[LCH Announce] Transit (connectivity) supplier alterations

[Phillip Baker, Low Cost Host Ltd]

Hello,

Since the KPN outages in August 2005 (Referenced here 
http://mail.status.lchost.co.uk/pipermail/lchannounce_status.lchost.co.uk/2005-August/000030.html 
and here 
http://mail.status.lchost.co.uk/pipermail/lchannounce_status.lchost.co.uk/2005-August/000034.html) 
and then the subsequent required upgrades to our network infrastructure 
(Referenced here 
http://mail.status.lchost.co.uk/pipermail/lchannounce_status.lchost.co.uk/2005-October/000041.html) 
we have been working on a suitable replacement strategy to improve not only 
our network quality and resilience to faults at transit suppliers but to 
switch to carriers whom we can enjoy a better working relationship with.

Over the past week we have been trialing the Tiscali carrier services IP 
transit to ensure the quality of service meets not only our, but your 
exacting demands. For the last couple of days we have disabled our service 
from KPN International in order to fully test the Tiscali service over the 
weekend period.

We have thus far received no complaints relating to the Tiscali product 
during this period and would encourage any customers who feel that 
performance has been degraded in the past couple of days to get in touch so 
that we can adequately troubleshoot them. Provided no serious - and 
unresolvable - issues are reported we expect to put Tiscali into production 
in the next 6 weeks, and will switch back to KPN for the interrim period as 
of 08:30am Tuesday 2nd May 2006. Once Tiscali is in production we will be 
dropping KPN's transit services as their product quality and specifically 
their attitude has become increasingly incompatible with our business ethos 
over the past 12 months.

Towards the end of June we also plan to put transit services from NTT 
(formerly NTT/Verio) into test and then into production by the start of 
July, in order to strengthen our connectivity globally, but specifically to 
the Pan-Asian region, where NTT have their key strength.

We are also currently on planning on connecting to Telia - which as those of 
you who have been with the network for a long time will remember was 
previously connected to the network during the days when Woaftech Ltd 
operated it. Additionally, some of you will remember it as seemingly being 
the occasional cause of some issues with latency and loss to and from the 
network - I certainly know that at the time as a customer on the network 
that this appeared to be the case - however, knowing what I do now of the 
network and how it was operated in those days I can now assure you that this 
was not down to any issues with the Telia product or network itself, but 
rather down to the unfortunate way in which the service was purchased and 
delivered due to the financial constraints WoafTech found themselves under 
at the time.
Telia is planned to replace our transit from TDC who have, we feel, allowed 
service quality to marginally degrade in recent months - putting their 
product in an unfavourable position when compared to other carriers. Telia 
obviously have their strongest connectivity in the Scandinavian regions, 
which is primarily why TDC were selected to provide a partial transit 
service for our network in the first place, and so Telia should prove a 
highly suitable replacement. We presently plan to switch to Telia in 
approximately 6-10 months, allowing for our current TDC commitment to reach 
its end.

As with all transit alterations there is likely to be a brief interruption 
when changes are made lasting no more than 5 minutes. There will then follow 
a settling in period of a few days after turning up a new transit while any 
issues that are identified are resolved. We remind you that we may not 
necessarily be aware of connectivity issues affecting you and encourage you 
to report any and all anomalies you see with your connectivity - our aim is 
to provide unrivalled network performance and we can only achieve this with 
your assistance and cooperation.

For those of you concerned about your connectivity pricing being affected by 
these changes I am pleased to report that these improvements will have no 
negative impact on your current connectivity pricing for the forseeable 
future.

Exact dates and times of alterations will be mailed to this list closer to 
the time.

As always, if you have any concerns or queries please feel free to contact 
our support department at support at lchost.co.uk

Regards,
Phillip Baker
LCHost Chief Technical Officer