CyrixWeb® Data Center

Quick Links: Equipment Power System Air Conditioners Web Servers Cooling Drives Power Supplies Standby Servers Backbones Network Redundancy Network Reliability Low Latency Firewalls Security Monitoring

CyrixWeb.net's Network Operations Center (NOC) features raised flooring. This enables a constant flow of conditioned air and helps to maintain optimal room temperature at all times. In addition, raised flooring reduces static and ensures a professional, computer grade environment for our servers.

The facility is equipped with two Raytheon fire suppression systems, designed to immediately extinguish fire and protect equipment and personnel. The command center is controlled via automatic doors to further secure and protect the equipment.

Finally, the NOC is located in a secure, monitored, class A building with a minimum number of approved personnel allowed access to highly sensitive areas and equipment. A detailed record of employee and visitor entry is maintained at all times.

Uninterruptible Power System
To guard against local power failures, CyrixWeb.net has two industrial-grade, three phase Liebert UPS systems. These act as back-up batteries, maintaining uninterrupted power in case of surges or power outages. With these backup systems in place, we can keep our network up and running indefinitely without relying on external power.

Industrial-Grade Air Conditioners
Our NOC has two Liebert ten ton industrial air conditioners, which condition our computer rooms and operations center. Our computer room is kept at an optimal temperature of 65 degrees Fahrenheit.

Custom Web Servers
CyrixWeb.net's web servers are custom-built industrial machines designed for a 24/7 web serving environment. All CyrixWeb.net servers are equipped with dual redundant 450-watt power supplies, hot swap Seagate Barracuda/Cheetah drives and force-filtered cooling systems. In addition, our NOC is equipped with an inventory of identically configured, burned-in standby servers.

Force Filtered Cooling
All of CyrixWeb.net's custom web servers are equipped with a positive pressure filtered-air system. Five large fans pull filtered air into each server's protective case and the components within are cooled by fans which circulate this purified air. This constant introduction of clean air into the case creates a positive pressure environment ensuring dust and particles remain outside of the server.

Hot Swap Seagate Drives
The drives and drive bays of all CyrixWeb.net servers are constructed from high-grade aluminum, and rest in shock mounted drive cages, which adds to the durability of the hardware. CyrixWeb.net's drives proudly feature the lowest failure rate in the industry.

Redundant Hot Swap Power Supplies
Each server employs triple-redundant hot swap power supplies. If a power supply were to fail, the server would continue running with power from the alternate supply. Meanwhile, alarms would alert a technician, who would quickly restore redundancy. In the meantime, servers and client sites would experience no downtime and remain running at optimal speed.

Standby Servers
We keep spare servers on-line of all CPU configurations. If a server were to experience a hardware or software failure, a backup server will switch on in less than 5 seconds to ensure sites remain up and running. We would then reboot the main machine and the server would be up and running again in a matter of minutes. We have at least one backup server for each of the main systems. 

Connected to Three Backbones
The CyrixWeb.net NOC located in Trenton, New Jersey is OnNet with GlobalCenter (GC), Qwest Communications and GTE through three separate bandwidth-on-demand connections which enter our building.

GC, a Tier 1 provider whose 13,000-mile fiber optic network and Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology provide an enormous 460 gigabytes per second (Gbps) of capacity worldwide, has an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) fiber node located just a few floors below the CyrixWeb.net NOC.

Qwest comes into Trenton with an OC-48 line. They also have an ATM fiber node floors below the CyrixWeb.net NOC. Our Qwest connection enables us to offer additional redundancy and better routes to Europe, Latin America and Asia. With our carriers, our router has up to 180,000 possible routes to send each packet of traffic.

Genuity, a division of GTE, is our third Tier One Internet backbone. Genuity provides superior network performance as a result of their high-speed peering arrangements with other Tier One Internet backbone providers. The GTE global network delivers customers directly onto the Internet via a high-speed connection to its private, super-capacity backbone, including 18,000 miles of fiber and OC192 capacity. It is comprised of more than 800 U.S. local access points and approximately 1,900 international local access points in more than 150 countries.

Furthermore, because of these unique connections, CyrixWeb.net does not need to link to the Internet though an OC3 or T3 Telecom circuit. Instead, independent cables run inside our building directly from the CyrixWeb.net NOC to all three carriers points of presence. These lines can handle the bandwidth of a T3 or an OC3 with DWDM. Plus, they handle several times the bandwidth of an OC3. Whatever your bandwidth needs may be, CyrixWeb.net has the scalability to meet them.

Network Redundancy
CyrixWeb.net uses intelligent end-user routing software called Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), between Qwest, GC and GTE, who use the same protocol. BGP identifies which path is the most efficient for each data packet and then routes the packet to its destination on the fastest path. This increases the speed at which web pages sent by well over 200%.

Studies have shown that the most common reason for downtime is circuit failure on Tier 1 provider backbones. To guard against this potential problem, we have three Tier-1 providers. If one experiences problems, we can route traffic down the other one. Furthermore, because we are OnNet with GlobalCenter, Qwest and GTE, we share their digital distribution architecture, which includes private peering network connections to major Internet carriers such as MCI, Sprint, UUNET, EUNET, AT&T, AOL, Best, Erols, @Home, IBM Advantis and others. These private peering arrangements allow CyrixWeb.net to exchange packets of data with every major backbone carrier in a one-to-one environment quickly and efficiently.

In addition, GC has high-speed links to nine public exchanges including both MAE East and West and several NAPS. Through these public exchanges, customers have the ability to reach their site no matter where they are located.

Network Reliability
Industry analysis reveals that 75% of downtime over ten hours with any ISP is caused by telephone circuit failure. Since our NOC is directly connected to Global Center, Qwest and GTE, circuit failure is virtually eliminated because there is no phone circuit between us and our providers. Instead, there is a direct connection between our Cisco 7500 routers and theirs.

CyrixWeb.net's providers also have peering connections with other major Tier 1 providers, which allows traffic to be switched to alternate backbones should the need arise.

Raw Performance Equals Low Latency/High Throughput
Too often providers operate their networks at three to four times responsible capacity. As a result, their corresponding transfer times reach over 300ms. CyrixWeb.net's network daily average is 8% of its capacity, with midday peak spikes reaching only 17.5% capacity. CyrixWeb.net guarantees clients will be carried off our network in less than 55ms over a five minute average at any time of day or night.

Firewalls
A firewall is a security device that secures the server from possible attacks. It is placed between the server and the Internet to moderate and document requests for data access according to a predefined set of security policies. Every one of our servers comes equipped with a firewall, which is built and managed by our in-house security engineers. Our data center staff is managed by a network security engineer with over 15 years of experience in telecommunications cryptography. In addition to the individual firewall, our entire network is secured through a circuit level firewall, providing one more level of security for mission-critical data.

Automated Security Monitoring
To ensure the integrity of your clients websites, we proactively monitor system processes on each server as well as across our entire network. This monitoring process is done by both live technicians and custom software agents. They are both intended  to halt and report all intrusions to the system and provide your customers with the peace of mind they need to conduct secure business transactions.