One can start by asking them how many different Internet backbone connections they have. The saying 'don't put all your eggs in one basket' easily applies to selecting an ISP. Even if you choose one of the largest providers to host with, you can still have problems if they rely on one backbone. This is because any single backbone may have huge problems at any time. It has happened in the past, and there is no way of knowing when it might happen again. It doesn’t matter if your host has twenty OC3 connections to the Internet if they are all connected to the same Internet backbone.

So how can you get around this? The answer is to choose a multi-homed hosting provider. What is a multi-homing? Multi-homing is having two or more upstream providers. It would be even better if your host was connected directly to the Internet backbones themselves and didn’t rely on another ISP for that connection. Once you know how many connections your provider has to the Internet, ask them what type of connections they are. Also ask about the speed or capacity of each backbone connection.

If they have two backbone connections, and their answer to your question is an OC3 (155Mbps) through provider “A” and a T3 (45Mbps) through provider “B”, you are still not out of the woods. What would happen if their OC3 connection failed and it was operating near full capacity? They would end up trying to route traffic through a connection nearly four times smaller than what they were already using! There is simply not enough available bandwidth on the backup connection. You know that you can't park a city bus in a garage that was made to accommodate a mid-sized sedan.

So what would have been the answer you wanted to hear? If simply having multiple backbone connections is not the best way to achieve redundancy, what is? Ideally, if your provider had two backbone connections you would want roughly half their traffic to go in and out of each connection. You don’t want your provider to oversell their capacity

It would also be helpful if your provider could take advantage of those multiple connections by using something called Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). BGP efficiently routes traffic by choosing the shortest path available between two points. These two points consist of your hosting provider and the end user. What this means is data will be sent to the user of provider “A” through the backbone connection of provider “A”, and data will be sent to the user of provider “B” through the backbone connection of provider “B”. If one provider failed, BGP could also implement something called "fail-over" routing, where the other provider would keep your data connected to the Internet. This is also a good time to find out which backbone providers your host is using. If provider “A” and provider “B” aren’t even handling one percent of Internet traffic, then what good is BGP doing you if your data still needs to travel to provider “C” to reach the end user?

So there are ways for your host to provide you with greater efficiency and better reliability. Why don’t they do so? You know what the answer is. The name of the game is money. The more your hosting provider uses on one backbone, the cheaper bandwidth they receive through that backbone provider. Now you know how some companies can offer super-cheap hosting packages.

This is also why hosting providers with more backbone connections need to charge higher prices. For example: you can push 100Mbps through one connection using provider “A” or use BGP and multi-homing to route the same traffic through multiple providers. Using BGP may only push 30Mbps through provider “A”, 20Mbps through provider “B”, and 25Mbps through providers “C” and “D”. As you can see the bandwidth used is not very high on each backbone, so the hosting provider using BGP will not be able to get the bandwidth at a cheaper rate. The Internet is one place where you truly get what you pay for. Make sure you have read your hosting provider’s Service Level Agreement (SLA). The better the guarantee on the SLA, the better for you. If your host should fail to deliver what is stated on the SLA, what do you get? When the name of the game is money, the winning hand is knowledge.

About the Author:
By Jeff Florida (jeff@cybercon.com) and Tom Knowles (tom@cybercon.com) of Cybercon. Cybercon (www.cybercon.com)is a leading provider of advanced Internet hosting and managed services.

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