Interconnections & Points of Presence

Syntec has full in-span interconnect (ISI) into BT over an STM-4 with points of connection into four BT Next Generation Switches (NGS's), located in West London, NorthWest London, City of London and Milton Keynes. Syntec also has a full interconnect with Thus / Your Communications, and direct fibre links to Colt, Verizon, Cable & Wireless and NTL/Telewest. Through PoPs in Telecity/Redbus Harbour Exchange and Telehouse East served by dedicated fibre, Syntec is connected to organisations such as PacketExchange, Level3, KPN Euroring, Murphx, NetServices and the BT Datastream network. Where traffic volumes warrant, Syntec provides direct circuits in both TDM (ISDN30) and IP-trunk presentation for direct collection and/or delivery of traffic to client premises and switches. Syntec owns and operates four carrier grade switches manufactured by Excel (part of Lucent), each of which has 64xE1 TDM capacity, plus further equipment manufactured by Squire, Telesoft, Quintum and Cisco. Switches contain redundant components in critical areas such as power supply, processor cards etc, and we operate on the basis of one switch being on standby/test duty with all client traffic being carried on the remainder. Switching is controlled by a cluster of high availability HP [300] series servers running in a HP-UX environment, with provisioning, routing and CDR data stored in a hybrid MySQL / SQL Server environment. All switching and transmission equipment is fed from dual 48 volt DC supplies, with auto-start diesel generator backup to the electricity mains.

Syntec is regularly adding both capacity and capability to its platforms. Syntec currently has 48 E1s of IVR capacity incorporating hardware from Eicon, Dialogic, Digium and others. Platforms are configurable to perform a wide variety of functions, such as queuing, routing, mapping, distribution, messaging, information serving, data acquisition, recording, conversion etc.; functionality can be menu and/or timeswitch driven, and clients can log-in resources such as home-workers and call-centre staff. Any given functionality is available on a minimum of two platforms at any time, with capacity being managed to ensure redundancy - all services will continue to operate in the event of total failure of any given platform. All platforms are dual powered from resilient sources.

Syntec operates both telephony- and IT-based continuous monitoring systems 24/7, ensuring that engineers are alerted to any abnormal conditions in the Syntec infrastructure; this monitoring includes not only Syntec equipment, but also major carriers to which Syntec is connected, and, where warranted by traffic volume, clients' lines and equipment. All critical equipment is remotely accessible; non-redundant points in the infrastructure are minimised. Spares are held on-site for all critical equipment. On-switch divert-on-fail routing enables us to design backup routing plans for any client which will deliver traffic not only by alternative routes, but also to alternative locations, to maximise the availability of traffic to the client.

• We have suffered no major failure since the switches were commissioned. (First switch commissioned in 1999, second in April 2002, third May 2004, and fourth June 2005)
• In the last twelve months we have had one service interruption, which lasted 1.5 minutes
• We are currently switching some 80 million minutes per annum
• Monitoring and Resilience
• Processing
• Switching and transmission