Network Design

The core network has been designed as a fully redundant mesh. The two primary edge routers constantly communicate using iBGP and if one fails the other will immediately take over its role. Beneath the routers is an HSRP (Hot Standby Router Protocol) cluster of Cisco Layer-3 switches which constantly communicate with each other and both the routers. If one core switch fails the other will automatically take over within 28 seconds.

The network is designed to avoid single points of failure - in the event of a failure of either a core router or core switch, traffic will continue to flow on an alternative path.

The network design also minimises 'scheduled maintenance' down-time because we can temporarily disconnect a single piece of equipment for maintenance without disrupting the rest of the network and traffic can be kept flowing throughout the operation.

All equipment throughout is Cisco, ensuring full compatability of protocols.

Outbound network traffic to our Tier-1 upstreams is optimised using Cisco Optimised Edge Routing (OER).

Why Xtraordinary?

We pride ourself on our IP network engineering skills. In our opinion it's not an especially complex network design, yet some competitors (particularly 'budget' operators) shy away from this 'complexity' in favour of dependency on a single router or without the benefits of layer 3 switching.