SCIENCE

Force10 Networks has announced that ReadySpace, a leading hosting service provider based in Singapore, has selected the S-Series 1/10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) fiber switch to provide 10 GbE performance and reliability for its growing number of customers in South Asia.

In just eight years, ReadySpace has grown from a modest hosting provider with small business and individuals as customers to a major enterprise and game hosting service for some 5,000 customers. ReadySpace deployed several Force10 S50N switches, configured with 48 GbE ports and four 10 GbE ports. However, as the deployment took place over time, network traffic doubled in volume. To accelerate the speed of the installations, IT staff at ReadySpace then deployed Force10's JumpStart software, which expedited the process by enabling rapid bare-metal provisioning of the S50 switches.

"Since we opened in 2002, we've prided ourselves and differentiated our business based on our ability to deliver a high level of service, superior peering arrangements and low-latency bandwidth," said David Loke, executive director, ReadySpace. "However, as our customer demand increased due in part to Singapore's initiative to provide Gigabit Ethernet services to individual citizens, we selected Force10 Networks because we needed a more dynamic and flexible infrastructure with bulletproof reliability that could flawlessly handle these spikes in network traffic."

The S50s were deployed to replace ReadySpace's core switches, each configured with 48 GbE and four 10 GbE ports. Once installed, ReadySpace IT staff deployed Layer 3 protocols, such as OSPF, BGP and VRRP to manage the traffic between servers and their storage systems. The team also utilized the built-in SNMP v3 support for general network management, along with ACLs for administrative access. With space in the data centers at a premium, the 1-RU form still provides a switching fabric capacity of 288 Gbps and forwarding capacity of more than 131 Mpps.

"Hosting providers such as ReadySpace face tremendous challenges stemming from rapidly growing customer demand and inflexible infrastructure that are difficult to effectively scale," said Arpit Joshipura, chief marketing officer, Force10 Networks. "Around the world, service providers have recognized that the flexible, dynamic architecture of Force10 switches is purpose-built to seamlessly, reliably and cost effectively handle the traffic peaks that are characteristic with providing Internet access to thousands of bandwidth-hungry customers."