The type of connectivity used can range from a single channel ISDN line to multiple DS-3
connections. Connectivity is just as important as servers used. Without enough bandwidth
to serve all clients, all other features are useless and therefore unimportant. If
download time of your website is an important consideration (it should be!), then
connectivity of the hosting provider is one of the most important considerations. In
summary, you should never host your website on any connection less than a full T-1 line
without redundancy.
Triple redundant DS-3's!
Site0 utilizes 3 separate DS-3 connections
to diverse Internet carriers. Below are our upstream providers and their respective rating
according to BoardWatch Magazine.*
Provider
Ranking
Primary Provider:
UUNet (MCI/WorldCom)
#1
Secondary Provider:
Savvis Communications
#4
Tertiary Provider:
Frontier GlobalCenter
#23
* Data collected independently by Boardwatch Magazine's
Directory of Internet Service Providers, Volume III, Number 2 (Winter 1998 - Spring 1999),
Page 26-29. Copyright MecklerMedia Corporation.
Monster Bandwidth!
Site0 has the capacity to use up to 695
Megabytes of data, well over the bandwidth needed to serve Yahoo!'s 12 million plus
visitors every day, or Microsoft's website. We currently have an OC-12 and an OC-3 located
right in our Network Operations Center. While we have this much bandwidth available, we
are not using anywhere near this bandwidth. Our policy is for our 95th percentile of
bandwidth consumption to never exceed 70% utilization. When this happens, we upgrade our
bandwidth.
Redundancy. Redundancy. Redundancy.
Redundancy in upstream connections is very important.
We have fiber coming into our facilities from 3 different points of entry. Equally
important, if any one or even two points are cut, the other connection has the current
capacity to transfer all data down the remaining single path.
