Secondary Data Centre - Infrastructure

Fire detection and automatic suppression

Network infrastructure and bandwidth

All dedicated bandwidth is provided on a 1:1 contention ratio, but is delivered on shared pipes using traffic shaping to ensure availability of reserved bandwidth while still providing the ability to burst to higher rates. Burst availability is not guaranteed to any specific rate, but we aim to maintain at least 100% headroom. BGP4 routing is employed to provide resilience against individual line failures. Network design and implementation from layer 1 - layer 7 is carried out by A.L.D (T) system administrators, from the laying of fibre and copper at The Bunker, to the implementation of BGP and even experimental routing protocols, such as Mobile Mesh.

Many of our employees are involved in the Consume project, and thus we have a lot of knowledge about routing and wireless networks.

Network operation centre

Our Network Operations Centre (NOC) is staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The NOC is responsible for monitoring and administering the core ISP systems as well as the management and escalation of customer support calls.

All clients have direct access to the NOC via telephone or e-mail. System and network administrators and security guards man the customer support centre.

These personnel are responsible for the monitoring and fault detection, maintenance and administration of both The Bunker infrastructure and equipment therein.

Outbound communications to clients include outage notices, maintenance window updates, and customer information as contracted by clients. Again, the conduit is via telephone or e-mail, as the situation requires.

Network / service monitoring- 'Big Brother'

"Managed" systems within the bunker are monitored 24 x 7 x 365. They are monitored for their connection to the network, as well as core services as defined by each customer (mail, web serving, etc.). A data sample is taken from each system every 5 minutes, with notification made to technical staff, immediately in the event of a service not responding to the monitor. Notification is done through graphical web based displays with audible alarms, email and SMS. The system is also used to notify on the activation of services that have not been requested by the client.

The 'Big Brother' system (www.bb4.com) is capable of reporting events via web, WAP, SMS and email. Our reporting system is monitored by staff on site at The Bunker and remotely by staff in associated departments in the London head office. As well as monitoring servers and services, Big Brother has also been adapted to monitor the environment within the bunker, polling for information on the condition of other network equipment such as switches, routers and load balancers, temperature, humidity and light levels.

In brief Big Brother provides:

• 24 x 7 Network connectivity testing for managed servers
• 24 x 7 Service monitoring for requested core services (http/https, mail, ftp)
• 24 x 7 Inactivity monitoring of requested services (telnet etc.)
• Immediate notification to staff of system failure, connectivity or service
• Display functionality to show condition/history of services
• Environmental monitoring of The Bunker
• Disabling function to prevent false alarms during scheduled maintenance

Bandwidth monitoring - client

Bandwidth monitoring is provided by Cricket (cricket.sourceforge.net), which is used to analyse and display the data in the form of graphs and reports.

Bandwidth graphs are updated every minute and are monitored by staff at The Bunker and London head offices. These graphs give an immediate indication of any load problems or failures with any of our upstream providers. This enables us to re-route traffic via our BGP gateway, so that our customers do not experience any failure or latency.

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