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.