NeoSpire utilizes Internap for Internet access to provide our customers with the fastest most reliable connectivity available. Utilizing Internap's proprietary intelligent routing technology, NeoSpire is able to provide its customers with the fastest download speeds for our customers web sites and applications.
Internap Network Services Corporation has created a platform to intelligently route data over the Internet's major backbones from a single connection to one of their Service Points. They achieve this by connecting directly to each of the major backbones, thereby avoiding the congested traffic exchange process, while using their intelligent routing technology to find the most direct path across the public infrastructure.
Internap provides Internet connectivity that routes data more efficiently and reliably over the Internet. They analyze the traffic situation on every major Internet backbone, then select the path of least resistance for immediate delivery of mission-critical information and fluid communication. Internap has developed the industry's first routing and route management technology, specifically designed to optimally deliver data to and from destinations across the Internet. They utilize this intelligent routing technology to achieve superior performance versus other network providers.
Internap solves Internet congestion by setting up Private Network Access Point (P-NAP® ) facilities -- a combination of a unique network infrastructure and intelligent routing technology. Their network infrastructure provides direct access to each of the major Internet backbones, minimizing the need to switch from one backbone to another. Their routing technology predetermines the most efficient path between the data sender and receiver in order to route the data accordingly. NeoSpire customers are largely unaffected by any major Internet backbone outages because of the built-in redundancy and fault tolerance of their network infrastructure. Internap's customers bypass congestion points on the Internet which results in avoiding packet loss, latency and other difficulties that can plague conventional Internet connectivity. The result is optimal data transmission -- any time of day.
There are fundamental scaling flaws in the design of the Internet that can typically cause latency and data packet loss at the interconnection points between backbone providers. These scaling flaws include
- Routing inefficiencies.
- Lack of adequate network technology.
- Distributed management of public network access points (NAPs).
- Lack of economic settlement between network providers (peering is free).
These flaws contribute to unavoidable congestion and poor Internet performance.
As Internet usage grew, telecommunications companies set up their own networks, or "backbones," to supplement the original infrastructure. As a result, what was once a single network became a global collection of hundreds of interconnected computer networks, with the vast bulk of data traveling over approximately a dozen major commercial backbones.
While additional backbones provided more bandwidth to carry the increasing amount of data, the overburdened public access points caused major slowdowns. Data that needed to move from one network to another queued up at the access points, creating serious bottlenecks. To ease this congestion, backbone providers created a large number of private connections, or "peering points," between their networks. These private peering points allow data packets to move from one network to another much more freely.
Backbone providers don't have an economic incentive to locate the optimal path between the data sender and receiver to route data packets from one network to another. Because major backbone providers don't pay for access to each other's networks, the bulk of the traffic on any given network is going to and from non-paying customers. To avoid the high costs of upgrading their network to handle increased traffic, backbone providers have a financial incentive to get rid of data packets as quickly as possible. Accordingly, they pass them off to a competitor's backbone at the earliest opportunity, creating what is known in the industry as "hot potato" routing. This approach results in data packets making many network crossovers en route to their destination, resulting in longer wait times. But even more important, "hot potato" routing creates the reality that your data has to travel over more and more networks that are outside of your control.
As Internet traffic continues to increase, private peering points are becoming more congested and backbone providers lack the financial incentive to invest money to accommodate their competitors' traffic. Thus, private peering arrangements between backbone providers lead not only to routing inefficiencies but also to congestion at peering points -- two factors that significantly reduce the speed of data transmission.
There are really three inefficiencies with the current infrastructure:
- The existing routing protocol is not "intelligent".
- Lack of adequate network technology.
- Distributed management of public and private peering.
The existing routing protocol only selects one of the available network paths -- not necessarily the best-performing network path. It does not take into account any of the variables that affect the user experience like congestion, packet loss or latency. Internap, in essence, creates the ideal routing protocol by building intelligence onto today's existing BGP protocol.
In addition, the public NAPs and private peering points are not centrally managed and no single entity has the economic incentive to resolve problems, facilitate bandwidth allocation or bring about centralized routing administration. When public NAPs and private peering points are congested, data packet loss occurs, slowing downloads and decreasing the reliability of data transmissions. This may not sound like a problem, but when you consider that even a one percent packet loss can double your customer's download time, you can see how points of congestion lead to major slowdowns in data transmission on the Internet.
Internap has created an innovative way of using the existing Internet network infrastructure to route your data and avoid the Internet's points of congestion. Internap built an Overlay Network that is armed with intelligent routing technology to get your data from point A to point B in the fastest, most reliable and least-congested path possible.
Unlike some Internet access providers who randomly choose public NAPs or private peering points, Internap's routing technology sends customer data out along the correct Internet backbone immediately, through their Private Network Access Point (P-NAP) facilities. Thereby optimizing the effects of Internap's proprietary network architecture and advanced routing technologies which dramatically boosts performance.
- One fat and happy backbone
Internap builds redundancy into every phase of its operations to assure you of reliable, trouble-free data transmission 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
First, Internap purchases direct access and full transit connectivity into the major global Internet backbones. In all cases, Internap is one of their biggest customers. This means our backbone providers have a financial incentive to deliver top-quality performance. Internap has also signed service-level agreements with each backbone provider, specifying network availability, performance and response time for problems. This economic relationship between Internap and the major backbone networks provides NeoSpire customers with something that private and public peering relationships cannot offer: a differentiated quality of service.
Furthermore, the multiple routing options Internap has available virtually guarantee connectivity to the Internet, regardless of problems individual backbone providers may be experiencing.
Finally, if in the extremely unlikely case that a catastrophic event was to take out one of Internap's facilities, it wouldn't affect the rest of the network. In contrast, if you have only one backbone provider and it's experiencing network problems, your data transmissions could be affected even if you aren't trying to access the particular node that is having the problem.
- The intelligent way to travel
The second key to Internap's speed is the intelligent software they developed to select the most direct route for your data. The system is a seamless integration of databases, software programs, router configuration processes and route verification methods.
It assesses the global routing tables being advertised by all of the backbone networks homed to a given service point, and automatically determines exactly which Internet Protocol routes are to be optimized to which networks. The software then routes data to its intended destination backbone. A verification system also allows the software to monitor the routing of data, and if routing is found to be suboptimal, adjustments may be made to further optimize routing.
By utilizing Internap, NeoSpire brings certainty to the process of communicating on the Internet -- a peace of mind that no other provider can offer. Our customers receive fast, reliable and centrally managed Internet connectivity services that maximize the performance of their mission-critical Internet-based applications.
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