How our network is reacting to the increase in demand and shift in traffic patterns
Published by Colt Technology Services on April 15, 2020
In the last few months we’ve seen a significant increase in traffic across our network – between 30-40% extra in data traffic and 50-60% spikes in voice traffic, with some customers requesting 20x their normal capacity.
The Colt IQ Network was built for high bandwidth, data intensive services and our decision to invest in next generation and SDN based technologies has meant we’re well placed to cope with dynamically changing demands from our customers.
Key to this has been accessing and assessing data. We’ve built an ecosystem of network performance, fault and telemetry tools, which provide drilled down visibility of traffic flow, growth, shift in patterns, and performances. As a result, we can pick up trends ahead of time.
These tools have enabled us to conduct fault scenarios, failure analysis and establish the need for additional network capacity. The systems review traffic trends and act as an input to distribute the traffic to alternative less utilised routes, helping manage traffic efficiently. The systems also allow near real-time detection of network faults, which means we can take effective and timely corrective measures.
Quality of Service (QoS) principles built into the network architecture allow us to protect customer services in the event of any congestion. Our operations teams are split around the world, proactively monitoring network traffic and capacity on a near real-time basis.
We’ve also taken several steps to provision capacity into the different layers on our network:
- High capacity private network interconnects and peering to global Tier 1 network operators
- 100G ports to top internet exchange points – LINX, LONAP, FRANCE-IX, DECIX and AMSIX
- Network backbone capacity upgrades: multiple 100G ports to scale traffic increase in the core packet network and similarly, phenomenal uplift of the underlying photonic/optical network that enables multiple 100G wave/spectrum services for large customers
- Upgrade and augmentation of access network routers for additional edge port capacity to serve Ethernet and IP services across 400 DCs and sites around the globe.
The increase in traffic is unlike anything we’ve seen before – our customers are having to respond quickly to an ever-changing situation and key to this is connectivity. We’re continuing to closely monitor traffic and utilisation across our network around the world, helping keep customers connected in these incredibly trying times.
Vivek Gaur, Vice President, Network Engineering
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