10Gbps Manchester fibre network
Our servers are located in Melbourne’s state of the art data centres in Manchester, England, in the Manchester Science Park, one of the most digitally connected regions in the UK. We connect into Melbourne’s sophisticated, self-healing 10Gbps Manchester fibre network, which spans six Manchester data centres, three of which are Melbourne’s own data centres. See the network diagram opposite.
This network connects to multiple upstream bandwidth providers at three different Manchester data centres, providing complete independence from the failure of any bandwidth provider or facility.
Reliability, resilience and monitoring
Melbourne have a very simple rule: if a device is critical to network availability, there will always be a hot-standby available. All critical hardware, such as routers and firewalls is duplicated, meaning that the failure of an individual piece of hardware will have minimal impact on the overall running of the network. In addition, there are several levels of monitoring in-place to ensure that any issues are discovered at the earliest possible point, and specifically before they become service-affecting. Every single router, switch and firewall on the network is monitored and any outages are notified instantly by e-mail and SMS to an on-call engineer.
Externally monitored and verified uptime statistics are available
Manchester: The largest UK Internet hub outside of London
Where better to locate your virtual server than in the middle of the UK, in Manchester? Immediately to the West is Ireland, and beyond that North America. To the East you have mainland Europe. Towards the south you have London. To the North lies Scotland. Manchester is ideally located to ensure your VPS is reachable from all of these places and beyond directly, without going through London, and with the minimum of latency and the maximum speed. This is because Manchester is one of the most connected cities in the UK. The city has a dozen or so data centres, the BBC and ITV in Salford’s MediaCityUK, and 3 world class universities, all interconnected via excellent peering exchanges. You have major Tier 1 carriers such as Level 3 with undersea cables coming across from North America into Ireland, and then across into Manchester, completely independent of London. Other carriers connect Manchester directly to mainland Europe, via undersea cables that leave the UK from various points all the way up the east coast of the UK, again without passing through London. This makes Manchester a great location for those looking to increase the resilience of their UK data.
Internet Exchanges and Transit
As a customer of Manchester VPS, you will benefit from the high quality, multiple Gbit connectivity that our data centre has into the following regional and national internet exchanges, and global Tier 1 internet transit providers.
The London Internet Exchange (LINX)
One of the world’s leading Internet Exchange Points, with over 480 members connecting from over 50 different countries. LINX’s London network consist of two separate high-performance Ethernet switching platforms installed across ten London Data Centres. LINX members have access to direct routes from a large number of diverse international peering partners. Click here to see a full list of members.
NWIX’s Manchester Internet Exchange (MaNAP)
A peering exchange based in the north west of England. Has a comprehensive DDoS mitigation strategy and is ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certified. Members include access providers such as Carphone Warehouse. Virgin Media (ntl/Telewest), Thus, and content providers such as the BBC and Google including YouTube. Click here to see a full list of members.
IX Manchester
A peering LAN based in the north west of England, and powered by Linx (see above). More than 35 of the North West’s leading internet companies peer with each other at IX Manchester, including Melbourne, M247 Ltd, TelecityGroup UK, UKFast.net, Bytemark Hosting, C4L Connections 4 London, Entanet, Gamma Telecom, Zen Internet and Cable & Wireless Worldwide. Click here to see a full list of members.
Cogent Communications
Cogent is a multinational Tier 1 Internet Service Provider consistently ranked as one of the top five networks in the world. Their innovative, facilities-based network spans across North America, across the Atlantic throughout Europe, and across the Pacific to Asia. With over 57,000 route miles of intercity fiber and more than 27,100 metro fiber miles, they interconnect with over 4,660 other networks.
Below is a map of Cogent’s network. Click here to see the map in its full size (3570 x 990 pixels, 1.8Mb).
