Network Infrastructure

Data Centre

We run all of our core hosting and co-location services from our private racks in the Blue Square data centre, Maidenhead. Blue Square is one of the very few carrier-neutral premier-class data centres in southern England outside of the M25 and also provides disaster recovery options that are independent of central London.

The data centre provides us with the following features as standard for both service and redundancy:

• 2 megawatt on-site substation

• Diverse power feeds to substation

• Dual AKSA 1.6 megawatt generators connected to C&N ATS systems

• Two main fibre duct points into building

• N+1 PowerWave UPS system

• N+1 Airedale Air Handling system

• 22 degrees celsius +/- 2 degrees data floor temperature

• Dual 16 AMP feed per equipment rack

• 24x7 secure entry via swipe card system with 6-layer entry

• Data centre located within it's own secure compound, with 3 metre fencing and electric entry, including anti-tailgate systems

• NOC engineers available 24x7

• 20Gbit resilient Ethernet ring linking Blue Square 1,2,3 & MK to London Docklands facilities, with 50ms self-healing capacity

Network

Our upstream connectivity is provided by a fully redundant BGP network consisting of two separate hardware vendors which provide redundancy not only in the network level, but also the hardware level. 

We have connectivity via two separate 10Gigabit networks, from both Extreme Networks and Foundry Networks. On top of this layer 2 network we are provided transit via two independent IP Transit networks which run from multiple Cisco Systems 7606-S RSP720 and 6509 SUP720 routers at multiple London facilities, offering true redundancy.

Connecting with multiple Tier 1 providers, including NTT/Verio, Telia, Tiscali and AboveNet, as well as over 250 peerings at the London Internet Exchange (LINX) as well as LIPEX and LONAP, we currently pass 68% of our traffic to direct peering partners. This provides routes to all destinations in the quickest and shortest path available and ensures low latency. As standard we offer connectivity at less than 45ms to all European destinations, including Eastern Europe. We also offer a packet loss of less than 0.01% which is one of the lowest in the industry.

Hardware

Our main hosting infrastructure is based exclusively on hardware supplied by Extreme Networks for our network infrastructure and Dell for our servers. Both companies have been chosen carefully due to their proven reliability, support and features offered.