Allow us to introduce: The Project Backbone Europe
Anexia is facing the biggest investment that has ever been done in our infrastructure and network: The expansion of our Backbone Europe. This project is a milestone for the Anexia network team and represents a tremendous leap forward. The project Backbone Europe allows us to be there for our customers more than ever, guiding them forward with smart investments and advanced technology.
The Backbone Europe from Anexia, extending from Vienna to Frankfurt and in the medium term to Amsterdam, has existed for many years. The current expansion phase is designed to significantly strengthen the network, which includes a hardware “refresh” as well as a capacity upgrade. To this end, we are working together with the service integrator Xantaro, which not only supports us with the best hardware, but is a partner whom also shares our philosophy of technical excellence.
Hard facts and what they mean
One of the main objectives of the project Backbone Europe is to provide us with an even thicker skin against attacks. The expansion, with a distributed and largely self-sufficient infrastructure, puts us in the position to be able to avert large DDoS attacks. This gives our customers even more security – and a more peaceful night’s sleep (also at peak times). Especially in the area of e-commerce or streaming, customers rely on providers with fast and fail-safe connections. In order to provide this high-quality hosting services to even more customers, we tripled Anexia’s external connection through the expansion. The resulting full automation increases the scalability of the network. Particularly close attention is given to the fully redundant connection of different carriers and Internet exchange points.
- Thanks to the support of Xantaro, we are working with advanced technologies and use, for example, MX routers from Juniper Networks with a capacity of more than 2 Tbps.
- With the expansion of the Backbone Europe, the connections between our core locations in Vienna, Frankfurt and Nuremberg will be increased to multiple 100GE. Two-way redundant DWDM systems are installed in the metros in order to meet the growing demand for 10 and 100GE wavelengths.
- The Backbone Europe will have over 1 Tbps edge capacity with connections to carriers such as Telia Carrier, NTT Communications and Deutsche Telekom, a 100GE peering port at the DE-CIX ─ the world’s largest internet exchange point, as well as direct connections to various internet providers (PNIs) with more than 100 Gbps.
By expanding the European network and Anexia’s backbone, not only do our European customers benefit, but customers from the USA do as well, since they are the ones primarily taking advantage of this infrastructure. In addition, the project Backbone Europe serves as a blueprint for further, planned expansion stages of Anexia’s entire World Wide Cloud (WWC) network.
Expansion and automation work hand-in-hand
The expansion of the Anexia Backbone Europe goes hand-in-hand with the network’s full automation. What does that mean?
By the end of the year and for the first time ever on the market, Anexia offers the opportunity for selected customers to gradually use the self-service of the Anexia Engine as well for network settings and bandwidth orders. These can be automatically provisioned and are made available within seconds. As a result, the network can be quickly and flexibly adapted to the requirements of the customer, since services can be booked or cancelled at any time and within minutes. We call it: Network as a Service!
And this is how the new Backbone Europe will look on the map:
Roll-out and European Road Trip
Theo Voss, Head of Network and Infrastructure, is responsible for projects at Anexia. He and his team have been busy preparing the roll-out of the project Backbone Europe over the last few months.
Theo, how are you holding up?
(Laughs) Yeah, this is actually a huge project that my team and I have been implementing over the last few months and will continue to implement. But no worries, we’re not letting it get to us. We’re too professional for that. Because, of course: Those who do their planning well, have an easier time during implementation. We have planned quickly, but also precisely – a fact which will benefit us during the roll-out.
Tell us what will happen in the next few weeks?
We expect the hardware to be delivered to Vienna in just a few days. Practically Anexia’s entire network team will then “rebuild” the Backbone in several days on-site in one of our cages, in order to put the devices into operation, configure them and test them. From there, we’ll then fan out. We have set up several small teams to take a road trip through Europe in order to install the devices at the respective locations. And then the only thing left to do is to switch it on.
How many people from your team are involved?
Of course, I can’t send all the team members on the road to manage the daily tasks. We will take at least three teams with us.
And we’re very happy that you’ve agreed to take us on the road trip! So stay tuned and follow our Instagram Story about how Theo and his team are making their way through Europe. You can find out when, how and where on Anexia’s social media channels!