Cisco CRS-1 units are crucial to LeaseWeb's global hosting network, linking LeaseWeb's four data centers with telecom carriers and Internet exchanges around the world.
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — European hosting provider LeaseWeb (www.leaseweb.com) has added two Cisco (www.cisco.com) CRS-1 router modules, doubling its number of Cisco CRS-1 routers supporting its global hosting network backbone, allowing for easy expansion of the backbone of its hosting network.
According to its announcement last week, the two Cisco CRS-1 units, worth $790,000, are non-stop devices that are crucial to LeaseWeb’s global hosting network, linking LeaseWeb’s four data centers with telecom carriers and a multitude of Internet exchanges, including LINX in London, DE-CIX in Frankfurt, AMS-IX in Amsterdam) and NYIIX in New York. LeaseWeb said it uses the Cisco CRS-1 units because they provide the best guarantee for uptime.
“In April 2009, our customers used 300 Gigabits per second,” LeaseWeb operations director Rolph Haspers said in a statement. “And in November 2009, bandwidth usage had increased to even more than 500 Gbps. In view of our policy of maintaining double the amount of bandwidth that customers actually use, this requires significant, easily scalable capacity in our network.”
Powered by Cisco IOS XR Software, the Cisco CRS-1 Carrier Routing System is the only carrier routing system of its kind offering continuous system operation, unprecedented service flexibility, and system longevity. These advantages are passed onto LeaseWeb customers such as web hosts, system integrators, web designers, and application developers. “These customers each have several customers of their own, which can really accelerate bandwidth growth per LeaseWeb customer,” Haspers said. “In addition, we notice that the amount of bandwidth in our network automatically attracts new customers who find this very useful for purposes such as streaming. This has a flywheel effect in the growth of our Internet traffic.”
Bastiaan Spandaw, LeaseWeb’s network architect, said Cisco’s CRS-1 compatible Modular Services Cards and related Physical Layer Interface Modules let it create a large amount of additional port capacity in its network, external connections with telecom carriers and Internet exchanges as well as internal connections through various Cisco Catalyst 6500 switches with customers’ equipment.
Although LeaseWeb has chosen to use 10-Gigabit Ethernet connections for the added modules, it hopes to be able to use 100-Gigabit Ethernet modules for future expansion of the CRS-1 units. “Due to the rapid growth of our network, we really need those 100-Gigabit Ethernet connections,” Spandaw said in a statement. “I understand that Cisco is planning to introduce these new modules in Q1 or Q2 of 2010. This will make it easier for us to further upscale our backbone capacity.”
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