HOSTING ARCHITECTURE AND SYSTEMS

ICG Link, Inc. hosts your web sites on high availability, state-of-the-art servers. System architecture, is based on flexibility and the capability to expand to meet the needs of our clients as they grow. We use the Linux operating system on all our machines for maximum up-time. Various functions such as web, mail and other services are spread across multiple servers with a monitoring system watching everything. If a server or service ever fails, the monitoring system switches the necessary services to backup units and notifies our technical people of a problem.

We co-locate our system at one of two data centers in the Nashville, TN area: Sungard and Time Warner.

Some additional highlights of the operations include the following:

• HVAC: Sungard has five HVAC units and T/W has three redundant units (N+1 redundancy at both locations).
• POWER: At Sungard, available power includes 110v, 208v, 220v, -48VDC with redundant DC rectifiers. Multiple 160kVA PowerWare UPS units exist in multiple banks with two units in each bank and no unit loaded over 50% (N+1 redundancy). A 2500kVA Cat Diesel backup generator is on site with a 3000 gallon underground fuel tank plus a 280 gallon day tank at floor level for a runtime of over 24 hours. SLA's are maintained with multiple fuel suppliers for longer needs. At T/W, UPS is provided by an MGE Comet system. The Kohler diesle generator provides 750KVA from an 1100 gallon fuel supply with SLA's having a 4 hour commit time in the event of an outage. Generators are tested at least weekly, the auto transfer switch is tested at least monthly, city power is shut off at least quarterly with full operation on genset. Both data centers operate from a dedicated transformer.
• ISOLATION: At Sungard, fiber enters the building at two different points with diverse path all the way to the data center floor. At Sungard, power and data are separated on the data center floor beneath hot and cold rows. At T/W, the separation occurs in trays above the racks and cabinets.
• BANDWIDTH: There are multiple local loop providers connected to multiple backbone ISP's at both locations. Both data centers are multihomed via multiple Tier-1 network providers including Sprint, AT&T, Verizon Business, Bellsouth and XO Communications.
• SECURITY: Our servers are protected by several layers of security including key card access, biometric verification, video surveillance and staff. Our systems are in cabinets on the data center floor that are physically locked down except during maintenance and upgrades. The Sungard data center is in a multiple use building and as such has four tier physical security - building, building floor, raised floor area, cabinet. After hours access to the building and to the elevator to the data center's floor is key card protected. The floor has it's own separate security system such that access can not be gained except to the elevator lobby without a Sungard employee. Photo identification is required and all customers are fingerprinted and photographed for biometric access verification. There is individual key control of cabinets maintained only by Sungard, not customers and cabinets are non-descript for further security. At T/W, the data center is in its own space with 24/7/365 keycard access and locked cabinets once inside.
• FIRE PROTECTION: Both T/W and Sungard use a dry pipe fire suppression solution. At Sungard, early warning protection uses VESDA that samples all returned air to 0.003 microns for particulate change. There are above and below floor smoke and heat sensors.
• SUPPORT: The Sungard data center is manned 24x7x365. The T/W data center is manned during business hours and has emergency response crews 24/7/365.

In order to avoid overloads, our servers report to our technical people whenever they approach pre-established limits. This allows us to plan well in advance for necessary hardware and software expansions. A two week comparison of our system with the Top 40 business sites on the Internet showed us to be approximately 30% faster than the average.

ICG Link, Inc. is committed to providing world-class service from both a people and systems perspective. Our goal is that our experienced staff and system architecture will combine to deliver the support, reliability and performance you need for 24/7/365 web site operation.

ICG Link's server systems are layered for security purposes. The first level of security is our fully redundant firewall/router system. On the second level, only those machines that have a reason to directly access the Internet are located on our "external" network. Client data and monitoring systems exist on our "internal" network behind a third level of security.