Lightbound IP Applications

Server Collocation is very hot topic in today's IT world.  One of the items that is often over looked is latency in the Internet backbone.  That's where all Collocation providers are not created equal, you need to make sure that your applications that are Internet facing are not loosing to your competitors because your hosting partner has too much latency in their Internet connections.   Many hosting providers just buy the cheapest Internet upstream to be more competitive in their hosting offerings.  Make sure you look under the covers of their Internet connections to see how they are connected to the Internet backbone.  My suggestion is to subscribe to monitoring service that checks latency from many points on the Internet.  This will tell you how your Internet facing applications are performing.  

Hi my name is Jack Carr and I have been in the Information Technology business for 27 years and I have spent the last 10 years at IQuest(Lightbound).  We have been Indiana's largest Internet Access Provider since 1992.  We have changed our focus from a residential provider to a business provider in the last 10 years focusing on IP Applications.  IP Applications are any services that runs over IP; either Internet facing or non Internet facing.  An example of that would be Server Collocation, Email and Virus Scanning, Managed Services, Backup Services, Internet Access, Off Site Data Backup Service,  just to name a few.  I hope you enjoy my Blog and look forward to chatting with you soon.


regards - jack

Jack Carr
IQuest Internet, LLC / Lightbound
President
www.lightbound.com
jcarr@iquest.net

Today we met with one our sport teams clients in Indy and we are implementing our LightBound Storage as a Service product.  We are going take advantage of our dark fiber resources and partnership with Scale Computing and Double Take to backup their physical and virtual servers to our data center in Indy and then replicate their data to our out of state data center.   This will give them multiple levels of backup - first they will use Double Take to backup to the Scale Computing local SAN and then the Scale will replicate that LightBound local Scale shared storage server at our Indy data center and then we will then replicate their data again to our Scale shared storage server in our data center out state.  This will give our client multiple backups of their data using our LightBound Storage as a Service products and using our LightBound Cloud Services to transport their data to our out of state data center.

We have had alot of conversation with SIP Long Distance providers lately, what we discovered is that all VoIP Service Providers are not the same.  Many resellers and wholesale providers actually provide service without having a Class 5 switch in there network.  They do this without the benefit of having a Class 5 switch.  What does this mean?  It means that the VoIP Service Providers can't give the same level of reliability, because their core switch is not redundant enough.  What I mean by this is, their switch cannot have any hardware or software failures without taking it down.  When looking at VoIP Service Providers ask if their switch is NEBS compliant and look under cover to make sure. 

As we are out quoting projects it is constant battle with non-carriers quoting services as resellers of carriers.  They often oversell their capabilities or the carriers capabilities by setting false expectations of how services are delivered.  We often have to walk away from projects, but luckily we get second chance to re-quote after the customer discovers the quotes are incorrect. 

In other words watch out for the pretend carriers, especially in the Indiana WAN environment.  They are at least 2-3 Indiana WAN carriers that have signed up some many resellers you never know who might offer you WAN products.  Make sure they are register CLEC or ILEC.  They often represent themselves as the carrier.

So buyer beware of the who you buy your IP WAN service from.

Hi everyone,

As we continue to install VOIP PBX systems one of the interesting things that we have noticed is that many customers have purchased unlicensed VOIP Asterisk system.  We have noticed there are no easy upgrade paths for these customers.  What seems to be happening with these unlicensed system is that when a new version of the software comes out, the customers have to reinstall the desktop software.   This means lots of maintenance issues for the customers that want to run the newest software versions,  for new features the customers want.

So as you go to look for VOIP Service Providers and Indiana PBX providers make sure you understand how they are going to upgrade the system without you have to touch every desktop.  Also make sure they have Off Site Data Backup Service for this system and a good Disaster Recovery plan.

Many of these providers are not CLEC's so they can't help you with disaster recovery options for your dial tone.

Just some food for thought.

Have a great day.

jack

Hi everyone,

We had an interesting week with all flooding that has happened in the Midwest.  Many of our clients have experienced many kinds of outages during the last week.  Some of issues were not water damage, but their suppliers having outage issues.

There are many questions that came out of floods of the Midwest.  It really making people take a second look at their disaster plans.  For years we having been telling customers disaster can come in different flavors.  Luckily quite a few of our clients listened and had off site solutions ready.

The one issue many of you don't count on is, your providers would have issues because their upstream providers didn't have redundancy in their network.  So in other words you have suppliers that have suppliers and if the chain breaks you will be effected.

Many customer ask the question about their current provider, but don't ask the questions of who is supplying them and what their network looks like.

Make sure you ask all the questions of your suppliers and also who is supplying them.

Regards - jack

On a daily basis I spend lot's of days trying to removing the IP Bottleneck for clients.  I bet you are wondering what the IP Bottleneck is.  What we see on the daily basis is the need to get bigger IP pipes to our clients.  Not only bigger pipes, but multiple paths and multiple applications across the same pipe.  That is the real win for the us and the client.

One of the biggest education challenges is trying to show clients how to utilize the "BIG IP PIPE", basically get the most from their investment.

In this world of converging IP networks it takes lot of education to show clients that by fulling utilizing their IP connectivity they can reduce their overall IT budgets and get more bang for their buck.

Running voice, data, video, disaster recovery, across the same IP pipe is a good start.

Stay tune for more later.

jack

Today has been a day full of explaining how different providers actually regulate Quality of Service on your Internet Access Connections.

Not all Internet Access is the same, what do I mean by that.

What I mean is, and I am not a gamer(but in the gamer world this is paramount), but end to end performance is the key and can you really afford to have your customers waiting on data back from your web servers.  You may be sitting there saying my server is running at 5 percent utilization and my customers are calling about poor performance.

They will go somewhere else, that is why every Internet Access Provider is not the same.  Make sure you understand your needs before you go out and buy the cheapest solution.  If your goal is just surfing that is different than hosting servers.

If you can remember that end to end performance is what you are after you do find and maybe that will indirectly make your business more profitable.

Have a great day!

jack

www.lightbound.com
jcarr@iquest.net

Almost every meeting I attend people talk about Off Site Data Backup Service.  This service needs to be part of your Data Disaster Recovery Plan.  Most customer need to add to their plan and put in a robust regular testing procedure to go along with their Off Site Data Backup Service.  We have found that most people backup their data and some even backup their data off site, but never successfully try to recover from it. 

If they are successfully with backup and restoring their data they don't consider how to restore their applications as well as their data.  Making sure you have the complete solution for Off Site Data Backup Service is critical.  There is so much more than just backup your data and recovery from it.  This is a great step, but also having a devices(servers) to recover your data to is just as important.  Also having a location(office or data center) to work out of and recover too is also important.

These are just a few things to think about when doing Off Site Data Backup Service.

Regards - jack carr
Lightbound

www.lightbound.com

Hi everyone -

It was a crazy week in Server Collocation business, spent most week with a client with several needs from Disaster Recover and Off Site Data Backup Service to Mail Server Host.

The service providers (including us) are really changing from offering one or two IP Services to completing outsourcing customer application.  Most clients are just wanting to run their application and not spend their time taking care of networks and servers infrastructures.

That is what is making service providers changing business plans every few years.  It makes the job fun.

regards - jack