The Planet’s Network
March 26, 2008 by Kevin Hazard, Web Hosting Evangelist in Evangelist's Corner, Tech Stuff, The Planet
The Planet is widely recognized as an industry leader in network performance, reliability and capacity, so for our loyal customers (and soon-to-be customers), we wanted to give you a behind-the-scenes look at what makes our network great.
Terms like “Tier 1 bandwidth” and “fully redundant” are tossed around in networking circles, but to the uninformed, those terms may make about as much sense as “dual layer lunar module connections” and “space-time transfer warps.”
Have no fear, though. The video below should give you a good education on The Planet’s network, and you’ll avoid the typical Network Engineer initiation (which typically involves multiple pairs of socks and a gallon of peanut butter … I’ll spare you the details).
Stan Barber, our vice president of network operations, gave me a great network walkthrough, and because I think everyone could benefit from his tutorial, I did my best to transcribe the simplistic overview on video a la the UPS Whiteboard commercials.
Video Disclaimer: We are continuing to build our network, so the final schematic is forward-looking and will be fully realized shortly. The connections and their explanations have been simplified to best communicate a high-level understanding of the network … Oh, and I am not an actor nor a Network Engineer. 
Right about now, you’re probably expecting me to say something like “The Planet: It’s the Network,” but I doubt Verizon would find that message very original.
We take a lot of pride in our hosting network, so if you have any questions, please let us know and we’ll be happy to answer them for you.
-Kevin
The YouTube link: The Planet Network
March 26th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
If you look really closely, you can see “tdurden was here” on the white board.
March 26th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Interconnectedness ??? Is that a word??? haha
March 26th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
Haha… Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com say it’s a word … I’ll take it.
March 27th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
I see a D2, D3, D4, D5, and D6, why no D1? Is it a super secret underground bunker?
March 28th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
D1 may or may not be a mountain training facility where the “network engineer” initiations take place.
June 17th, 2008 at 12:42 am
Hi,
What happen if D3 is down ? I think all Dallas datacenters will be down too, it’s a unique point of failure if I’m correct.
June 17th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
D3 is the core network distribution location for our Dallas facilities, so it should be no surprise that it is the most secure, most redundant and most monitored facility in our network.