Blog - D9 Hosting Network Improvements

D9 Hosting Network Improvements

Written On 14/04/2011 04:05 by Dan T

**Before Reading This, Please Note That We Haven't Gone Insane. The Post Was Made On April 1st**

As an on going effort to provide our customers with the best service possible, we have been analyzing our entire network structure over the past few months to see where we can be more efficient.

It's been in the planning stages for a while now, but we are happy to reveal that we have put a number of new systems in place to speed up our network, details of which you can find below.

New Backup Procedure
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Any web host knows that backups are vital, but there are pit falls with the standard backup systems, mainly the speed at which the data can be written from one machine to another.

We have discovered the a small change to the existing network topology will increase transfer speeds to the backup servers by 27.3%. We can do this by leveraging gravity. Please see the diagram below to get an idea of the how the legacy system works:

As you can see, the data flows to the backup server in a sideways direction. Common sense dictates that a simple change can increase the transfer speed significantly, please see diagram 2 below:

This new topology is already in place on our newest US server; Kipling and so far we have seen great results, although if any users on the server have any issues please do let us know. The system has been fully tested but there's no substitute for live testing!

Looking For a New Datacenter
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Using the same logic, we have discovered we can significantly increase the load times of your websites by placing our servers in a datacenter that is significantly below sea level.

The datacenter we currently use is 1072m above sea level, meaning that the majority of people who access your website (those who live 1072m or less above sea level) have to make a big climb to rearch the server, thus meaning your website takes longer to respond:

As with the new backup procedure we can use gravity to increase the response time to your website, moving to a new datacenter below sea level will mean that instead of your packets traveling uphill to reach the datacenter, they are going downhill, which will speed up response times by at least 50%.

Any of you reading this that have been involved in any disaster planning should have already spotted the major pitfall in this idea - the risk of flooding! But don't worry, we know how important your websites are, and the last thing we want to see is a flooded datacenter, so we have put in place a contingency plan:

Comments (5)

On 23/04/2011 09:24 Donald MacLeod Said:

Hi, I'm not well versed on servers etc but as long as everything works, I'll be happy with that. Donald

On 14/05/2011 05:23 Tobius T Poswa Said:

Hi I need to host on your site. What must I do. The site seems to meet my expectaions. Please reply

On 25/05/2011 02:54 Donald Maisey Said:

I assume the backup servers are using the new super-fast Write-Only memory system. ;-) Don

On 22/06/2011 11:22 D9 Hosting Said:

It's like you're reading my mind Don! We've actually lined all cables with WD40 to ensure packets flow smoothly, we estimate this will increase access times by 122%.

On 11/11/2011 05:08 Douglas Goodey Said:

Hi, I am a new kid on the block and would just like to say that I am delighted yo be joining you, Site not live yet!

Blog - D9 Hosting Network Improvements

D9 Hosting Network Improvements

Comments (5)

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