Webworks employs on of the best-connected hosting facilities in the world. The
network was designed specifically for high performance webhosting. Webworks
is one of the few facilities which uses only high-end etherswitches. The data
center has significant network equipment and backbone connections to ensure
that our customers get the fastest access possible to their content.

Your website will be housed in a data centre that has connections to many different
internet backbones including UUNET, MCI, Sprint, CAIS, AGIS, and NETaxxs --
six of the top ten internet backbones. The data centre also operates its own
T-3 to MAE EAST and peers with many of the small Tier One providers. By connecting
to multiple backbones, Webwork's data can be distributed through many sources.
This architectural design also means that we are not dependent upon any single
internet backbone. Thus when problems occur, we are able to reroute traffic
automatically, thereby ensuring the integrity of our network and continued access
for our high-speed webhosting clients. We have taken the term "multi-homing"
to a whole new level.
Furthermore, by routing traffic mainly accross large Internet backbones instead
of sending data through meet points (commonly referred to as NAPs), the data
traffic from our network avoids these centers of high congestion. In effect,
a small-scale NAP has been created by accessing large Internet backbones through
private peering arrangements
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Webwork's data centre runs Border Gate Protocol (BGP4). BGP is used at a provider
with more than one access point to the Internet. It helps create a truly redundant
network. In fact, in an ideal situation, a lease line failure should result
in the BGP routing session to close on the bad leased line and the router on
a working circuit should then begin to accept the additional traffic.

A provider's local area network is not often enough being seen as a point of
latency. The two main sources of latency for a full-time Internet connection
are the user's local area network and the Internet provider's local area network.
Webwork's data centre network is anchored by Cisco 5500 Series etherswitches
and high-end Cisco routers. This top-of-the-line network hardware ensures that
data requests get to their destination and back out of the network as fast as
possible. We use etherswitches instead of hubs because of their speed and their
security capabilities. Whereas only one computer plugged into a hub can talk
at one time, all the machines connected to a switch and talk at the same time.
This means more data can travel through a switch and each server acts as its
own node on the network. Fruthermore, since each server is its own node on the
network, it is difficult for hackers to trace data packets with sensitive information
(i.e. passwords) to a particular server.
Servers in the data centre do not share a single path (T3). Instead, the servers
are connected in to a high-speed ethernetswitch. This switch is connected to
the core router at our facility. From the core router, data is sent back to
the end user accross the fastest available path. Whereas statically routing
traffic over one path creates a single point of failure, this distributed architecture
ensures that users can access data extremely quickly and have multiple paths
both in to and out of the network.
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