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Nxs Internet BV is one of the largest
independent Internet hosting providers in
the Netherlands. Based in Amsterdam, the
company has grown rapidly over the last
few years as more and more organisations
and individuals employ the Internet to
promote goods and services. In this highly
competitive market where service levels
are crucial to customer retention, Nxs
offers a range of services including
domain registration, streaming and
dedicated hosting. It currently has over
50,000 registered domain names and
5,000 customers including the Dutch
government and local companies such as
Debitel and Universal Music.
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Until recently, Nxs Internet operated from
four separate locations which housed
more than 1,000 physical servers for
customers to deliver content to the
Internet. These included the company’s
head office and three data centres; DCG
Amsterdam, Global Switch and Telecity.
Each building contained a Local Area
Network (LAN) comprising ProCurve 5400
series switches connected by Gigabit
Ethernet trunks and the main data centre
had two core switches and numerous
rack-switches.
However, when the cost of renting the
Telecity data centre became unacceptable,
Nxs Internet decided to consolidate the
data centre’s hardware and services to
DCG Amsterdam and upgrade this facility
as well as its main network
infrastructure. It was thought that by
consolidating and upgrading its network
infrastructure, working efficiency,
management and ongoing maintenance
costs would considerably improve.
“Although our original infrastructure had
served us well in the past, the transfer
was an ideal opportunity to review its
limitations and plan for future growth.
We required a new future proofed
network to satisfy the demand for higher
performance and to ensure against
disaster recovery. We also needed a
network that was flexible enough to
support our future growth strategy,”
explains Henk Nijland, technical
manager, Nxs Internet BV.
To sustain excellent service levels and
service continuity under all
circumstances, Nxs Internet’s new
architecture had to be highly reliable and
provide enhanced connectivity and
appropriate levels of scalability. It also
had to retain the existing redundancy
safeguards and provide an acceptable
price-performance ratio.
“Although the original core switch
within our DCG Amsterdam data centre
provided some redundancy, we wanted
the Global Switch data centre to remain
our primary contingency for disaster
recovery,” adds Nijland.
“Under normal circumstances, it is
completely redundant but, in the event
of a complete system failure within DCG
Amsterdam, we required any new switch
within Global Switch to offer a range of
opportunities for redundant sharing of
critical applications. This provision for
disaster recover is essential if we are to
maintain a fast and reliable connection
to the Internet for our customers.”
Nxs Internet therefore approached
several leading networking vendors
including ProCurve Networking and its
local partner, ISPshop, asking them to
propose an appropriate networking
solution to satisfy its needs.
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Based on the industry-proven ProCurve
ProVision ASICTM, the foundation of the
networking solution is centred around the
next-generation ProCurve 8200 series core
switch. The 8200 has been used to upgrade
existing ProCurve 5400 series switches
within its main data centre, head office and
the Global Switch data centre. ProCurve
2600 series switches and ProCurve 2800
series switches provide intelligence at the
edge of the network and 10 Gigabit Ethernet
trunking offers high-density port
connectivity and enhanced performance.
“We have worked closely with ProCurve over
the last six years and chose its solutions over
other leading vendors because they are
highly reliable, offer an excellent priceperformance
ratio and are future-proofed.
We were also interested in the new Q-in-Q
functionality (IEEE 802.1ad) offered by
ProCurve. This is a very interesting
technology within data centre
environments,” comments Nijland.
Q-in-Q functionality increases the
scalability of Ethernet networks by
providing a hierarchical structure
connecting multiple LANs on high-speed
networks. It allows multiple bridged
networks to share the same physical
network whilst keeping each network
completely independent. Q-in-Q
functionality is especially useful to connect
many LANs in a large campus or metro area
or to provide separate logical networks
running only one physical corporate
network.
ProCurve switches are ideal to support Q-in-
Q functionality. They are easily managed,
highly secure and provide the performance
required by its network infrastructure. In
addition, they come with a range of
connectivity options and a comprehensive
selection of networking features whilst
advanced management tools reduce
complexity and lower the total cost of
ownership (TCO).
To ensure effective network management,
Nxs Internet employs ProCurve Manager
Plus (PCM+) software. This complete
Windows-based network management
solution allows administrators to configure,
update, monitor and troubleshoot ProCurve
devices centrally from its main office with
easy-to-use, information-rich screens.
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Recently, Nxs Internet opened the doors of
its refurbished DCG Amsterdam data centre
together with a new fully operational
ProCurve Adaptive Network infrastructure.
The centre has an area of 600 square metres
and currently contains 88 server cabinets
each capable of holding 15 servers; 1,320
servers in total.
“Our upgraded network fits our growth
strategy perfectly. Within the limited space
available, its scalability will allow us to
introduce up to 150 server cabinets and the
additional servers therein will help us to
cater for the ever-increasing demand for our
services,” declares Nijland.
“With the reliable ProCurve 8200 switches
and the increased connectivity, we have
witnessed a significant increase in
performance. Our customers are easily
serving more content to the Internet,”
concludes Nijland.
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Nxs Internet, a Dutch Internet hosting provider, needed a highly reliable, high-performance networking solution that offered high availability, redundancy and scalability to satisfy the growing demands of its business.
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- Assess the limitations of its existing Local Area Network (LAN).
- Consult with ProCurve Networking and its local partner, ISPshop.
- Implement a new adaptive ProCurve networking infrastructure based on ProCurve 8200 series core switches.
- Deploy ProCurve management software to improve manageability.
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- A highly reliable, high-performance and secure network with high availability.
- A unified core-to-edge network with a shared platform architecture based on a tested reliability record.
- Reduced complexity from a unified infrastructure and shared management platform.
- A scalable network to meet future IT demands.
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- The highly reliable, highperformance, scalable network ensures that Nxs Internet can continue to increase business growth.
- A high level of redundancy protects Nxs Internet’s critical applications thereby ensuring business continuity.
- A reliable, high performance network ensures service quality and customer retention.
- High availability provides peace of mind by safeguarding network operations.
- Reduced complexity ensures that Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) will fall significantly.
- Nxs Internet will benefit from lower on-going support costs due to the core switches’ lifetime warranty♦.
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Primary hardware
Primary software
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Industry sector: ISPshop
Name: Nxs Internet BV
Headquarters: Amersfoort, The Netherlands
Telephone: +31 6 4022 6227
Number of employees: 5
Business: IT solutions provider
Products: IT hardware and software
www.ispshop.nl
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The ProCurve Networking business unit of HP delivers wired and wireless enterprise networking products, services and solutions. The foundation for ProCurve's business model is the Adaptive Networks strategy in which networks are adaptive to users, applications and an organization's needs. ProCurve was positioned in the challenger quadrant in research and advisory firm Gartner, Inc.'s 2006 Magic Quadrant Report for Global Campus LANs and is the No. 2 networking company worldwide measured in both ports and Ethernet switch market revenue according to Dell'Oro Group.
♦For as long as you own the product, with next-business-day advance replacement (available in most countries). The following products and their related family modules have a one-year warranty with extensions available: The ProCurve Routing Switch 9300m Series, ProCurve Switch 8100fl Series, ProCurve Access Control Server 745wl and ProCurve Network Access Controller 800. Stand-alone software may have a different warranty duration. For details, refer to the ProCurve Software Licence, Warranty and Support booklet at www.procurve.eu/warranty
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