Our Network

We use a whole range of technologies to build and run our network. Some more detail on them is below, in alphabetical order.

Autonomous systems and provider independence

Tibus can offer you advice on developing true provider independence using PI space and your own Autonomous System (A/S).

Whether this is for resilience and true failover using two separate ISPs, or whether your IP requirements are growing to the point where you need an LIR allocation / assignment, we’ll be glad to help. We’ve done this many times.

We’re used to working as part of a group of ISPs for a single client and are very comfortable with that. It’s becoming very common across our client base and we’re more than happy to be a primary or secondary ISP in active/active or active/passive.

Data Centres

We take co-lo space in four different data centres across the UK and Ireland, using them as a basis for delivering our Managed Services and POPs for our network. The reason we have four is to make sure we can ‘reach into’ markets in terms of peering and connectivity. Everything we do is geared up to getting our customers’ users to their content; and our customers content down to their audience, as quickly and smoothly as possible.

We choose our co-lo providers very carefully, based on their security accreditations, their financial stability and selection of carriers. We use Data Electronics and InterXion () in Dublin, BT in Belfast and Telehouse North in London. We’ll be expanding into Telehouse West soon and are planning both a Manchester presence and a Scotland presence.

Further afield we have current in-country hosting capability in the USA (Houston), Australia (Perth) and Finland (Helsinki). We plan in-country delivery capability for South America and Far East (KL) in 2012.

Equipment

We’re a Cisco house. We started off life as many people did in the network infrastructure industry – using 7200s to do everything routing-wise, with some 3650s everywhere else. We now use 5600s, 7600s and ASR family – along with 55xx firewalls / firewall modules. We do everything alongside Cisco Validated Design and underwrite everything via SmartNETs and the Cisco TAC. By no means are we Cisco bigots, we’re openly evaluating other vendors for higher-end network requirements. We think Cisco are good in the core though.

Layer 2 Ethernet Services

Tibus uses its own network (built on a range of telecoms networks) to provide Layer 2 Ethernet services for customers wishing to connect one or many sites, but want to run their own L3 services and / or their own IP. Typically we use Cisco Metro Ethernet 3400 at the customer / edge site and Cisco Catalyst Switches in the core.

Peering and routing

We peer with a carefully selected range of providers and partners. This mix is designed to give our customers the most elegant routes across the global internet, in combination with ample capacity for traffic spikes.

We peer with www.tinet.net, www.globalcrossing.com www.level3.com, www.bt.net , all on Gigabit bearers. Most are on dual ports in separate data centres. In 2011 we plan to add two more peers and extend our network significantly.

We’re also proud and active members of www.inex.ie, The Irish Internet Exchange. This IXP allows us to exchange traffic with all the major Irish ISPs directly, improving user experience significantly through a control over QOS and an ultra low latency. Through INEX, we also peer with some major international companies that have significant EMEA presences in Ireland, including Google, Microsoft and Amazon.