DavesnothereNo-BHELL-ity DOES have its Advantages
join:2009-06-15
START&Cogeco
kudos:6 | reply to ThaiGuy
Re: Where are the SERVERS ? - Summary said by ThaiGuy:This is a good thread.
Recent events have proved that users cannot rely on service reliability statements on a providers web site.
Unless they are prepared to go into detail about their network setup and redundancy plans, their sales pitches should be taken with a pinch of salt.
There is a good overview of Priority and weight at »en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRV_record
After certain recent events, I am inclined to agree.
Part of this thread's raison d'etre is to point out and clarify such info about common VoIP providers.
And thanks for the link. - I should have thought of that myself, however Arne was handy at the time.  |
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DavesnothereNo-BHELL-ity DOES have its Advantages
join:2009-06-15
START&Cogeco
kudos:6
1 edit |
SOME MORE INFO about several providers' servers' locations :
»Re: CC Disaster |
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 VexorgTR
join:2012-08-27
Sheffield Lake, OH
kudos:1
 ·Callcentric
·callwithus
 ·CenturyLink
 ·Clear Wireless
 ·Time Warner Cable
| reply to Davesnothere
What would be way more interesting is to know the actual make up of the data center.
Technically, I could pop a PBX in a place, hook it to some sip trunks, and call it a backup CO.
I'm sure there's some providers with 1 or 2 mega centers.... and others with 4 or 5 micro centers.
I would guess the mega center would work better overall. |
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nitzanPremium,VIP
join:2008-02-27
kudos:2 | said by VexorgTR:Technically, I could pop a PBX in a place, hook it to some sip trunks, and call it a backup CO. And you'd still be more reliable than a provider with NO disaster recovery facility at all.
Hurricanes aside, can you imagine what would happen to a single-site provider if a fire destroyed their entire facility? they wouldn't be down for days - they'd be down for months or possibly forever. Having multiple geo locations is not about how big you are - it's about being able to remain in business when disaster strikes. |
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DavesnothereNo-BHELL-ity DOES have its Advantages
join:2009-06-15
START&Cogeco
kudos:6
1 edit | said by nitzan:....Hurricanes aside, can you imagine what would happen to a single-site provider if a fire destroyed their entire facility? they wouldn't be down for days - they'd be down for months or possibly forever.
Having multiple geo locations is not about how big you are - it's about being able to remain in business when disaster strikes.
And hurricanes CAN cause fires, water damage from sprinkler systems, and of course direct flooding.
CC's equipment escaped any of that - THIS time.
But look at that NYC neighbourhood where a ruptured gas main during Sandy's strike was believed to have set off a string of fires destroying about 100 homes ! |
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VexorgTR
join:2012-08-27
Sheffield Lake, OH
kudos:1 Reviews:
·Callcentric
·callwithus
·CenturyLink
·Clear Wireless
·Time Warner Cable
| reply to nitzan
said by nitzan:Hurricanes aside, can you imagine what would happen to a single-site provider if a fire destroyed their entire facility? they wouldn't be down for days - they'd be down for months or possibly forever. Having multiple geo locations is not about how big you are - it's about being able to remain in business when disaster strikes.
I think the other part of the argument is Quality over Quantity. I have CallCentric and some other guys too all in my PBX. CallCentric in our opinion gives the best sound, and best call completion. What happens many times is my PBX tries to call with the "Other guys"... then after that call flops for whatever reason, it completes it with CallCentric. If you have 30K clients, your secondary and primary servers really need some power. Otherwise you could end up with 'Call cannot be completed' I don't want to start another fight, but the "call cannot be completed" crew is a "more redundant" company discussed earlier in the thread.
What got CallCentric so popular in the first place was Quality... for a long darn time, it just worked great. Of all the providers in my PBX, CC still is the favorite. However, the "Other Guys" did their job keeping the lines of communication open during the outages.
You could have 30 data centers, but that doesn't guarantee good quality. It doesn't hurt though.
I've said many times, provider redundancy is nice, but as a business user of VOIP, I have to show some responsibility for my own redundancy too. |
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 XCOMdigitalnUllPremium
join:2002-06-10
Spring, TX
·flowroute
·Comcast
·voip.ms
·Callcentric
·SIPBRI
| This is not a case of user responsibility. Do not try to flip the coin. This is a service providers responsibility.... ATLEAST TRY and get ready for what was heading up their way. This is a case of bad choices, poor implementation, and lack of caring for their customers. I fully understand the situation and how bad it is but that does not mean that they had no time to prepare for what was coming.
This is going down the drain quick.
I am done with this subject.
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[nUll@dcypher ~]$ |
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 espaethDigital PlumberPremium,MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN
kudos:2
·Vitelity VOIP
| reply to Davesnothere
said by Davesnothere:Part of this thread's raison d'etre is to point out and clarify such info about common VoIP providers. Still with no summary...
The part of this thread that is potentially misleading is that it tends to suggest that if your provider has geographic redundancy you're covered. That may not be the case.
- DID outages can still occur even if the provider soft-switch is not located in an outage area. Every provider listed in this thread has taken a hit to DID service on the east coast. You can move the SIP portion of call control pretty much anywhere with IP connectivity, but the gateway back to the TDM world has a physical location requirement.
- Even with geographic distribution of resources, there are still single elements of failure. Notably in the VoIP market, that's going to be the accounting database. Providers need to know if you're an authorized user, and if you have funds available to complete a call. When operating multiple nodes, that means they all have to agree on customer credential and balance information. This is typically handled by either having all call processing nodes point to a central DB, or leveraging DB replication functions to distribute the DB availability. The key problem in either case would be the introduction of data corruption.
- Depending on your provider's chosen E911 vendor, E911 services may be linked to a single point of failure.
- I've noticed at least one provider here is using GoDaddy for domain registration. If you do a cursory google search you will find it is ridiculously easy to get a domain suspended with GoDaddy. If someone were to craft a social engineering attack for a Friday night, there is a very good chance the NS records for the domain will remain pointed to "NS1 & NS2.SUSPENDED-FOR.SPAM-AND-ABUSE.COM" until they can take it up with a manager in the Abuse department on Monday morning. |
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| reply to Davesnothere
For me as a small business owner, voip provider uptime is more important than quality in a disaster. Still I would not accept poor quality as a trade off. I have at least 5 single points of failure within my office. My voip providers vulnerability just adds to the problem. Nobody dies if my office is closed for a few days. It hurts my pocket book but there is a limit to how much redundancy/reliability I can afford. Callcentric's record is good enough for me. This last month has taught me a lot and I am better prepared for what might come next.
I live in earthquake country. I never expected to apologize to my customers for a hurricane. If everyone one in the neighborhood is having power and phone problems my customers understand. When Sandy hit and I lost my phones, my customers had no clue as to what was happening. For local business it would be better to not be offline at all but if you have to go down, go down with your customers. So now I am susceptible to both PG&E outages and Coned outages. Still the utiliy companies are fairly reliable and that is what I can afford. I'm sticking with Callcentric for now. They fill a niche in the market I am in. About once a year we get an unexpected day off .. I mean a power outage.
BYOD VOIP is not for sissies! Buck up or get a POTS line. Wait? I have had way to many POTS lines fall off the telephone pole behind my office.... |
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DavesnothereNo-BHELL-ity DOES have its Advantages
join:2009-06-15
START&Cogeco
kudos:6
2 edits | reply to Davesnothere
Here's an interesting and related anecdote about a VoIP provider called Localphone :
»Re: CC Disaster
I had not heard about this company before earlier during the current thread.
Here : »Re: Where are the SERVERS ? - Summary |
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MartinMVoIP.msPremium,VIP
join:2008-07-21 | reply to espaeth
said by espaeth:- DID outages can still occur even if the provider soft-switch is not located in an outage area. Every provider listed in this thread has taken a hit to DID service on the east coast. You can move the SIP portion of call control pretty much anywhere with IP connectivity, but the gateway back to the TDM world has a physical location requirement.
This apply to all VoIP providers, without exception.
quote:
- Even with geographic distribution of resources, there are still single elements of failure. Notably in the VoIP market, that's going to be the accounting database. Providers need to know if you're an authorized user, and if you have funds available to complete a call. When operating multiple nodes, that means they all have to agree on customer credential and balance information. This is typically handled by either having all call processing nodes point to a central DB, or leveraging DB replication functions to distribute the DB availability. The key problem in either case would be the introduction of data corruption.
That is pure speculation. Database corruption can happens as easily on a centralized setup than a distributed. At least if it's distributed, it's easy to update database resolution to one that isn't corrupted. In our case, it's distributed, and we do not have a single point of failure. Worst case scenario would be if we had to run a Read Only database while we move a master, VoIP operations would still be operational, but users wouldn't be able to modify their settings until a new master is up.
quote:
- Depending on your provider's chosen E911 vendor, E911 services may be linked to a single point of failure.
In VoIP.ms case, all VoIP servers have independent interconnection with the 911 provider, they are not dependant on a Proxy or single point of failure. Same applies for Termination and Origination.
quote:
- I've noticed at least one provider here is using GoDaddy for domain registration. If you do a cursory google search you will find it is ridiculously easy to get a domain suspended with GoDaddy. If someone were to craft a social engineering attack for a Friday night, there is a very good chance the NS records for the domain will remain pointed to "NS1 & NS2.SUSPENDED-FOR.SPAM-AND-ABUSE.COM" until they can take it up with a manager in the Abuse department on Monday morning.
VoIP uses go Daddy SSL certificates and as a partner to nic.ms, the entity that controls our domain. Again this is speculation, there are easier ways to use social Engineering and DDoS attacks to bring down a service, as we have seen recently, but I will not publish "tips" in a public forum.
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Martin - VoIP.ms |
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