Plenty of bandwidth, a quick scalability, expertise in the field of Microsoft technology and professional extra hosting services are the qualities that the intensive internet user 123Video (www.123video.nl) was looking for in its hosting provider.

THE ORGANIZATION

123Video is located in Roden, in the province of Groningen. The internet firm has had success with the same ingenious formula as sites such as YouTube. Visitors can download or upload videos and provide reactions and comments to the films posted. The big difference is that 123Video concentrates completely on the Dutch market with largely Dutch content. The founders of the site are the former owners of the successful dating site Relatieplanet, which they have recently sold to the newspaper De Telegraaf. After a difficult starting period with a hosting provider with limited internet capacity, 123Video luckily was able to find the flexible scalability and hosting expertise necessary for video streaming at LeaseWeb.

COMPARABLE TO FORMULA 1

123Video is a heavy internet user, with heavy demands on the hosting infrastructure. In the start-up year 2007, the site registered at least 2 million unique visitors and over 80 million page views per month, with over 350 million films viewed! ‘Naturally, that places high demands on a hosting solution,’ says Marnix Wellinghoff, Technical Manager of 123Video. ‘You can compare it to the extreme demands placed on technology in Formula-1 racing.’

SCALABLE INTERNET CAPACITY

How the streaming solution is put together is a strict secret, but the founders of 123Video have put a lot of energy into making a good design. Wellinghoff: ‘We have tried a lot of things, made adjustments and corrections, and now we have come up with an optimal streaming model. However, we do not understand the network part of the business and we do not want to understand it. LeaseWeb has the expertise and an impressive network with a whole lot of capacity. You cannot find that capacity anywhere else in the Netherlands. They are also a party that can provide even more bandwidth when we need it, and they are a hoster that can adapt quickly because they have plenty of hardware in stock.’

ENGINEERS WHO HELP OUT IN EMERGENCIES

123Video also chose LeaseWeb due to the high level of expertise in the organisation. Wellinghoff: ‘Their engineers set up our servers, switches, load balancers and firewall,’ says Wellinghoff. ‘They also make sure that the hardware settings and their connections are completely attuned to our streaming needs. They can also help out in case of an emergency. We administer the servers from a distance, but they offer support for replacing hard disks or advice on Microsoft Windows, for example. We have some knowledge in-house, but in some areas the engineers at LeaseWeb have a lot more knowledge than we do. It is comforting to know that we can call someone if we can’t figure it out ourselves.’

LOAD BALANCING

An important factor for streaming is bandwidth, but it is also important that the hardware and disk capacity can handle the streaming as well. Wellinghoff: ‘That means that you need enough servers, including streaming servers, web servers, a database server and an application server, and that the load balancing should be set up in an intelligent manner. In addition, the website, database and the streaming-service must be protected. We have had to take some software measures to protect everything, because a firewall alone is not enough.’

DATACENTER EVOSWITCH

LeaseWeb has housed the hosting solution for 123Video in its climate-neutral data center EvoSwitch (www.evoswitch.com). Wellinghoff: ‘I was really impressed with that. The data centers I have been to so far are all small, cramped spaces that you want to escape from as soon as possible. EvoSwitch is a lot more spacious inside. It is also good that it is a green data center. That was not our main priority, but if you have the choice of being in a data center with a modern infrastructure and a green approach, for the same price as another center, then that is the one you would want to choose.’