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On Thu, 28 Jan 2010, Rob Beard wrote:
Quoting Paul Sutton <zleap@xxxxxxxxx>:-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 http://www.thisiswesternmorningnews.co.uk/business/Vision-bunker-data-centre/article-1592692-detail/article.html Saw this on the bbc news text thing earlier, google came up with the following report from western morning news. PaulWell I guess it'll be good if it happens, it will probably create a few jobs... BUT... is it going to be competitive compared to other data centres across the UK?I wonder too how easy it is top tap into the transatlantic cable?
It's utterly trivial, so I don't know why the fuss is about it. All you do is run a cable to London or Manchester where the end-points are and plug into them...
And why do people actually want stuff from the US? Most content we get now will be from UK based servers - keep it that way. The current ping time for me to www.google.com is 20ms - that's not in the US (It's probably mainland europe, but definately not the US!)
The article seems to suggest they'll just patch into it, surely it's not that simple is it?
Not at all, and it really annoys me when people whinge and witter on about all the fibre going up the A30/A38....
The Atlantic cables are ownd by large consortiums, who may also own the infrastructure taking the landing points to London (And Manchester) The reality is that (for a price), it's actually very easy to get Gb to London and Manchester from almost anywhere in the country, and you can get 10Gb in lengths of (I think) 80Km, so as long as you can find staging points (Newton Abbot, Exeter, Bristol, etc.) then it's also do-able. 40Gb will be here soon too once the per-port switch price drops.
If I wanted fibre from my home to London, it would go to my local BT exchange, then to Newton Abbot, (possibly via Ashburton), then it would join the fibre going up the A38 - (Hurrah, we've 'tapped in' to the A38 fibre), then it would come out at Bristol then to London)
You just need to pay for it all.The people I used 8 years back (Western Power) had Gb all over the South West.. They ran it initially over the earth cable on pylons and latterly under-slung and underground. They weren't even clever about splitting it up at the time - they were just running 10 and 100Mb VLANs over it... I had 4 x 10Mb lines from Sowton to different bits of Devon & Cornwall. Their network extends from lands end to south wales and it wouldn't surprise me if it was down to London now. (But you can pick up fibernet in Bristol anyway - although you might need a BT link to bridge them...)
Combine that with another carrier, lets say BT and there is a good chance you may get data path redundancy, but make sure the other carrier doesn't actually buy wholesale from one carrier you're using - Kingston uses Western Power fibre for example (or used to)
It really irritates me when people just want to "tap into the fibre". It usually means they haven't a clue about how the Internet actually works. They might as well shine a torch down it for all the good it will do.
Also, their goal of wiring up every business and home to fibre, um... that's going to be expensive too I dare say. If they can pull it off then great, but I wouldn't hold my breath, unless it's going to be extremely expensive like existing fibre connections.
Very expensive. Unless you already have ducting in-place like e.g. BT ... Or use the sewers...
I know I may sound a bit cynical about all this, but I've heard people talk about DC's in the SW, tapping into the fibre for a long time, and it's not happened - I'm sure it can happen - given the money, but ... In my mind, a data centre is just that - a carrier neutral location with redundant power and AC, where carriers can then establish a base in and connect to their own networks, and then allow other customers to host inside too, who then have the choice of which carrier to choose from. I do not believe that a data centre ought to provide Internet too, or if it does that they then lock you into it, rather than one(s) of your own choice.
Get a big building, give it good power and AC, invite BT, C&W, Western Power, Telewest/NTL, Fibrenet, Level3, and all the other big carriers in at a very good rate, and when they've laid their infrastructure, then it'll be ready for punters to come in and choose the ISP of their choice.
Or; Get a big building, with good power & AC, run your own fibre to BT, TW/NTL, Level3, etc. get an AS number, your own IP address pool, BGP peer with all those carriers and then offer hosting with internet access... As an added bonus, run a private Gb line (diversely routed out of the DC, of-course) to LINX, LoNAP and MaNAP too... But if you've done that you might as well buy bandwidth that way too..
Gordon -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html