Network
100GE: a logical next step for large networks
A guestblog by Pauline Hartsuiker, Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX)
Internet traffic is growing fast. More people are making use of wireless devices, such as smartphones and tablets. Cisco predicts in its Visual Networking Index that Internet traffic from these devices will exceed traffic from wired devices by 2014. Moreover, peak Internet traffic is growing more rapidly than average traffic. Cisco’s index reports that peak traffic will increase nearly fivefold by 2016. These developments put a large pressure on the capacity of IP networks. For organizations already dealing with high amounts of Internet traffic (such as a hosting provider), a 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GE) connection to an Internet exchange is a good solution.
Peering basics: a closer look at Internet Exchanges
In my previous blog post, I gave an overview of public and private peering, discussing the pros and cons of each. Today we’ll take a closer look at the most cost-effective form: public peering.
Peering basics: Public vs. private peering
When we make NOC announcements, we often mention our peering connections. We assume that the readers of those messages technically understand peering. But as they say, assumption is the mother of all mistakes. Sometimes it’s good to start with the basics of things. In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at peering and examine the differences between public and private peering.
LeaseWeb now has a 100GE connection to AMS-IX!
I’m proud to announce that we have established a 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GE) connection to AMS-IX. The new Ethernet standard allows ten times the amount of traffic to be sent over one line compared to the previous standard of 10GE, thereby significantly improving bandwidth utilization. It’s a big technological leap forward: 100GE increases our capacity and reduces the inherent complications and potential issues associated with multiple lines. This makes it easier to scale and support growth. And not only will it offer greater flexibility, we’ll also be able to increase our capacity even faster when needed.
IPv6 Launch Day: LeaseWeb reflects
Organized by the Internet Society, ‘World IPv6 Day’ on 8 June 2011 saw top websites and internet service providers around the world successfully trial the new protocol. This gave participants a chance to investigate known challenges of IPv6 adoption further and for a few new challenges to present themselves. In the year that has followed, network engineers worked hard with companies delivering networking equipment to solve the problems identified in the trial.
IPv4 Efficiency
With IPv4 Exhaustion catching up, LeaseWeb’s network and innovation experts have been busy for the past few years thinking of new ways to support our customers and become smarter with our IPv4 usage. This is of course done hand in hand with preparing, educating and promoting the use of IPv6 on our network.
IPv4 & IPv6 interoperability and the LeaseWeb network
You may have noticed that there has been a lot of noise about IPv6 recently, with the ‘World IPv6 Launch’ taking place on 6 June 2012. However, you might wonder why progress remains so low. Well, the main factor is that IPv6 and IPv4 are two completely separate protocols. IPv6 is not backwards-compatible with IPv4, meanwhile IPv6-only hosts are unable to connect to the traditional IPv4 Internet.
Unfortunately this distinction is a decision that was made over 15 years ago; but it is only now that we are faced with the issues this creates. It means that for a relatively long period of time we will have two separate internet ‘universes’ – one old (IPv4) and one new (IPv6).
TCP, SPDY and LeaseWeb
Looking back on the past decade, the speed of the internet has made major progress, with many of the limitations removed through the years. A 50-100 Mbps connection at home is nothing extraordinary anymore, while hardware became cheaper and cheaper. But even with the fastest PC and the fastest internet connection, there is usually a noticeable delay when loading a website. For some pages it is less than half a second, for others it can even be two seconds or more. As they say: time is money (especially on the internet), so reducing loading times is one of the major goals of the LeaseWeb Networking department.
10 Myths about the use of IPv4 addresses
It’s widely reported that the online platform is evolving rapidly, with social media, mobile and cloud computing acting as the top catalysts. So to us – and many other people – it wasn’t a surprise when in February last year the final batches of IPv4 addresses were allocated, heralding the end of the IPv4 era. Unfortunately the connectivity problems caused by a lack of IPv6 adoption can have a direct impact on the economies of developing countries.
LeaseWeb’s network activities during the holiday season and beyond
Today’s post gives you an insight into LeaseWeb’s networking department and our activities during December. As you know, we’ve had a really busy year providing reliable and high capacity data to and from the internet and across our customers, whilst managing network access and security.