Our Network Infrastructure

The LONAP network spans across four datacentres in London's Docklands area:

Telehouse Docklands, North Building
Telehouse Docklands, East Building
Telecity, 6-7 Harbour Exchange
Telecity, Sovereign House

Connecting these sites is a 10 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) fibre ring which provides resiliency and diversity to minimise the impact of a fibre cut. All the LONAP exchange hardware is housed in dedicated cabinets leased directly from the datacentre operators. This minimises reliance on third parties to operate our exchange.

Each of these core sites houses a Cisco Catalyst 6500-series modular switch powered by a Supervisor 720 (sup720) engine, two power supplies and a range of 6700-series fabric-enabled line cards to support both fibre and copper gigabit connections, and 10 Gigabit connections for members and the fibre ring.

Network Map

The LONAP Network

Traffic

Our network switches over 4.5 Gbps of traffic at peak times and has 10 Gbps of inter-site capacity available at this point in time. Each of the switches has a 40 Gbps backplane fabric giving an even greater capacity for intra-site switching. You can view our live traffic statistics (updated every 5 minutes).

Our infrastructure

Cisco Catalyst 6500-series infrastructure powered by Supervisor 720 Engines in all sites using 6700-series fibre and copper Gigabit and Ten Gigabit Ethernet line cards with switch fabric on board. This ensures more of the intra-site switching traffic is transferred from member-to-member without even reaching the switch 40 Gbps backplanes. All the sites are connected via a 10 Gbps fibre ring ensuring sufficient inter-site capacity.

10 Gigabit connections to members allow those with requirements above 1 Gbps to connect safe in the knowledge they will not be filling up their ports unexpectedly during a peak of traffic. We also supply n x 1Gbps port channels for those with an expansion requirement exceeding 1 Gbps but without the wish to proceed to a full 10 Gbps connection.

Connections to LONAP can be made over copper or fibre to suit your requirements depending on speeds, cable distance or expansion plans.

LONAP is an established exchange which has been running for over 10 years. Connecting to LONAP means joining a stable and well run exchange with a devoted membership. As a not-for-profit company our members benefit from our continued growth which is designed to best serve their interests.

Members based in multiple PoPs are welcome to connect to LONAP in more than one location to increase their service resiliency. Members are permitted to pass traffic between their own ports and can even request private VLANs between their own ports or to other members, such as for DSL aggregation. We would remind prospective members that the LONAP exchange is not a replacement for an inter-site link and as a membership organisation our services are provided on a 'best efforts' basis. As such, relying on solely a LONAP connection for mission critical requirements would not be advised, despite our excellent reputation for service and stability.

LONAP has on-site spares of much of the critical equipment which powers our network to assist us in responding quickly to any problems that may arise. This speeds up the time to resolution and helps to avoid delays caused by vendor replacements arriving on site.

A full off-network 'out-of-band' connections at all of our sites ensuring we can address any problems remotely without waiting for staff to be on site. LONAP has direct contracts with all the datacentre operators we work with and as such as also have access to on-site staff who are available 24x7 to service our needs.

All LONAP sites are datacentres with internal UPS and generator backup facilities. In addition to this, LONAP has deployed its own Powerware 9125-series UPS systems with extended battery packs, helping our members stay connected even if parts of the datacentres experience problems.