Yes, You Can Afford a Content Delivery Network

The public Internet is a marvelous system for communications. Businesses can connect with consumers and other businesses worldwide at a modest cost. It is the Internet that has created millions of business opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t exit. Unfortunately, like any other successful environment, the Internet has gotten crowded. So much so that you website may have slowed to a crawl. Are you permanently stuck in this traffic jam?

The short answer is no. There is not much you can do about the flow of data through the Internet except to get the best last mile connection possible and find a clever way around the congestion. Major content providers discovered years ago that if you can’t get through the Internet in a timely fashion, the best you can do is go around it.

But, doesn’t circumvention get you speed at the cost of losing connectivity with customers? Not if you do it right. The popular solution is called a content delivery network or CDN. This network doesn’t connect directly with the end user. Instead, it bypasses much of the Internet and delivers content as closely as possible to the service providers. You still have potential issues of congestion within the provider’s networks. Even so, the speed up in performance is dramatic.

Who uses content delivery networks? Big content producers mostly. That includes companies delivering streaming and downloadable video and audio feeds and large software packages. CDNs are a big solution for big operations. So that leaves the small and medium e-commerce companies out of luck, right?

Not any more. Now there is a CDN solution anyone can afford. It’s called MaxCDN . Packages start at under $40 a year. You see that correctly. It’s $40 a year, not a month. That’s cheaper than a lot of backup solutions used by small businesses and consumers. What do you get for your money? Let’s take a look.

MaxCDN puts your content as close to the user as possible. They do that by running a network of content servers located around the world. Right now, when someone clicks on a link within your website, your server downloads the files necessary to reproduce the page through the Internet across whatever distance is between you and the user. Time delays are introduced along the way from routers and switches in the network and the speed of transmission through optical fiber. Users who are physically close to your server get faster loads than users who are thousands of miles away.

MaxCDN gets around these delays by having multiple servers loaded with copies of your large static files, such as images, JavaScript files and style sheets. The system is smart enough to know where the user is located and to serve the file copy closest to the user. This minimizes the latency between server and user to significantly speed up load times. You can speed up your website by seconds, even make it load 2 or 3 times faster than it does now. This results in happier, better conversions and increased revenue for you.

MaxCDN gives you an easy to use control panel to manage your account with performance reports to show just how much the service is helping. You also get plugins and custom setup to make setup fast and easy.

Are you frustrated that your users are going away because they haven’t got the patience to wait for your site to load? An easy solution my be at hand. Check out the features and benefits of MaxCDN now and see if it might be of immediate benefit to your organization.

Latest Evidence Of An Ethernet Juggernaut

There’s an overwhelming force building. If it hasn’t gotten to you yet, it will soon. This force looks to redefine the telecommunications industry in a way that will fundamentally alter our communications networks from a telegraphy and telephony orientation to a digital packet orientation. After nearly a couple centuries of evolution, we’re now looking at a revolution that’s arisen in a couple of decades. That revolution is Ethernet and it’s gaining speed while we watch.

The acceleration of Ethernet services into traditional metropolitan and long distance telecom networks points out that the digital network, particularly the local area network, has become the center of communications activity. Worldwide traffic was primarily telephone calls until recently. Actual voice conversations are now the small part of the traffic. Data file transfers and video are now the big network activities. In fact, video has taken over the Internet and is driving the deployment of more and faster content delivery networks (CDN) to offload high definition video programming from the Internet.

Think about how you communicate. The office desk phone used to be the primary tool for business communications. “Data” was on paper and the interoffice mail was the network that moved it around. Today, you are as likely to use email, text messages and social media as you are to pick the phone and dial somebody. Data is now on hard drives and electronic data networks move it around. Even cell phones are still called “phones” out of tradition. Texting, Tweeting, emailing and posting are used as much or more than the voice side of the system. Wireless voice channels have been established technology for years. All the scrambling and innovation is focused on building more and faster data channels.

The switchover of the worldwide electronic communications network from telegraphy to telephony to computer data networking has taken place in steps with one methodology gradually yielding to another. Most long distance computer links use trunk lines originally designed to transport telephone calls digitally. The process of using analog phone lines to carry digital signals, called “dial-up,” ran out of capacity quickly at less than 100 Kbps. Digital telephone trunks, known as T1 lines, DS3, and SONET fiber optic services, start at 1.5 Mbps on the low end and go up to 100 Gbps on the very high end.

This system works, but the translation of loading data packets into telephone channels and then back again costs in efficiency and a limitation of network services. Since nearly every LAN is now running Ethernet, the most sensible change is to re-work the metro and long haul networks to also use Ethernet. You can then optimize for one protocol from end to end.

One technology shift that has enabled long distance or “Carrier” Ethernet is the industry shift from the original collision domains to switched Ethernet. This change doubled the speed of the links, since nodes can transmit and receive at the same time. More importantly, there is no need to constrain the length of the network to ensure detection of colliding packets. Nearly all LANs now use switches in place of hubs as a matter of course. This adds the possibility of running very long connections between switches, say 1,000 miles or more, and still create networks that behave like one large LAN.

Some of the latest announcements in this field are that a major carrier, Windstream, is now offering a product called Carrier Switched Ethernet. This is a wholesale bandwidth service that allows other carriers access to Windstream’s 980 network exchanges. Using E-NNI or Ethernet Network to Network Interfaces greatly expands the service footprint of any network to include the networks of other service providers. Another announcement is that MegaPath, a major North American network service provider, has been building out its Ethernet over Copper (EoC) capability so that it is now the largest EoC provider in the country with 19 major markets serving millions of businesses at speeds up to 45 Mbps. That’s significant because it means you can now get last mile Ethernet connections over twisted pair copper lines, replacing bonded T1 lines and DS3 bandwidth.

The triple threat of Ethernet over Copper, Ethernet over Fiber and Ethernet Network to Network Interfaces creates the opportunity to go “all Ethernet” in connecting multiple business location and dedicated access to the Internet. There are big cost savings available with this new technology, as well as multi-point mesh network services that were hard to implement previously. Could your company benefit from these Ethernet services? Check Carrier Ethernet pricing, availability and features and compare with what you are using now.

Your Own Private Information Superhighway

We’re all familiar with the metaphor of the Internet as the Information Superhighway. It’s an apt description. Like a national road system, the Internet will take you anywhere. It’s even better than the Interstate highway system. The Internet goes worldwide with no worries about how you get across oceans and mountains. You can depart from any destination and reach any other destination in a reasonably efficient way.

Just like any superhighway, the Internet has it snags. First are traffic jams. You know how you’re cruising along on a interstate road trip and, all of a sudden, stop lights appear on the cars ahead. Traffic slows to a crawl for inexplicable reasons. Eventually you discover that the cause was an accident blocking the roadway or construction you didn’t know about. At certain times, the carrying capacity of arterial roads branching out from big cities is exceeded and traffic is bumper to bumper for miles and perhaps an hour or more.

Not much is different on the Internet. Traffic may zip along unimpeded on the fiber backbones, but slows to a crawl at choke points. Last mile access networks are particularly limited. Shared bandwidth means everybody pokes along when too many people want too many packets at the same time. The limited capacity of wireless broadband networks often stretches the definition of “broadband.”

Another “feature” of the Internet is that there are no fast and slow lanes. All the lanes treat all traffic equally. That’s great for big data files, the semi-trucks of the Internet, or video downloads, the equivalent of passenger cars. There are millions of them and they pretty much dominate the road. How about the ambulance that has to get to the hospital without interference? Emergency traffic has preference on the physical highway. On the information highway, it gets in line with everything else. You might say that our real superhighways have some class of service (CoS) controls. None of that is available on the Internet. If you have sensitive traffic, like real time voice or video that needs preference, it won’t get preferential treatment and will wind up as damaged goods.

Are there the equivalent of commuter lanes on the Internet? Nope. All lanes are the same. What some high volume content producers do is augment the capacity of the Internet with private roads that parallel the Internet and connect to it near the off ramps to their customers. These private carriers are called content delivery networks (CDNs). Without them, the internet would be even more swamped than it already is and video streaming would be impacted to the point where it just wouldn’t be worthwhile.

This is one example of a private information superhighway. Content delivery networks pick up traffic at your location and deliver it to distributors such as satellite and cable companies, who then merge it onto their broadband networks along with other Internet traffic. You have to pay for this convenience, but it can be well worth it to ensure that your high value content streams and downloads smoothly.

Another example of a private information superhighway connects only paying customers and doesn’t connect to the Internet at all. This is the MPLS network. It is a B2B or business to business connection service that has no general consumer access. Who wants such a system if you can’t reach the general public? Companies that want to connect their multiple business locations to exchange sensitive proprietary data and in-house telephone traffic want exactly this type of arrangement. They also have separate access connections to the Internet to interact with customers through websites, e-mail, social media and the like.

Compared to the vagaries of the Internet, MPLS networks run like a dream. They are engineered to have enough bandwidth to meet all commitments at all times. Traffic is prioritized so that VoIP telephone and video conferencing get the priority they need to run smoothly. Latency, jitter and packet loss are minimized by design. Security is made much easier because of the proprietary nature of the network technology and lack of public access.

Are you finding that you really need a private network for your internal business operations to complement the public network that connects you to your customers? If so, learn more about MPLS and Content Delivery Networks to optimize your business communications.



Note: Photo of traffic jam courtesy of Tage Olsin on Wikimedia Commons.

Secure Hosting In The Cloud For The US and Europe

You’ve been investigating the benefits of cloud computing hosting, but have concerns about the cost and security of cloud hosting solutions. Let’s take a look at what a secure cloud hosting provider has to offer for clients in the United States and Europe.

FireHost has enterprise-class secure data centers in Phoenix, Arizona, Dallas, Texas, London, England and Amsterdam, Netherlands. They are interconnected by a secure private network and offer access through multiple Content Delivery Network (CDN) Points of Presence (POPs) in major cities in the US, Europe and Asia. This offers special benefits to companies doing business globally who need the high performance of cloud hosted solutions.

You might think that this level of sophistication would price secure cloud hosting out of the reach of smaller and medium size companies. That’s not the case at all. One big advantage of cloud hosting is that it is enormously scalable from a minimal server configuration right on up to as much horsepower as you can use. At all times, you have the ability to rapidly scale up and down to meet rapidly changing business needs. You can even set the system up to automatically scale up your resources when you are close to running out of capacity.

If you processes credit cards or are involved in the healthcare industry, you are subject to special regulation. Not every hosting company is set up to meet the requirements of PCI DSS 2.0 or HIPPA. This one is. To support PCI DSS, they have an auditor friendly infrastructure, managed SSL service, application and database server isolation, two-factor authentication, managed antivirus protection and continuous vulnerability monitoring. These same features plus business association agreement friendly solutions makes it easy for you to meet HIPPA requirements for protecting people’s healthcare information.

Enterprise security is included with all size cloud hosting plans. It is VMware based. Hardware firewalls lock down all unnecessary ports with only ports 80 & 443 open for Web servers. You have to option to open other ports at your own risk. Your cloud server is protected by VPN with SSL encryption. The VPN client is compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. A web application firewall actively protects websites and applications from sophisticated hacker attacks such as SQL injection, session hijacking, cross site scripting, distributed denial of service, zero day web worms, directory traversal, cross-site request forgery, brute force login and more. Suspicious activity is automatically blocked.

Managed support is available 24x7x365. The Service Level Agreement (SLA) offers 100% network uptime, 100% infrastructure uptime and 1 hour hardware replacement. Their SAS70 Type II compliant certified data centers feature backup UPS power with backup generators to backup the UPS. Multiple Internet providers are employed to ensure continuous network connectivity. There are no support charges or hidden fees for fully managed support services. FireHost manages the physical environment, network, operating systems, databases and web servers. You manage your Web applications and custom applications. Managed 14 day backup is included.

You are probably wondering how affordable this level of secure hosting really is. Would you be surprised to learn that you can get a cloud server starting at $200 per month with no setup fees and no contract? Amazing but true. Scale up to a maximum of 84 GB memory, 8 cores and unlimited disk space as you need it. 1 TB of bandwidth is included. You can buy more if you need it for extremely large applications.

You can easily pay more for a non-cloud server and have none of the benefits included with secure cloud hosting. Plus, HIPPA and PCI compliant secure hosting is available at reasonable prices if you need them. Can you really afford to run your own data center or use standard hosting services anymore? Get secure Web servers with managed hosting starting at $200/mo. now. Check out the HIPPA and PCI packages as needed.

AT&T Sees the Video Tsunami Coming

It's been predicted that video is going to sop up every Mbps of bandwidth available, and soon. Even today, broadband providers are repositioning themselves to say that unlimited bandwidth usage doesn't really mean you get to pound your access connection every second of the day. At least for consumers. Today unlimited bandwidth has monthly bandwidth caps because the provider's networks really aren't unlimited. In fact, they're strained.

One company that has recognized this and taken steps to add capacity is AT&T. But not just general capacity to the Internet. What AT&T has done is to add 400 Gbps of capacity last year to its CDN or Content Delivery Network.

So what's a CDN? It's a private parallel network to the Internet. You know that the Internet is the ubiquitous high bandwidth IP network that connects virtually the entire world in one big mesh network. If we were using the Internet for it's original purpose of research, educational and government email and file transfers, any bandwidth limitations might be transparent. But even as the Internet has been expanded to accommodate commercialization and general access, high bandwidth applications such as video have advanced even faster. Content and Internet service providers alike have recognized that it makes sense to move video applications to alternate networks before increasing bandwidth congestion brings everything to a crawl.

Enter the Content Delivery Network. These are privately run networks that connect (mostly) video content providers to drop-off points as close to the end user as possible. The content bypasses most of the international Internet to feed local nodes of the service provider. That content is then merged with Internet traffic and sent to your computer via DSL or Cable broadband. As far as you're concerned, it's all coming from the Internet.

Who are these CDN's. Big names include Akami Technologies, Limelight Networks, Level 3 Communications, and, now, AT&T. With its massive installed network base, AT&T has a leg up in that it also provides last mile solutions as well as Internet transport and private line networks.

The model of a Content Delivery Network is also applicable to businesses. If you need connectivity among multiple business locations, the service you want is MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching. This is a private network arrangement that has the ability to guarantee availability and performance, unlike the "best effort" service you can expect via the Internet. You can also get private line point to point connections when there are only two locations involved.

Do You Need a Content Delivery Network?

The infrastructure to deliver content via the Internet has a way of growing geometrically. There was a time when a single PC and a few incoming telephone lines with modems were all you needed to create, maintain and operate an online Web service. Now you're wondering how you're going to afford the capital equipment, bandwidth and staff to deliver high definition video feeds coast-to-coast. Perhaps the most reasonable solution is to turn the job over to a content delivery network.

The content delivery network or CDN is a specialized service that's roughly analogous to Web hosting services. With hosting, you have the option to create and maintain your own Web server and enough bandwidth to accommodate the incoming traffic. Or you can buy that service. If you decide to outsource to a Web hosting company, all you need is enough Internet bandwidth to upload your content updates. The host takes care of server maintenance, environmental control, backup power quality and high speed connections to the Internet.

The reason to go with a content delivery network is the same as electing to use a hosting service. In many cases its easier, less expensive and faster to scale up than trying to do it yourself. The CDN builds and manages its own private network to store and distribute content over a large geographical area to many simultaneous users. They ensure that there is enough bandwidth to handle the demands of your application, be it software packages, streaming audio, or high definition video. In some cases, they have special arrangements with Internet Service Providers to directly peer with them. Content can move from the CDN into the ISP network, avoiding the public Internet completely.

There are different architectures that content delivery networks can employ. One methodology is to cache multiple copies of the same content on servers around the country. When you request a download, the network figures out which cached copy is closest to your location and available. Others distribute content throughout their own networks and coordinate efficient delivery. Load balancing among distributed servers helps to improve network reliability by being able to bypass a failed server and provide the content from an alternative location.

By the way, how are you set for access bandwidth? If your bandwidth demands now exceed your line capacity, find better deals on WAN bandwidth now.