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Zero-Downtime Network™

The Rackspace network has been engineered from the ground up to accommodate the high-availability demands of our customers' mission-critical Web applications. Our Cisco-powered, Zero-Downtime Network™ with unique self-healing attributes is based on multiple bandwidth providers and BGP4 (Border Gateway Protocol) for best case routing.  This ensures the data reaches the end user in the fastest, most efficient manner possible.  This allows us to deliver on our 100% infrastructure availability guarantee.

Rackspace provides a fully resilient and redundant network infrastructure.  Our entirely switched network employs Cisco chassis based switches running HSRP (N+1 hot failover) to ensure that data can be routed even in the event of device or link failure.

 

Guaranteed Packet Delivery

Our providers are paid to make sure that packets of information are delivered quickly and efficiently to your end users. This offers significant advantages over simply peering with the major backbones. Peering agreements rarely include Service Level Agreements (SLAs) so no one is accountable for lost packets at congested exchange points. Because Rackspace has SLAs with all of our network partners, we are able to guarantee that all packets will leave our network at full speed.

Bandwidth Utilization

Rackspace's substantial bandwidth capacity allows us to accommodate even the largest spikes in traffic. To ensure rapid delivery of content, we continuously add network connectivity and new routes. Low bandwidth utilization allows for maximum uptime and ensures our customers never experience network degradation, even if multiple transit partners experience simultaneous outages.

Network Providers

Rackspace doesn’t rely on any single connectivity provider. Instead, we employ a multi-provider strategy. This creates natural redundancy in our network architecture and ensures that packets can leave our network from multiple points. Additionally, if one or more provider experiences congestion or downtime, traffic can be rerouted through other network partners until the issue is solved. We work closely with leading telecommunications providers to build and maintain our world-class Tier 1 network with a total of 6 Gbps bandwidth.

The Rackspace Tier 1 network has significant advantages over Tier 2 providers, whose network is likely to suffer from more latency and packet loss which will affect the speed of your web site, which in turn could affect your business.  With Rackspace you get a Tier 1 network, this guarantees you your own dedicated connection, zero contention ratio, no packet loss and no downtime.  When speaking to other hosting companies, ask if they can give you the same promises.

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