Our servers are located in a professional data
center located in Colorado. Click here to see photos.
Data Center features...
...Redundant Connections to several Tier 1 providers
...Multiple fiber paths
...Multiple redundant power back-up
...Raised Floors
...HVAC, Separate cooling zones with over 60 tons of cooling
...Multiple Levels of Security
...Card key access
...Video surveillance
...Multiple levels of Fire suppression
...Early Warning System
...FM-200 gas-based fire suppression system
...Continuous, uninterruptible power supply
...Environmental Monitoring Systems maintain constant temperature and
humidity
Routers and Equipment
...Juniper Backbone Routers
...Hewlett-Packard Gigabit Ethernet Switches
...Routers have multiple connections to our backbone
Connectivity
Currently there is a full 2000 mbps (2GiG-E
connections) supplying our Data Center. In OC fiber line terms thats
close to 3- OC-12 lines and 1- OC-3 line.
The use of non-blocking gigabit devices throughout the network ensures
regional latency of a few milliseconds or less, suitable for the most
demanding delay-sensitive traffic. Use of redundant fiber rings ensures
network reliability and availability.
The data center has connections to many different Internet backbones including
Level3, Genuity, Time Warner and Yipes. By connecting to multiple tier
1 backbones, the data can be distributed through many sources. This architectural
design also means that the network connections are not dependent upon
an single Internet backbone. Thus when probems occur, traffic rerouting
is automatic, thereby ensuring the integrity of the network and continued
access for our high-speed servers.
This takes the term multi-homing to a whole new level. Presently
bandwidth utilization is 5% during peak traffic times. Therefore, the
network is very flexible. If one of the backbone connections experiences
problems, the traffic can simply be rerouted over other paths, thereby
ensuring that users receive fast access times to sites hosted on our network.
In addition, the network runs Border Gate Protocol (BGP4). BGP is used
at a provider with more than one access point to the Internet. It helps
create a truly redundant network. In fact, in an ideal situation, a lease
line failure should result in the BGP routing session to close on the
bad leased line and the router on a working circuit should then begin
to accept the additional traffic. In other words, traffic from a down
circuit is redistributed across other circuits, thereby maintaining network
integrity. Providers that are multi-homed and correctly setup can actually
be more reliable than a single backbone provider because they have multiple
paths to multiple providers.
Internal Connectivity
A provider's local area network is not often enough being seen as a point
of latency.
The two main sources of latency for a full-time Internet connection are
the user's local area network and the Internet provider's local area network.
Ether switches and high-end Juniper routers anchor the local network.
This top-of-the-line network hardware ensures that data requests get to
their destination and back out of the network as fast as possible.
We use ether switches instead of hubs because of their speed and their
security capabilities.
Whereas only one computer plugged into a hub can talk at one time, all
the machines connected to a switch can talk at the same time.
This means more data can travel through a switch and each server acts
as its own node on the network. Furthermore, since each server is its
own node on the network, it is difficult for hackers to trace data packets
with sensitive information (i.e. passwords) to a particular server.
Servers on the network do not share a single path (T3). Instead, the servers
are connected into a high-speed Ethernet switch. This switch is connected
to the core router at the data center.
From the core router, data is sent back to the end user across the fastest
available path. Whereas statically routing traffic over one path creates
a single point of failure, this distributed architecture ensures that
users can access data extremely quickly and have multiple paths both into
and out of our network.