MWEB boasts 10Gbps network after upgrade
SA ISP, MWEB, said on Monday that it has concluded a four-phase network build and upgrade process to improve network performance and increase redundancy.
Rudi Jansen, MWEB CEO, said the first phase was to upgrade MWEB’s link between Johannesburg and Cape Town.
“We’ve gone live with the upgraded link between our Victory Park data centre in Johannesburg and our data centre in Parow, Cape Town. This upgrade represents a 400% increase in throughput and we’re now running a 10Gbps network between these centres,” he said.
The group said that the upgrading of the line provided improved performance for Cape Town customers who hosted email with MWEB, which was stored at its Victory Park data centre, as well as Johannesburg subscribers accessing content sites hosted at MWEB’s data centre in Cape Town.
Jansen said that phase two saw MWEB go live with its Durban link into Telkom’s IP Connect (IPC) service, which provided access to last mile ADSL infrastructure. Migrating Durban subscribers from the Johannesburg IPC to the Durban IPC link, improved the ADSL experience for Durban customers who were being served from Johannesburg.
“The investment was significant to ensure that the experience in each of the regions is the same as in the others,” said Jansen.
MWEB said it would also create connections from the vendor neutral Teraco Data Centres in Isando (Gauteng) and Rondebosch (Western Cape), to the Teraco data centre in Durban.
As part of phase 2, Jansen said MWEB’s10Gbps national backbone network had a link between Johannesburg and Durban.
A further 10Gbps link from Durban to Cape Town completed the national backbone ring and further enhanced redundancy in the core network.
“We now have the ability to route national and international traffic over these links at great speed. With multiple international links, multiple IPC connections and fail-over hardware in all these locations, our redundancy has been boosted significantly,” Jansen said.
Phase three would offer open peering options for other ISPs in Durban at the neutral Teraco data centre in Durban, providing faster access onto the MWEB network.
“MWEB invites ISPs in Durban to meet and peer with the company at Teraco while we’re waiting for the Durban Internet Exchange (DINX) to be established,” the chief executive said.
MWEB noted that it had also added significant international bandwidth managed by Seacom.
“Our total international capacity is now in excess of 23Gbps, across the Seacom and SAT3 cables. Not relying on a single link will further enhance the network performance. We will grow our capacity even further in the coming months, adding new cables when they become available,” Jansen said.
“These kinds of improvements take us closer to the type of internet experience we want all South Africans to have, where customers are able to experience true triple-play services. We believe that our uncapped, un-throttled internet offering started that journey of breaking mindsets on restricted internet usage and these ongoing network enhancements provide increased stability and faster access to online content and services,” he said.
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