Philosophy: Twice as much bandwidth available as used by hosting clients
Leaseweb, the largest business hosting provider in the Netherlands, has expanded its already sizeable hosting network from 160 Gigabits per second (Gbps) to 210 Gbps. The extension is necessary to continue realising the Leaseweb philosophy: always have twice as much capacity available as the bandwidth used by clients with their internet sites.
Concretely, the expansion means that Leaseweb has acquired new port capacity from a number of telecom carriers (transit traffic) and an internet exchange (peering). Leaseweb has purchased 10 Gigabits of additional port capacity from Tata Telecommunications, formerly Teleglobe, and Global Crossing. TeliaSonera is delivering an additional 20 Gigabits of port capacity in Leaseweb’s hosting network. Furthermore, to enable additional peering capability, the company has bought 10 Gigabits of new port capacity from the London Internet Exchange (LINX).
50 Gbps extra!
In all, 50 Gbps of capacity has been added to the hosting network. “Clearly our hosting network is growing extremely fast,” says Bastiaan Spandaw, Leaseweb’s Network Architect. “By way of example, we used just 40 Gigabits per second of bandwidth in 2006. It is not really surprising that the hosting network is growing so fast. If you have a lot of hosting capacity you attract big clients’ companies that consume a lot of bandwidth. These clients then make the hosting network grow even faster.”
Dedicated hosting
Leaseweb’s clients now consume a total of 95 Gbps of bandwidth with their dedicated hosting and collocation hosting solutions, but the company will reach the 100 Gbps mark in a few weeks. “That’s why we are already expanding now,” explains Spandaw. “We do not want to run the risk of trouble in buying port capacity, because this would mean that we would be unable to expand the hosting network in time. We promised our clients that we will always have twice as much hosting capacity as they consume in bandwidth, and we want to continue making good on our promise. Clients must be able to count on it, because with this philosophy, we offered them an extremely scaleable hosting solution.”
Scalable dedicated hosting
“Scalability in our hosting network is extremely important to a number of Leaseweb clients,” states Ruud Mous, Leaseweb’s Sales Director. “We have several clients that distribute audio and video directly via our hosting network. Not only do they consume a lot of bandwidth, but they also expect us to be able to add bandwidth for them at any time of the day or night. What they need is a scalable dedicated hosting solution. Our hosting network philosophy makes this possible.”
Streaming hosting
Thanks to Leaseweb’s large hosting network capacity and its network philosophy, streaming hosting clients and wholesale users like 123Video (www.123video.nl) and the Danish company Octoshape (www.octoshape.com) have already turned to the company for their streaming hosting requirements. 123Video is the Dutch version of YouTube. Octoshape offers streaming for internet broadcasts of for example pop concerts, television programmes and other events. WIGE Media has also found an important streaming hosting partner in Leaseweb. WIGE Media (www.wige.de) is responsible, among other things, for the television productions of the Bundes Liga, DTM (German Touring Car Races), and Formula 1 in Germany.