Building E-Commerce

December 15, 1998

With the entrance of players like Sprint and MCI WorldCom into the ISP arena, a new class of ISP has emerged: the nationwide backbone provider. These players have world-class telecommunications backbones in place and these are used to connect to the original Internet NAPs (Network Access Points) and the new MAEs (Metropolitan Area Ethernets). Some larger ISP players, like PSINet and DIGEX also have nationwide backbones, but theyıre still a step or two behind MCI WorldCom, for example.

Should you automatically use a nationwide provider to host your site? Certainly not, but you should find out how these players interact with the hosting service you do choose use because at some point both will have to work together. Aside from acting as hosting services, these big guys also sell connections to smaller hosting companies. How these smaller hosting companies have implemented these connections is absolutely critical if youıre looking for a fast connection.

Find out how the hosting service connects to its larger service provider. Then find out how that provider links to the Internetıs various NAPs and MAEs. The more direct connections this larger player can boast of, the better. Once youıre satisfied with that level of access, examine how your hosting service interconnects. Most will offer you T1 service, but how many T1 lines do they actually have? Many rent only a single T1 and share that line among multiple customers. Find out the customer-to-T1 ratio. The more customers, the more likely youıll encounter congestion.

A good rule of thumb here is that with the packet-switched design of the Internet, a single T1 connection will run efficiently for up to 14 customers. Again, this is because the Internetıs performance cloud is really just a giant mass of interconnected packet-switching routers. Customers generally burst traffic through these digital leased lines, leaving them idle most of the time, and therefore usable by someone else.

Similarly, consider geography. The closer your hosting providerıs point of presence is to you, the better. Connections will encounter less interference and your leased-line costs will be cheaper. True, their method of connecting to the larger backbones is a consideration, but look carefully before committing to a leased line. Just because one ISP may offer you T1 speeds to the Internet, doesnıt mean youıll get a fast connection if they have 100,000 customers and use a single T3 to connect to MCIıs backbone. Another ISP may offer similar connectivity, but its T3 connection may contain significantly less traffic. They may even have redundant T3s.

Make sure the hosting contender shows you its usage reports. These bandwidth statistics let you see how much traffic the ISP is running, to which backbone provider, how many layers lie between it and the backbone provider and what its peak traffic times are. These usage reports should cover at least a monthıs worth of normal network traffic. Avoid times when general Internet traffic is unusually high or low, and make sure they cover both incoming as well as outgoing lines.

Last, determine what your company needs to accomplish with this server. Many IT managers mistakenly assume that just because itıs a Web storefront, only the in-bound connection from the rest of the Web is important. They make sure that this is handled by a T3 and then purchase only dial-up or ISDN service to allow their in-house people to connect to the commerce server. Remember that commerce is by nature a workflow solution. Taking payments and fulfilling orders may very well mean that your employees will need faster access than your customers.

In short, the advantage of using a hosting service is that Web and telco bandwidth issues are a huge headache and the hosting company will handle that for you. Negotiating usable service contracts to these backbone providers is an extremely complicated process and becoming more so as customers learn more about the issues of quality of service and disaster recovery (see below). A good hosting service insulates you from these problems and lets you get straight to the issues of building the server.