Datacentre locations - is Docklands better?

xgarb · 5th August 2008

Hi,

Way back when I started web design it was pretty much Docklands only as far as recommended hosting was concerned... now there are datacentres popping up all over the country and I'm wondering if there is still an advantage to Docklands over say Bluesquare or Manchester etc..

Thanks,
xgarb

JamieBeeston · 5th August 2008

Given most of the UK's transit to the Rest of World (ROW) and the vast majority of uk Peering (providers linking to each other) is in Docklands, I'd say yes.. it's still the premium.. but it is priced accordingly.

JamesSykes · 5th August 2008

Yes and no. Connectivity is your primary concern when looking out of London but if you get that right then there's no issues with locating outside.

I believe Bluesquare is quite well serviced when it comes to connectivity and my testing here shows that it's only an additional 2ms or so difference between London and Maidenhead which is nothing really.

London has only gotten so big because of the convenience of connecting to others. If it were cheap to lay fibre anywhere in the UK then we would have DC's all over the place.

UH-Matt · 5th August 2008

If your pitching a premium service then I tend to find the docklands name is a good seller... (managed services and such)...

Depends what your doing I guess.

JamieBeeston · 5th August 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by UH-Matt

If your pitching a premium service then I tend to find the docklands name is a good seller... (managed services and such)...

Depends what your doing I guess.

Totally..

If you're after lower cost, then london isnt the place to be, the prices here are admittedly much higher..

If cost isnt your primary concern, then there is no reason to go anywhere other than Docklands really unless you want to be physically geographically close to your kit.

J

othellotech · 5th August 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by xgarb

I'm wondering if there is still an advantage to Docklands over say

If you want to be at the "heart" of the internet in the UK, then you need to be in E14 which is where all the traffic meets at places like LINX. Even the "out of town" DCs ultimately get fed from Docklands.

It depends on your business requirements, the further away you are the longer the data will take to travel, and the more potentials for outage there are, but the cheaper (sometimes) it becomes.

xgarb · 5th August 2008

Thanks for all your replies. The site is a UK based forum which doesn't make a lot of money so cheaper options are better!

I wanted to check that 'out of London' hosts weren't going to be markedly different and it seems for my needs they won't be.

Think I'm going to run with this.. http://www.bytemark.co.uk/page/Live/...dedicated/atom for a few months to see if it's fast enough with the Atom processor.

TDMWeb · 6th August 2008

There are advantages in having some presence in a location which is independent of London connectivity (not too many of those though). The sites we use which are out of London give pings only 1ms or so higher than London (if that sometimes), which is really not relevant.

Personally I'd say the overall datacentre specs, reliability, way it's operated, etc is more important than outright location.

midnightsoftwar · 6th August 2008

I think the Docklands are mostly 'better' in image only, rather than actual tech specs. Yes, most transit terminates there, but the difference between there and outside London is minimal.

JamieBeeston · 6th August 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by midnightsoftwar

I think the Docklands are mostly 'better' in image only, rather than actual tech specs. Yes, most transit terminates there, but the difference between there and outside London is minimal.

Name me one commercial site anywhere in the UK with better specs than SoV?

danfoster · 6th August 2008

Isn't telecity manchester widely regarded as a better facility than the ex-redbus ones?

JamieBeeston · 6th August 2008

Ones?

I asked about SoV specifically, which as far as I'm informed is the best in the country, on equal par with HSBC's own..

This was before powergate though, so I dont know if that's better spec'd again.

This is going on what our Account Mgr / Sales Force tell me though..

dazmanultra · 6th August 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by JamieBeeston

Name me one commercial site anywhere in the UK with better specs than SoV?

I'd have thought Level3 Goswell Road and Equinix Slough give it a run for it's money. Everywhere has it's upsides and downsides, you just have to fit that in with the business you're trying to do and the market you're trying to meet.

Maff · 6th August 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by JamieBeeston

Ones?

This is going on what our Account Mgr / Sales Force tell me though..

Would you expect your account manager to tell you anything less??!!!

"No, actually Jamie we are not the best spec DC, but our competitor xyz are"

edb49 · 6th August 2008

There's a large installed base in Docklands - it used to be the only realistic option to host things, and certainly used to be one of the cheapest when Redbus were doing racks for £200-250/month.

There are quite a few locations appearing outside London now, which offer a higher quality service for the same price.

There are very few applications that need the very slightly improved latency that Docklands can offer. I am aware a bank with an automated trading system needed sub 0.5ms latency, and so had to locate this in Docklands.

Your average Joe Bloggs on his ADSL will have latency in the 20-30ms range, so even adding 15ms to do a "worst case" Docklands to John O'Groats wouldn't be a massive penalty. It wouldn't affect any applications like VOIP, gaming, etc by a noticable amount.

John O'Groats is an extreme example, I would imagine Manchester is in the < 5ms range for those with fibre.