Our Network

Our network was built from the ground up to provide maximum reliability to our clients while also delivering the lowest latency and highest throughput possible.

Design

Our network consists of two separate networks: a public Internet network and a private internal network. This “network within a network” design is comprised of two logically separate and redundant network architectures. Every rack is a private rack at Bitzworx.

The public Internet network connects client servers to the Internet at 10 / 100 / 1000Mbps port speeds. Each client is isolated to their own private VLAN to maximize security. This network is continuously monitored for performance and reliability. Bandwidth graphs, projections and custom alerts are available through Grove.

The private internal network is not reachable from the public Internet. It also separates client servers into their own private VLAN security purposes, and also allows us to provide many services not found at other providers. The private network allows your servers to securely communicate at speeds up to 1000Mbps without incurring any bandwidth charges. This eliminates additional switch charges, cross connect fees, and having to move servers from rack to rack as you add servers.

The private network also connects all servers to internal services offered by Bitzworx: off-server backup, Network Attached Storage, update servers, local DNS resolvers, service monitoring, IPMI metrics, and software/OS performance metrics all without using any of the public bandwidth allowance.

Bandwidth Providers

We took great care in researching and selecting only the highest quality Tier 1 bandwidth providers for our network to ensure we provide low latency and high availability to all locations both domestically and abroad.

Level(3) was recently named as the #1 IP transit provider in the world by Renesys Corp, an independent research firm. Level(3) operates one of the world's largest, newest and most advanced Tier 1 telecommunications networks. The network spans 23,000 intercity route miles and serves the worlds 10 largest phone companies, 10 largest Internet service providers, and 6 largest cable providers. Level(3) is currently ranked #1 AS in the world by CAIDA.

Global Crossing operates one of the world's largest Tier 1 IP networks. With over 100,000 route miles of optical cable around the world, no other infrastructure even comes close. Global Crossing operates peering points in hundreds of cities across the world and has sustained network availability levels of 99.999 percent -- the industry's highest standard.

Global Crossing was recently ranked as the #3 backbone provider in the world by Renesys Corp, an independent research firm. Global Crossing's IP network is second highest ranked network in CAIDA's ranking of Autonomous Systems in the entire world.

NTT Communications operates a high quality Tier 1 IP backbone with direct connection to major ISPs in Asia, the U.S., Europe and Oceania. The network currently boasts the industry's largest dedicated Internet bandwidth of over 300Gbps between Japan and U.S and 258Gbps to the Asia-Pacific region to provide end users with fast Internet connections globally. The network currently operates with over 4.3Tbps total backbone capacity, and over 705Gbps peering capacity.

NTT was recently rated #5 backbone provider in the world by Renesys Corp, an independent research firm.

Savvis operates a global Tier 1 network that spans 105 cities in 47 countries, encompassing the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Europe, The Middle East, Asia and the Pacific Rim.

Savvis network reliability was declared 'Perfect' in Network World magazine's study of ISP backbone performance achieving a 100-percent uptime rating and theoretical minimum rates for a beam of light traveling cross-country. Known as the 'The Network that Powers Wall Street' Savvis provides network services to over 4,500 financial institutions including 75 of the top 100 banks in the world and 45 of the top 50 brokerage firms in the United States. Savvis was recently ranked the #4 backbone provider in the world by Renesys Corp, an independent research firm.

Hardware

Our robust and scalable network utilizes only routing and switching products from industry-leaders Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks. We use Juniper M-series routers in our border routing layer and Juniper EX4200 and Cisco 3750 series switch stacks in our core switching and aggregation layer. This setup is fully meshed with redundant internal and external fiber connections for maximum reliability. At the client access level we use Cisco access switches for both our public and private networks. These switches are connected in a bonded, redundant fashion to our core layer to not only enhance reliability but to reduce the risk of congestion and provide maximum throughput.

Location

Our network in downtown Chicago is the ideal location to provide low latency connectivity to all locations around the globe. Chicago is one of the most well connected cities in the world. It serves as one of North America's largest Internet hubs and is home to every major network provider. Most of the fiber optics that connect the East and West coasts of the United States run through Chicago and this yields low latency to both coasts as well as to Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. Network reliability is also greatly increased as the central hub location allows for many routes between our network and final destination points.

Datacenter

Facilities

All of Bitzworx's servers are housed in private datacenter space in the newly renovated 427 LaSalle data center facility located adjacent to the Chicago Board of Trade in downtown Chicago. The building is one of Chicago's preeminent carrier hotels with excellent options for metro and global connectivity.

Chicago is one of the most connected cities in the world, and it's central location makes it the optimum location for serving Internet content. Chicago serves as one of North America's largest Internet hubs and is home to every major network provider. Most of the fiber optics that connect the East and West coasts of the United States run through Chicago and this yields low latency to both coasts as well as to Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

Chicago was recently rated the greenest city in the US for datacenter locations. A recent study showed Chicago was much more energy efficient and produced only a small fraction of carbon emissions than other datacenter locations. Chicago was also recently ranked one of the safest cities in the United States with a very low risk for natural disasters ahead of other cities in Texas, California, Florida and the East Coast - all of which have a much greater risk for hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and floods than Chicago.

Datacenter Statistics

• SAS 70 Certified Datacenter
• 3 3000 Amp, 480 Volt, 3 phase power feeds from multiple sub-stations
• 3 2 MegaWatt (MW) Electrical Generators
• 4 500 KVA UPS systems
• 4 300 Ton Chillers
• Automatic logic monitoring of all critical equipment
• 24x7 Security Staffing and CCTV Surveillance
• Biometric Scanners for Datacenter Access
• Mantraps and Optical Turnstiles at entrance