In Q2 and Q3 this year we focused on upgrades to the System or Server platforms of Network Presence, which has been very successful and included more rack-space in the Equinix Data Centre in Mascot, Sydney, that has laid the foundations for works underway to upgrade our Network Connectivity, in terms of capacity and capabilities now in Q4 2013.
In October already we’ve already finished activating and integrating a second fibre-based uplink to our primary Internet supplier and started upgrading that 2nd link’s router to ensure it’s able to participate in our in-house SDN system that manages our network. Further, this 2nd fibre uplink uses a different physical path from the Equinix Data Centre to the Internet, using separate metropolitan Sydney fibre paths to get to different upstream routers and networks in Sydney for Internet connectivity. This provides for some ‘deep’ redundancy of our network access out of Equinix itself.
We’ve also started commissioning a 4th uplink and Cisco router into our Sydney network, which provides better connectivity for Colocation customers, as well as further redundancy for our main Sydney POP.
Some of these upgrades require physical work at the Data Centre (new cabling (mostly moving from copper to fibre), more RAM and interfaces for routers, etc) and the first of these works is scheduled for late on the evening of Tuesday, October 22nd and early in the morning of Wednesday, October 23rd and we’ll post a Scheduled Works Notice on this today.
We’ve been able to measure improvements in our network performance over the last week or so since this new capacity and routers came online and I’ll post more about this on-going network infrastructure upgrade project soon.
FYI and regards,
Richard.