Virtual Private Network (VPN) / Point to Point / Multipoint

C4L has pioneered its own Multipoint services using the latest in VLAN technology to enable companies requiring reliable, high bandwidth connections between two or more sites/POPs.

Our leased line services are available as 2Mb, 10Mb, 34Mb, 45Mb, 100Mb, 155Mb, 1Gb and 10Gb. All speeds can be delivered on a local or long distance basis, which means your premises can be economically and securely connected. A Connexions4London Leased Lines is one of the most cost effective ways to carry dedicated voice and data traffic between business sites.

Connexions4London offer 3 different types of leased line circuits.

• Leased line connections between 2 fixed UK locations
• Multi Site leased lines in a WAN format
• Dedicated Leased line to the Internet
  

Point 2 MultiPoint The most common application of this would be for connecting multiple sites together. This can also be used for connecting multiple customers to a single transit /content provider. This is an extremely cost effective method of connecting multiple points to a network. Point2Multipoint enables transit/content providers to sell their services securely to multiple colocation facilities. As a method of connecting multiple POP's, this reduces the overhead requirements of leased lines and routers at each location.

*where required

For a quote from our sales team call them FREE on 0808 163 1155 or Email Sales

The security benefits of VLAN services

The worst types of outages at public peering points are commonly caused by the mis-configuration, malfunction or compromise of a router of one participant putting traffic (sometimes broadcast) on to the exchange media which can have an adverse effect on all others connected.

Increasingly, most participants at public peering points will only want to exchange traffic with a subset of the others, the remainder often not being trusted due to the absence of a contractual relationship (and/or presence of a competitive one!).

Unfortunately it can be quite difficult to prevent unsolicited traffic from such a party entering one's router at a public exchange, and there have been examples of unpaid-for traffic being "default-dumped" onto or "tunnelled" across the networks of unwitting participants by unscrupulous providers seeking unfair advantage. This issue becomes even more crucial in an environment where the interconnect point is being used not just for settlement-free peering agreements, but for the sale of paid-for transit traffic under SLA commitments.

Another issue is confidentiality - although LAN switches in general do not route traffic to places it is not required, this is never 100% foolproof, and there is growing sensitivity about privacy of data in an Internet environment where both hacker and law enforcement activity are on the increase. Denial of service attacks and hacking attempts against routers at public peering points are also a possibility.

It is clear that there can be significant advantages, both in the quality of service, and in the perception to the customer of how the service is provided, in restricting traffic flow to only those parties at the interconnect point who have a legitimate mutual agreement to do so. Attempts to send traffic to a party which is not part of a pre-agreed VLAN will result in that traffic being discarded by the switch before it can do any damage. Likewise, it is impossible to wire-tap traffic on a port for a VLAN of which it is not a member. This has the immediate effect of reducing the scope (and hence impact) of any problem to just the members of the VLAN, and not the entire customer base, and will quite often contain a problem or remove its impact.

The VLAN products offered by C4L package the underlying technology in a way which reflects the common commercial relationships that take place between service providers at interconnect points, and enhance and protect these by offering increased security, confidentiality and robustness.

C4L is also actively researching and working with vendors to find ways of using VLAN and other technologies to make public peering services more robust and secure.

C4L can offer ethernet presentation of high bandwidth connectivity between major switching locations within the UK. This cuts out the high cost of SDH and opens opportunities for connectivity to distant sites without you needing rack space and routers in some circumstances. Possibilities include connecting into exchange points such as LINX or MaNAP with greatly reduced costs to get there.