Adweb Ltd (www.adweb.co.uk) is a London based specialist hosting provider focussed on the printed media industry. In particular Adweb run the Adfast service, an Internet based artwork delivery service for the entire British regional press, a market estimated to be worth billions of pounds every year. Given the scale of industry and timeliness of deadlines the Adweb content delivery platform has to be of very high reliability.
As a result of the challenges of maintaining their network and in particular, the trials and tribulations of dealing with upstream network providers, Adweb approached Crosspoint to provide an outsourced solution of their delivery network as well as the establishment of a physically diverse backup data centre facility to ensure best practice and continuity of service in the event of problems with the primary facility, with the two sites needing to be linked by dedicated network to ensure data replication across the two sites.
Crosspoint Solution – Phase 1 – Network Platform
Our response was to remove Adweb’s reliance on a single upstream Internet provider by moving their data centre Internet connection onto dedicated and redundant BGP routers with multiple incoming IP transit feeds and scope to add further in due course. As their data volumes grow additional partial transit providers can be added, so taking advantage of the cost effectiveness this type of supplier can provide.
The Key Steps in delivering this solution were as follows:
Install Dell SC1435s running the Quagga BGP router application
Bring in additional transit feeds
keep existing provider
proposed and select new transit providers
Each of the new routers installed with one transit feed
Setup
Order, configure and install new routers in Adweb racks in Telehouse East
Arrange new IP addresses and ranges, deal with all administration
Order new IP connections and arrange installation
Renegotiate existing contract with current IP supplier
Commission the new connections, test, confirm readiness
Work with Adweb during transition onto new IP address ranges
Setup monitoring and alert systems (inc SMS)
Ongoing Support
CCH to have full ongoing responsibility for the new network including monitoring and support. To proactively react to faults, manage traffic accordingly, 24x7x365.
Crosspoint Solution – Phase 2 – Backup Data Centre Solution
With the new network safely installed and running Crosspoint were then able to move on to the second phase of the project in establishing the redundant data centre and dedicated Ethernet link between the two sites.
Our Bracknell based facility is ideally suited for such requirements, being some 30 miles from central London it offers both geographic and vitally network diversity from any Docklands based facility. We were arranged the installation, testing and handover of a dedicated Ethernet link between the two locations as well as the rack in the Bracknell site.
Once the colocation space and circuits were ready Adweb were able to ship the equipment to us for installation, so saving them the trip out of London to do so. The kit list included servers, RAID arrays, switches and remote reboot strips all of which was installed to their configuration and handed over.
Conclusion
Adweb now have:
much improved network redundancy
completely outsourced the hassle of maintaining the network as Crosspoint deal with all network issues
for minimal commercial cost as Crosspoint were able to renegotiate improved terms with the existing provider and also sourced competitive new secondary suppliers
can demonstrate to their own customers both improved reliability and that they are conforming to best business practice, an important factor in maintaining the confidence and business of some of the largest publishing groups in the country
John Ellard, MD of Adweb said:
“We are delighted with quality, reliability and commercial aspects of the Crosspoint solution.”
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