0
  • SERVICES
    • DEDICATED SERVERS
    • COLOCATION
      • 1U RACK SPACE
      • 2U RACK SPACE
      • 4U RACK SPACE
      • 10U RACK SPACE
      • 21U HALF RACK
      • 42U FULL RACK
    • CONNECT TO THE CLOUD
    • MANAGED HOSTING
    • IP TRANSIT SERVICES
  • DATA CENTERS
    • DATA CENTER LOCATIONS
      • LOS ANGELES
      • SAN FRANCISCO
      • CHICAGO
      • NEW YORK
      • NEW JERSEY
      • BOSTON
      • PHILADELPHIA
      • CONNECTICUT
      • MIAMI
    • NETWORK
    • SECURITY
    • CERTIFICATIONS
    • SUPPORT
  • ABOUT US
    • HISTORY
    • CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY
  • INDUSTRY INSIGHTS
    • WRITE FOR US
    • STYLE GUIDE
  • CONTACT US
GET A QUOTE
0
  • SERVICES
    • DEDICATED SERVERS
    • COLOCATION
      • 1U RACK SPACE
      • 2U RACK SPACE
      • 4U RACK SPACE
      • 10U RACK SPACE
      • 21U HALF RACK
      • 42U FULL RACK
    • CONNECT TO THE CLOUD
    • MANAGED HOSTING
    • IP TRANSIT SERVICES
  • DATA CENTERS
    • DATA CENTER LOCATIONS
      • LOS ANGELES
      • SAN FRANCISCO
      • CHICAGO
      • NEW YORK
      • NEW JERSEY
      • BOSTON
      • PHILADELPHIA
      • CONNECTICUT
      • MIAMI
    • NETWORK
    • SECURITY
    • CERTIFICATIONS
    • SUPPORT
  • ABOUT US
    • HISTORY
    • CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY
  • INDUSTRY INSIGHTS
    • WRITE FOR US
    • STYLE GUIDE
  • CONTACT US
GET A QUOTE
0
  • SERVICES
    • DEDICATED SERVERS
    • COLOCATION
      • 1U RACK SPACE
      • 2U RACK SPACE
      • 4U RACK SPACE
      • 10U RACK SPACE
      • 21U HALF RACK
      • 42U FULL RACK
    • CONNECT TO THE CLOUD
    • MANAGED HOSTING
    • IP TRANSIT SERVICES
  • DATA CENTERS
    • DATA CENTER LOCATIONS
      • LOS ANGELES
      • SAN FRANCISCO
      • CHICAGO
      • NEW YORK
      • NEW JERSEY
      • BOSTON
      • PHILADELPHIA
      • CONNECTICUT
      • MIAMI
    • NETWORK
    • SECURITY
    • CERTIFICATIONS
    • SUPPORT
  • ABOUT US
    • HISTORY
    • CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY
  • INDUSTRY INSIGHTS
    • WRITE FOR US
    • STYLE GUIDE
  • CONTACT US
0
  • SERVICES
    • DEDICATED SERVERS
    • COLOCATION
      • 1U RACK SPACE
      • 2U RACK SPACE
      • 4U RACK SPACE
      • 10U RACK SPACE
      • 21U HALF RACK
      • 42U FULL RACK
    • CONNECT TO THE CLOUD
    • MANAGED HOSTING
    • IP TRANSIT SERVICES
  • DATA CENTERS
    • DATA CENTER LOCATIONS
      • LOS ANGELES
      • SAN FRANCISCO
      • CHICAGO
      • NEW YORK
      • NEW JERSEY
      • BOSTON
      • PHILADELPHIA
      • CONNECTICUT
      • MIAMI
    • NETWORK
    • SECURITY
    • CERTIFICATIONS
    • SUPPORT
  • ABOUT US
    • HISTORY
    • CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY
  • INDUSTRY INSIGHTS
    • WRITE FOR US
    • STYLE GUIDE
  • CONTACT US
0
  • SERVICES
    • DEDICATED SERVERS
    • COLOCATION
      • 1U RACK SPACE
      • 2U RACK SPACE
      • 4U RACK SPACE
      • 10U RACK SPACE
      • 21U HALF RACK
      • 42U FULL RACK
    • CONNECT TO THE CLOUD
    • MANAGED HOSTING
    • IP TRANSIT SERVICES
  • DATA CENTERS
    • DATA CENTER LOCATIONS
      • LOS ANGELES
      • SAN FRANCISCO
      • CHICAGO
      • NEW YORK
      • NEW JERSEY
      • BOSTON
      • PHILADELPHIA
      • CONNECTICUT
      • MIAMI
    • NETWORK
    • SECURITY
    • CERTIFICATIONS
    • SUPPORT
  • ABOUT US
    • HISTORY
    • CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY
  • INDUSTRY INSIGHTS
    • WRITE FOR US
    • STYLE GUIDE
  • CONTACT US
  • SERVICES
    • DEDICATED SERVERS
    • COLOCATION
      • 1U RACK SPACE
      • 2U RACK SPACE
      • 4U RACK SPACE
      • 10U RACK SPACE
      • 21U HALF RACK
      • 42U FULL RACK
    • CONNECT TO THE CLOUD
    • MANAGED HOSTING
    • IP TRANSIT SERVICES
  • DATA CENTERS
    • DATA CENTER LOCATIONS
      • LOS ANGELES
      • SAN FRANCISCO
      • CHICAGO
      • NEW YORK
      • NEW JERSEY
      • BOSTON
      • PHILADELPHIA
      • CONNECTICUT
      • MIAMI
    • NETWORK
    • SECURITY
    • CERTIFICATIONS
    • SUPPORT
  • ABOUT US
    • HISTORY
    • CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY
  • INDUSTRY INSIGHTS
    • WRITE FOR US
    • STYLE GUIDE
  • CONTACT US
  • Home
  • Industry Insights
  • Hosting News
  • 100 Percent Uptime: What It Really Means
Phone with facebook advertisment
Facebook offers VoIP App for iOS
January 24, 2013
New Jersey Power Failure Knocks Govt. off-line
January 25, 2013

100 Percent Uptime: What It Really Means

Published by The Colocation America Staff on January 25, 2013
Categories
  • Hosting News
Tags
one hundred percent

In our industry, everyone claims to have 100% uptime (including us). While major data center companies come dangerously close to attaining 100% uptime, saying so is really more of a marketing ploy. Depending on who you ask, some may tell you, 100 % uptime isn’t really possible. Well, if you read the fine print you might find that 100% uptime is indeed possible.

What does 100% uptime mean?

In our industry, everyone claims to have 100% uptime (including us). While major ISPs come dangerously close to attaining 100% uptime, being able to state that fact is really more of a marketing ploy.

Depending on who you ask, some may tell you, 100% uptime isn’t really possible. Well, if you read the fine print you might find that 100% uptime is indeed possible. Why you ask? It’s all in the fine print.

Calculating Uptime

Most reputable companies operate with full disclosure, meaning if downtime does occur they will credit you and most likely tell you what caused the disruption. Some will even go as far to credit you for the time you were knocked offline. But herein lies the motivation for claiming 100% uptime: Downtime costs the colocation provider money, so they bust their butts to make sure it doesn’t happen.

Data centers share connectivity with other ISPs, so if one of their networks goes down, traffic is re-routed accordingly. Often, if outages do occur, the incremental interruption of service is so small that a user might not even experience so much as a delay in service. That’s the loophole. 100% uptime doesn’t take into consideration routine maintenance, otherwise known as “planned downtime”. It’s also important to note that individually managed servers can go down independent of network failure due to problems outside a hosting providers control.

It’s Really Just Marketing

In our industry, it’s not un-common to operate at 99.999% uptime throughout the year. Again, data centers are hubs for ISP (internet service providers) and are programed with all sorts of software to ensure traffic gets re-routed in case one ISP goes down. So 100% uptime isn’t really a literal thing, but a way of stating a data center has extended the average time between failures that downtime is hardly noticeable. The time in which a data center is able to get clients back online is also a factor. If downtime is corrected quickly, enough to satisfy industry standards, then a colocation company can still state (within reason) they have maintained 100% uptime.

Closing Statements

In a perfect world, 100% uptime can be achieved, but we do not live in a perfect world. As long as the possibility for network failure exists then one can safely say 100% uptime doesn’t exist. That’s not to say that they’re aren’t enough safeguards in place to practically state one operates with 100% uptime. From that standpoint, the terms are purely for marketing purposes, and yet for thousands of customers who have never been knocked offline within a years time, those are acceptable terms. Now, if you ask any reputable company to be upfront with you, chances are they’ll come clean and tell you that mathematically they’ve only experienced 99.999% uptime.

The thing is, 99.999% uptime just isn’t as cool as writing 100% uptime. Why would anyone care about that .1 percent chance you’ll go down if you haven’t let anyone down in years? Everyone knows technology is fallible and at some point or another, downtime will occur. The difference is, a reputable company will compensate you for your strife. For us, uptime is all about connections. We built our data center with countless safeguards in place – all of which includes backup power systems and access to hundreds of national and multi-national ISPs which practically guarantees network connectivity never goes down. To the end user, that’s all that matters – that they don’t experience any downtime. 100% uptime isn’t a way to mislead the public – just another way of saying our data center is rock solid.

For more information contact Colocation America Editorial

Share
0
The Colocation America Staff
The Colocation America Staff

Related posts

raspberry pi web server

Photo Source: techybugz

October 28, 2021

How to Host an Entire Server on a Raspberry Pi


Read more
website hosting
June 11, 2019

How Your Web Hosting Service Affects Your Website


Read more
managed hosting

Photo Source: Colocation America

January 2, 2019

Various Types of Hosting to Optimize Your Business


Read more

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

COLOCATION SERVICES

Managed Colocation
Mac Mini Hosting
Data Storage & Management
Data Backup & Recovery
Consulting

DEDICATED SERVER PLANS

Linux
Windows
Storage Servers
Custom Servers
Bare Metal Servers

WHY US?

Connectivity
100% Network Uptime
Network Speed Test and Traceroute
Client Reviews
Corporate News

LEARN MORE

Data Center Tier Standards
How Does Ping Work
Calculate Bandwidth
IP Addresses and Subnets
IPv4 Subnet Chart

TOP NEWS POSTS

More RAM or a Faster Processor?
How to Catch a Hacker
Server Admin Tools
Benefits of Data Mining
Static vs Dynamic IP Addresses

LATEST NEWS BY TOPIC

Technology
Hosting
Data Center
Cyber Security
Fun

PHONE:
1-888-505-COLO
1-213-928-6929 (Local)

ADDRESS:
9360 W. Flamingo Rd.
Ste. 178
Las Vegas, NV 89147

© 2022 Colocation America. All Rights Reserved.
GET QUOTE
0

$0.00

✕

Login

Lost your password?