Talk Internet increases network capacity

Founded in 1995, Talk Internet provides businesses with voice and data services such as business broadband, Voice over IP (VoIP), email hosting and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking. Its customers are increasingly demanding faster broadband connection speeds in order to support their own commercial growth and connection to cloud services, and they also require robust, reliable and high performance 24/7 connectivity to ensure access to business-critical data and services quickly and securely. Such demand was putting increasing pressure on Talk Internet’s core network, leading to a requirement for extra capacity to support customers and also to maximize throughput and improve reliability through the introduction of MPLS technology as cost-effectively as possible.

“Over the last few years, we have seen a significant upswing in demand for our voice and data services, and customers now expect faster speeds for their money,” commented Simon Jones, Managing Director at Talk Internet. “Historically, we were typically selling an 8 Megabit per second (Mbps) business broadband connection; however, this has increased tenfold in recent years. Businesses are demanding more speed for their money to support technologies such as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), video conferencing, and remote access to cloud services, and simply put, our previous core networking solution could not give us the performance we needed.”

With Talk Internet’s previous Cisco environment no longer fit for purpose, a number of networking solutions were considered before Brocade was selected, based on its ability to offer the required amount of capacity and throughput at the most attractive price-point. The networking solution from Brocade, based on Brocade MLX routers and ICX switches, will not only support Talk Internet in the running of its day-to-day operations, but will also underpin its capability to provide new services to customers in the future, such as rolling out cloud-based services and virtualized environments, to further increase uptime and the resilience of its data center environment.

Jones continues, “As data volumes continue to rise, our customers are increasingly looking for more sophisticated cloud-based solutions to store and back-up their data in virtualized, replicated sites. In order to support that, we knew we needed a core network that was up to the challenge. By adding Brocade to our core networking design, we are now able to manage traffic more effectively, and boost our core routing performance.
“Our business operations, planning and competitiveness increasingly rely on our corporate IT infrastructure, so it’s imperative that we have a resilient, agile, high-performance network in place. In deploying Brocade technology we have future-proofed our network for the next three to five years because we can switch on extra capacity whenever we need to. Cloud computing and virtualization models demand ever-changing and unique networking requirements, and so we’re equipping ourselves today for our networking demands tomorrow.”

Brocade MLX Routers are designed to enable cloud-optimized networks by providing industry-leading 1, 10 and 100 GbE wire-speed density, rich IPv4, IPv6, Multi-VRF, MPLS and Carrier Ethernet capabilities and advanced Layer 2 switching. Specifically designed to deliver scale and performance, high reliability and cost-saving operational efficiency, these routers will enable Talk Internet to meet the dynamic needs of higher-bandwidth services.
Brocade ICX 6450 Switches provide enterprise-class stackable switching and are designed to allow organizations to buy what they need now, and then easily scale up as demand grows and new technologies emerge. These intelligent, scalable edge switches deliver enterprise-class functionality at an affordable price.