Over the past few years Ceitronics has wired several Internet Server Farms for various large telecommunications carriers. Internet Farms, more formally called Network Operations Centers or Co-location facilities, manage and direct Internet traffic to specific servers. Business customers lease space in an Internet Farm to store and manage data securely, and to connect at super high speeds directly into the Internet “backbone.” How Internet traffic travels around the Net into a Server Farm is a story of high speed connectivity.

The Internet is the network of networks, a fundamental connectivity framework that circles the globe via a high-speed system of telecommunications cables and satellite relays. The cable system consists of bands of DS-3, OC-12 and OC-48 trunks and T-3 lines. These trunks provide broad bandwidth and high-speed connections, ranging from 45 megabytes-per-second to 2.45 gigabytes-per-second. Satellites suspended high over the earth also carry Internet traffic through wireless telecommunications signals.

Thanks to the deregulation of the telecommuni-cations industry, carriers such as AT&T or Sprint have developed large networks spanning much of the world. Because they carry significant portions of the Internet’s total traffic, these and other large carriers are defined as the Internet backbone. They “peer” with other large carriers (Sprint may peer with British Telco, for example) to provide Internet service over the Internet fabric.

The practice of peering helps to move traffic across the Internet. A smaller, local Internet Service Provider (ISP) usually connects to the Internet “upstream” through a backbone provider. The Internet carries bits (short for binary digit), the ones and zeros that make up all digital data. The Internet is bit-blind—unable to distinguish between data that represents, for example, a music recording, an E-commerce site, or a web page. Bit-blindness means that disparate data can be sent down any typical Internet line.

TCP/IP (Transmission-Control Protocol/Internet Protocol), the software language recognized by all modems, manages transmissions on the Internet. TCP/IP breaks up the stream of bits that constitute a typical file, a document, song, picture, etc., into discrete “packets” of data to be sent out. These packets are easily digested and processed by the variety of computers, fiber optic lines, or satellite transmissions that make up the delivery pathways of the Internet. When the data packets reach their destination, a computer's modem uses TCP/IP to reassemble the file in its original form.

Illustrations
1. Anatomy of an Internet Server Farm (outside)
2. Anatomy of an Internet Server Farm POSTER! Available Down

Other Features
1. Newly awarded Ceitronics Projects
2. Origins of the Internet
3. Ceitronics Connects Internet Companies Matrix