IMC's Broadband Network Infrastructure
Obviously, because our applications are accessed over, and our conversion process is often enabled by, our broadband lines, we have to ensure they are physically available, operationally reliable and powerful enough to meet customer's SLAs. This requires a robust and redundant network infrastructure as well as sophisticated network management tools.
We provide three redundant network paths from our Rocket Center data center to our own Virtual Private Network (VPN) and then to our customers' various facilities. Verizon provides a fractional DS3 link, Quest provides multiple T1s, and a local carrier, Atlantic Broadband, provides a fiber optic connection. If any of these networks (or portions thereof) fail, our routers automatically route data over the remaining best paths on the other two networks to guarantee requisite uptime and throughput.
For select government agencies we also enable access to the NPRNet federal government "sensitive" rated secure network.
What's more, we monitor all networks with network monitoring tools that track bandwidth use. If congestion is slowing performance, we know it usually before the customer does and can recalibrate the networks to generate sufficient bandwidth. Latency of the IMC VPN is between 15 and 20 milliseconds and varies depending on Internet traffic, the bandwidth of the customer's network link to our VPN, and the density of the data being transmitted – files, images, e-mails, etc.
At present we purposely oversubscribe our networks to ensure customer satisfaction, but we have a network service plan in place that lets us scale up with even more bandwidth without reprovisioning which, of course, speeds time-to-network for customers.
We also manage our network security. Administrators create and manage user IDs and encrypt our entire infrastructure with end-point equipment.