Internet Connectivity For E-Commerce
03 January 2002, 12:29 PM
#1
Scooby Regular
Thread Starter
Join Date: May 1999
Posts: 7,901
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Not sure I'm with you, here 
You put a server at a colo facility. This is your webserver and has a connexion to the internet. 'Behind' it (still in the colo site) you put a firewall and a backend database server. Then you put a router behind that lot and get a leased line or something to run between that router and your company. Customer information only travels over that leased line, not the internet. It's just like a LAN extension (actually if you're in the city you could probably just lease a LES-100 or LES-2 into one of the colo sites in docklands and effectively extend your LAN).
[Edited by carl - 3/1/2002 12:42:14 PM]
You put a server at a colo facility. This is your webserver and has a connexion to the internet. 'Behind' it (still in the colo site) you put a firewall and a backend database server. Then you put a router behind that lot and get a leased line or something to run between that router and your company. Customer information only travels over that leased line, not the internet. It's just like a LAN extension (actually if you're in the city you could probably just lease a LES-100 or LES-2 into one of the colo sites in docklands and effectively extend your LAN).
[Edited by carl - 3/1/2002 12:42:14 PM]
03 January 2002, 02:29 PM
#3
Scooby Regular
Join Date: Jan 2002
Posts: 667
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I do a fair bit with co-lo'd servers, itv-f1.com sits on 8 of them down in the docklands (Exodus in the London Hosting Centre), which does mean an hour to get to them in the event of complete disaster (not happened yet). Then we also have our own company server 20min walk down the road at Globix's facility in new oxford street. Then I also do work on servers for BAR where I've never even seen the server itself or even the datacentre.
I guess it really depends where you are, if you're in london you can probably have things co-located somewhere within easy reach and VPN between your office and the server to securely transfer information.
If you're not and nowhere near a large hosting place it may be better to have them in house since the cost of server failure and dowtiem resultant from the time taken to get to the server and fix it may be longer than any potential downtime from your line going down.
Theres obviously things you can do to reduce the possibility of failure of a remote server, RAID with hot spares, multiple hot plug power supplies and the like, even up to a hot spare server.
Not running anything from Microsoft on it would also be a good choice
The other advantages of a datacentre are things like, near totally uninterruptable clean power with UPS and backup gens. Fire supression (not sprinklers) and the like. (I'm assuming you don't have all that in your office of course)
Oops, editied to add as for backups, just get all the software running and most (all?) datacentres have tape monkeys just to change tapes on peoples servers there (e.g. we have 2 DLT drives on itv-f1.com changed daily)
Hope that helps (if it makes sense)
Back to staring at my alarmingly high traffic graphs!
Andrew
[Edited by Andrewza - 3/1/2002 2:31:55 PM]
I guess it really depends where you are, if you're in london you can probably have things co-located somewhere within easy reach and VPN between your office and the server to securely transfer information.
If you're not and nowhere near a large hosting place it may be better to have them in house since the cost of server failure and dowtiem resultant from the time taken to get to the server and fix it may be longer than any potential downtime from your line going down.
Theres obviously things you can do to reduce the possibility of failure of a remote server, RAID with hot spares, multiple hot plug power supplies and the like, even up to a hot spare server.
Not running anything from Microsoft on it would also be a good choice
The other advantages of a datacentre are things like, near totally uninterruptable clean power with UPS and backup gens. Fire supression (not sprinklers) and the like. (I'm assuming you don't have all that in your office of course)
Oops, editied to add as for backups, just get all the software running and most (all?) datacentres have tape monkeys just to change tapes on peoples servers there (e.g. we have 2 DLT drives on itv-f1.com changed daily)
Hope that helps (if it makes sense)
Back to staring at my alarmingly high traffic graphs!
Andrew
[Edited by Andrewza - 3/1/2002 2:31:55 PM]
03 February 2002, 06:47 AM
#4
Scooby Regular
Several points guys....
1. You can't get 2Mb SDSL....maximum is 1.5Mb and that's very distance related (<3Km). Your exchange also has to be copper not aluminium.
2. You can get a SLA on SDSL from a number of suppliers (Pipemedia Online quote a 99% uptime)
3. Very few exchanges have been SDSL enabled and if yours hasn't (chances it wont be) the exchange will need a DSLAM installed to allow you to have the service.
4. If your going to colo and you need to transfer information to a internal/sensitive system one of the best ways would be to firewall off the Colo server and then use this device to create a VPN into your private network.
5. If your going to use a version of IIS as the public web server at least install something like SecureIIS from E-Eye. Its an application Firewall (http://www.eeye.com) and its only £350.
Cheers
Jeff
[Edited by Jeff Wiltshire - 3/2/2002 6:51:56 AM]
1. You can't get 2Mb SDSL....maximum is 1.5Mb and that's very distance related (<3Km). Your exchange also has to be copper not aluminium.
2. You can get a SLA on SDSL from a number of suppliers (Pipemedia Online quote a 99% uptime)
3. Very few exchanges have been SDSL enabled and if yours hasn't (chances it wont be) the exchange will need a DSLAM installed to allow you to have the service.
4. If your going to colo and you need to transfer information to a internal/sensitive system one of the best ways would be to firewall off the Colo server and then use this device to create a VPN into your private network.
5. If your going to use a version of IIS as the public web server at least install something like SecureIIS from E-Eye. Its an application Firewall (http://www.eeye.com) and its only £350.
Cheers
Jeff
[Edited by Jeff Wiltshire - 3/2/2002 6:51:56 AM]
01 March 2002, 10:59 AM
#5
We currently have a 24/7 managed (by ISP) 256k link to the Internet. That gives us a router/gateway IP and 7 other real IPs for use. We also use their DNS servers.
What do we use the Internet for?
WebPage Hosting (ours)
Email
Browsing/Downloads
SMPP connection for our paging system
Via our website, interacting with our back-office system for accepting bookings from our clients
We run a 24/7/365 operation
What recommendations does the Scoobynet IT community have regarding this?
Is the leased managed line the best way?
Is it the most cost effective?
ADSL?
Anything else?
Keep you guys thinking on a Friday
What do we use the Internet for?
WebPage Hosting (ours)
Browsing/Downloads
SMPP connection for our paging system
Via our website, interacting with our back-office system for accepting bookings from our clients
We run a 24/7/365 operation
What recommendations does the Scoobynet IT community have regarding this?
Is the leased managed line the best way?
Is it the most cost effective?
ADSL?
Anything else?
Keep you guys thinking on a Friday
01 March 2002, 11:12 AM
#6
Scooby Regular
Join Date: Jul 2001
Posts: 21,865
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
The most cost effective would probably be something like a SDSL connection. You can probably get a 2Mb SDSL connection from something similar to what you pay for your 256k leased line.
The SDSL would ahve major advantages over the ASDSL for your useage, simply because you are relying as much on the upload bandwith as much as the download bandwidth.
The SDSL would ahve major advantages over the ASDSL for your useage, simply because you are relying as much on the upload bandwith as much as the download bandwidth.
01 March 2002, 11:15 AM
#7
Scooby Regular
Thread Starter
Join Date: May 1999
Posts: 7,901
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Not sure it's a good plan to do your web page hosting on an SDSL line. Actually you shouldn't host it on the leased line either -- conventional wisdom is you should take the servers to the bandwidth, not bring the bandwidth to the servers. Would you not be better off with some remotely managed servers in a colocation facility (Telehouse, Telecity, Redbus, etc.) and a 'thin pipe' (e.g. ADSL, SDSL) back to the office for management and getting traffic like e-mail out of your office?
You can also now outsource your Exchange messaging, see http://www.ignite.com/uk/products/msex2000/
[Edited by carl - 3/1/2002 11:18:49 AM]
You can also now outsource your Exchange messaging, see http://www.ignite.com/uk/products/msex2000/
[Edited by carl - 3/1/2002 11:18:49 AM]
Trending Topics
01 March 2002, 11:22 AM
#8
Scooby Regular
Join Date: Jul 2001
Posts: 21,865
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Carl,
We used to host our website on our leased line (2Meg) and we recently moved it to a hosting company. Since that point our website has had more downtime than ever before including another 2 hours yesterday! If you are going to host the website externally then make sure the provider has some real good uptime stats.
Also Puff needs to connect to their systems internally, so at the end of the day its going to come back on their bandwidth anyway.
Ian
We used to host our website on our leased line (2Meg) and we recently moved it to a hosting company. Since that point our website has had more downtime than ever before including another 2 hours yesterday! If you are going to host the website externally then make sure the provider has some real good uptime stats.
Also Puff needs to connect to their systems internally, so at the end of the day its going to come back on their bandwidth anyway.
Ian
01 March 2002, 11:28 AM
#9
Scooby Regular
Thread Starter
Join Date: May 1999
Posts: 7,901
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Yes, but you're effectively caching the static content at the colo site, thus reducing the bandwidth requirement on the link back to the office to only the dynamic stuff. You could even pre-process a lot of the dynamic stuff on the colo server.
01 March 2002, 11:46 AM
#10
Err...
For our main & secondary online booking systems (we have 3!), a request is submitted by the client on a form. That sends the request to our webserver running an .exe on it. This exe then either interogates a local (webserver) database or submits a request to a gateway app. The gateway app then submits the request to either our old DOS Foxpro system or our new SQL windows one.
Not sure I would be entirely, if at all, happy to have requests between the webserver and the gateway going across the internet!
For our main & secondary online booking systems (we have 3!), a request is submitted by the client on a form. That sends the request to our webserver running an .exe on it. This exe then either interogates a local (webserver) database or submits a request to a gateway app. The gateway app then submits the request to either our old DOS Foxpro system or our new SQL windows one.
Not sure I would be entirely, if at all, happy to have requests between the webserver and the gateway going across the internet!
01 March 2002, 12:29 PM
#12
Scooby Regular
Join Date: Nov 2001
Posts: 2,576
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Puff, never go for any xDsl lines. No one, well I have found none yet, that gives a SLA.... 
Also with colo, you can't always get to the server, you may need to drive miles etc... We are in the process of moving ours in house onto our leased line. With the server being in house we can apply those many MS patches, backup it up, swap out the hardware if it fails etc....
H
Also with colo, you can't always get to the server, you may need to drive miles etc... We are in the process of moving ours in house onto our leased line. With the server being in house we can apply those many MS patches, backup it up, swap out the hardware if it fails etc....
H
01 March 2002, 08:32 PM
#14
Moderator
Join Date: Dec 1998
Location: Staffs
Posts: 23,573
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
A few thoughts (which will probably touch / cross on some other replies)
No one is offering SLAs on xDSL type services AFAIK. Very good VFM but if you have a business critical app running over your 'Net connection, it's not for you IMO.
We used to host a couple of public web / email servers on a leased line in our offices. Dragging bandwidth out into the sticks is wallet wilting territory. We've since relocated them to other facilities, one of them going into Telehouse which has far more bandwidth than we could ever afford.
Our server does has a tape drive in it but it's not used. We backup files to a NAS device to cover against data corruption / system failure. No off site backup though? Well, if our servers get destroyed that means Telehouse is gone and that's the end of the Internet in the UK. Fair enough, there are backup routes etc but IMHO they won't cope with the loss of the LINX etc. If Telehouse is gone, there’s no point in having a copy of your data to restore elsewhere as there won’t be anyway for the dial-up masses to see it.
However, if a hard discs pops, how quickly can you get access to the co-lo centre you are in? How many people have to authorise your access request?
No one is offering SLAs on xDSL type services AFAIK. Very good VFM but if you have a business critical app running over your 'Net connection, it's not for you IMO.
We used to host a couple of public web / email servers on a leased line in our offices. Dragging bandwidth out into the sticks is wallet wilting territory. We've since relocated them to other facilities, one of them going into Telehouse which has far more bandwidth than we could ever afford.
Our server does has a tape drive in it but it's not used. We backup files to a NAS device to cover against data corruption / system failure. No off site backup though? Well, if our servers get destroyed that means Telehouse is gone and that's the end of the Internet in the UK. Fair enough, there are backup routes etc but IMHO they won't cope with the loss of the LINX etc. If Telehouse is gone, there’s no point in having a copy of your data to restore elsewhere as there won’t be anyway for the dial-up masses to see it.
However, if a hard discs pops, how quickly can you get access to the co-lo centre you are in? How many people have to authorise your access request?
01 March 2002, 10:30 PM
#15
Scooby Regular
Thread Starter
Join Date: May 1999
Posts: 7,901
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
LINX also have presence in Redbus (or is it Telecity -- one of the ones in Harbour Exchange anyway) and a number of other sites. And, of course, there's ManIX, ScotIX, etc.
01 March 2002, 10:42 PM
#16
Moderator
Join Date: Dec 1998
Location: Staffs
Posts: 23,573
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Very true, but look how badly things crawled along last time one of the Foundry (IIRC) switches went **** up in Telehouse. The Internet pratically stopped for a day.
02 March 2002, 08:54 AM
#17
Scooby Regular
Join Date: Mar 1999
Location: Essex
Posts: 1,681
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I'm told that 98% of UK traffic goes through the LINX. It certainly handles a few "hits" :-)
As Chris says, if telehouse gets nuked its the ultimate in disasters. Military/Government/Financial and more importantly - all out stuff is in there. Building is meant to be bomb proof but I don't think they did a trial test
I would never host anything worthwhile on a cheapo ADSL or equivalent line. its ok when its working, but faults are not a priority !
As Chris says, if telehouse gets nuked its the ultimate in disasters. Military/Government/Financial and more importantly - all out stuff
is in there. Building is meant to be bomb proof but I don't think they did a trial test I would never host anything worthwhile on a cheapo ADSL or equivalent line. its ok when its working, but faults are not a priority !
Thread
Thread Starter
Forum
Replies
Last Post
Mattybr5@MB Developments
Full Cars Breaking For Spares
12
18 November 2015 07:03 AM