I have two racks in London UK. The colocation is
currently in London. The contract is up soon and most
of the feet on the ground in the UK of the company is
in the greater Birmingham area. So I'm interested in
colocating about two racks of servers to Birmingham.
I would need a cage if the space were shared.
What is peering like in the Birmingham area? Will
getting multiple provider feeds in Birmingham be
possible? It was easy in London.
And can anyone recommend colocation in Birmingham?
The alternative is stick with London (in spite of
difficulty for remote hands) so any suggestions on
excellent colocation in London?
Google search for "Birmingham UK colocation" only
useably yeilds "F1 colocation" and "easy net".
Off list is fine.
-Andrew
If peering and choice of transit is your primary concern, then you might well find the best approach lies in staying in London and finding a reliable contractor who is local and who can do things for you there when needed.
I've never heard of anybody acquiring peering in Birminghag.
You can peer in Manchester at the MaNAP, although I'm not sure how well that theory stacks up in practice these days. In any case from Brum it's not much further to London than it is to Manchester, ignoring the traffic issues.
Joe
For the record that was a typo, not some kind of weird dig at Birmingham 
Joe
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Andrew Gristina wrote:
I have two racks in London UK. The colocation is
currently in London. The contract is up soon and most
of the feet on the ground in the UK of the company is
in the greater Birmingham area. So I'm interested in
colocating about two racks of servers to Birmingham.
I would need a cage if the space were shared.
We've colo space in Telford (not far from Birmingham) if you are interested and
a small amount of space in Wolves but its shared only there.
What is peering like in the Birmingham area? Will
getting multiple provider feeds in Birmingham be
possible? It was easy in London.
Er, this is the sticks really. Closest peering point is NWIX/MaNAP or MCIX (or
if you know the right people the 'Phantom Exchange') in Manchester. Our network
connects to both Manchester and London so we could easily get you to these using
MPLS...
Let me know if you want more info
J
- --
COO
Entanet International
T: 0870 770 9580
http://www.enta.net/
No peering in Brum, quickest will be to bounce of London.
COLT has a data centre in Birmingham and we can do
what ever bandwidth you need to where ever.
Regards,
Neil.
BT have a POP there (certainly our BT leased line into East Yorkshire
bursts out there), so you stand a chance of getting BT & someone else
for two transits, if you can find DC space. There's no (public)
peering, so you would have to rely on something hacky like L2TP to get
over to London for peering... yuck. Birmingham has a great Selfridges
store, but is a bit of an IP frozen wasteland.
If your London DC space is with Telecity, talk to them; they have
buildings in Manchester (although I don't know whether they are full).
Manchester has some public peering, and a reasonable concentration of
carriers, so there's some chance of private peering.
London has problems - the data centres with space may not be represented
by the transit providers you like working with, or the exchanges you
want to join. The well connected DCs are getting full, certainly in
terms of power and cooling capacity.
Good luck, I hope if you do move it goes smoothly. If you (or anyone
else) wants to share recent experiences of UK hosting/colo projects,
then I'll be in Toronto next week.
-a
You may want to contact Fibernet (now a Global Crossing company), they have some PoPs there with fiber and general connectivity.
We are also present there and can provide connectivity, but not co-location.
Dave.
Andrew Gristina wrote: