in two separate industrial strength,
three phase Liebert UPS systems. These act as back-up batteries, maintaining uninterrupted power in case of surges or power outages. In addition to these high-quality power systems, the
NOC is also equipped with a natural gas generator. With these three backup systems in place, we can keep our network up and running indefinitely without relying on the building's power.
This is just another example of the commitment we have to keeping our clients' sites up 24/7 no matter what situation arises.
Temperature Controlled
Our facility has two Liebert 10 ton industrial air conditioners, which condition our computer rooms and operations center. Our computer room is kept at an optimal temperature of 65 degrees.
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Web Servers
Our web servers are custom-built industrial machines designed
for a 24/7 web serving environment. All of our servers are equipped with dual redundant 450-watt power supplies, hot swap Fujitsu drives and force-filtered cooling systems. Our Network
Operations Center (NOC) is equipped with standby machines, industry-leading Liebert uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) and a temperature-controlled environment, all located in a secure, monitored facility.
Force Filtered Cooling
All the drives, motherboards, and power supplies in our NOC are in cases with a positive
pressure filtered-air environment. Two large fans pull filtered air into the protective case, and the components within are cooled by fans which circulate this purified air. The constant
introduction of clean air into the case creates a positive pressure environment ensuring that dust and particles remain out.
Hot Swap Fujitsu Drives
The drives and drive bays of our servers are all constructed from high-grade aluminum, and rest in a Shock Mounted Drive Cage, which adds to the durability of the hardware. We back up our
servers nightly. If the industrial grade drive were to fail, all we would have to do is copy the backup (never more than 24 hours old) onto a standby machine which is already on-line. The
site would be up and running within a matter of minutes.
Redundant Hot Swap Power Supplies
Each server has dual-redundant hot swap power supplies. If one of these power supplies were to
fail, the server would not go down because each power supply is capable of running the server by itself, indefinitely. Meanwhile, alarms would alert our technicians to the problem; they would
restore redundancy with one of our spares and then service the failed supply unit. During all this, sites on our network would never be down.
Standby Servers
We keep spares on-line of all CPU configurations. If the server were to experience a hardware failure we would literally turn a key, grab the handle on the drive, pull it out, and insert it into
an identical standby CPU. We would reboot the second machine and the server would be up and running again in a matter of minutes.
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Connected to 2 Backbones
The Network Operations Center (NOC) located in Baltimore, Maryland, is OnNet with Frontier
GlobalCenter (FGC) and Qwest Communications through two separate bandwidth-on-demand connections which enter Downtown Baltimore just a few floors below the NOC.
FGC, a Tier 1 provider whose 13,000-mile fiber optic network and Dense Wave Division
Multiplexing (DWDM) technology provide an enormous 460 gigabytes per second (Gbps) of capacity worldwide, has an ATM fiber node located just a few floors below the NOC.
Qwest comes into Baltimore with an OC-12 line, and plans to upgrade their connection to an
OC-48 in the near future. They also have an ATM fiber node 14 floors below the NOC. Qwest comes into Baltimore at the same location with an OC-12 line and plans to upgrade to an
OC-48. Our Qwest connection enables us to offer additional redundancy and better routes to Europe, Latin America, and Asia. With these two carriers, our router will have up to 150,000
possible routes to send each packet of traffic.
Furthermore, because of these unique connections, we no longer needs to link to the Internet
though an OC3 or T3 Telecom circuit. Instead, independent cables run inside our building directly from the NOC to both the Global Center point of presence and the Qwest point of
presence. These lines can handle the bandwidth of a T3 or an OC3, and with DWDM they can handle several times the bandwidth of an OC3. So whatever the client's bandwidth needs are,
the scalability to meet them is available!
In September 1999, we added connectivity from Level 3 Communications. Level 3 was
described in USA Today as "a dream team with a dream network." With the fundamental change in communication technology at hand, they are the first to build an international end to
end communications network, based entirely on IP technology. To implement this new technology, Level 3 plans to construct local networks in 50 cities across the United States, all
interconnected by an intercity or long distance network that will extend nearly 16,000 miles.
Network Redundancy
We uses intelligent end-user routing software called Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), between Qwest and FGC, who use it as well. BGP can identify which path is the most efficient for each
data packet, and then route the packet to its destination on the fastest path. This increases the speed at which web pages sent from our NOC arrive at their destination.
Studies have shown that the second most common reason for downtime is circuit failure on the
Tier 1 backbone, the major data highway. To guard against this potential problem, we have two Tier-1 providers. If one has problems, we can route traffic down the other one. Furthermore,
because we are OnNet with Frontier GlobalCenter and Qwest, we share their digital distribution architecture, which includes private peering network connections to major Internet carriers such
as MCI, Sprint, UUNET, EUNET, AT&T, AOL, Best, Erols, @Home, IBM Advantis and others. These private peering arrangements allow us to exchange packets of data with every major
backbone carrier in a one-to-one environment quickly and efficiently.
In addition, FGC has high-speed links to 8 public exchanges including both MAE East and West
and several NAPS. Through these many public exchanges, customers have the ability to reach their site wherever they are coming from on the Internet. Thus we have the best of both worlds:
a network that is both efficient and wide reaching.
Network Reliability
Industry analysis reveals that 70 percent of downtime over 10 hours with any ISP is caused by telephone circuit failure. Since our NOC is in the same building as Frontier Global Center,
circuit failure is virtually eliminated because there is no phone circuit between us and FGC. Instead, there is a direct connection between our Cisco 7200 router and theirs.
The second most common reason for downtime is circuit failure on the Tier 1 backbone. FGC,
themselves a backbone, also have peer connections with other major Tier 1 providers, which allows traffic to be switched to other backbones quickly in the event of a crisis.
How reliable is this? Yahoo is another fine company who connects directly using only FGC. If
you can reach Yahoo, you can reach our network. FGC's groundbreaking 460 Gbps network runs BGP to 25 other major carriers through private peering arrangements, providing the fastest, most
efficient and most reliable network available today.
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