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Why
Choose Textvertising
Our Technology
Not all
SMS providers
are the same.
Textvertising was established in 2003 and is now
recognised as a leading provider focused on
technology, security and high standards of
service.
HTTPS Security
128 Bit Encryption ensures you of the
highest possible security for your data
during transit across the internet, and
even your company intranet.
In fact, the security we provide is
exactly the same as that used
by the vast majority of online banks.
Equipment & Technology
We do not use hosting packages or host
servers inside data centres such as
Rackspace.
Although these services are
ideal for many online businesses, they simply
cannot offer the high levels of security
and control that our internal policies
require. In fact, our hardware is
located at our secure site at our head
office in Preston, Lancashire, UK.
We use not one server, but actually 12
dedicated servers running either Windows
Server or Linux Ubuntu. The equipment
consists as follows:
Dedicated 10Mb Tier 1 Lease Line
from BT giving 99.999% uptime with
Class C Subnet and 14 fixed IP's
plus a backup Virgin Telewest
digital SDSL cable line with 5 fixed
IP's.
Dedicated Ubuntu Gateway Server
providing access to our services
with 1:1 NAT routing and restrictive
access by IP to secure services
updated on the fly.
2 load balancing servers sharing web
services across 4 servers.
Dedicated MySQL server and 2
replication servers.
Dedicated e-mail server.
Dedicated DNS server.
Resilience
Our dedicated development team have
implemented a "plug and play" strategy
to our hardware:
Our routing servers distribute web
services across a number of servers
in a pool. Should a server fail, the
routing servers detect which server
is offline and removes the machine
from the pool.
All servers in our server pool are
identical machines. Should one fail,
the server can be hot swapped
without affecting any of our
services.
We use a dedicated Linux operating
systems on 10 of our 12 servers. We always have a number of
pre-configured Drive Arrays ready to
run and on complete failure of an
Array, a new Array can simply be
removed and replaced. Our OS is
intelligent and self-configures the
server on power up and reinstates
its roll in the pool. In testing, a
complete replacement server and a
virgin Array can be up and running
in less than 3 minutes.
Our air conditioned server room
operates with an uninterruptible
power supply (UPS). Should a mains
power outage occur, the UPS will
retain power to the servers until
the mains power is reinstated. The
UPS is made up of Server grade
battery backups and an offline
generator.
Backup
Just like you do, Textvertising take
backups seriously.
Our data is handled by MySQL, the worlds
most popular open source database engine
(the same is used by leading web
services such as Google). Our data is
replicated across 5 servers - 3 locally
(2R1W) and 2 remotely at private
addresses (2R) across a
dedicated and secure VPN. Replication
happens in real time, not once or twice
a week as many providers do. Data
integrity is paramount importance.
Data stored in MySQL is encrypted using
special algorithms making the data
worthless to a third party. Our software
encrypts and decrypts the data on the
fly.
We also "backup the backups" on a 1 x 7
x 28 x 365 day rotation. this means we
can always roll back a database easily
to almost any point in time.
Investment
Textvertising continue to invest heavily
in both hardware and software and
constantly adapt services and equipment
to keep up with technology and to stay
ahead of the competition. A recent
investment in new hardware cost
£37,000 and an upgrade to our lease line
costed in excess of £42,000.
SMART messaging
Textvertising offer high quality message
delivery and are the only company to
develop and implement our own type of
messaging processing: S.M.A.R.T
technology.
This system works in two ways:
Firstly it minimises "SMS
stacking" which is where a single
connection can only deliver a maximum
number of messages per second via its
HTTP or SMPP "window". Once a connection
is established via one IP the connection
is closed to further connections. Each time
a client adds their message to the
stack, delivery cannot start until that
point in the stack is reached.
Our S.M.A.R.T technology helps to
eradicate this by utilising redundant
gateway connections over numerous IP's
which will automatically
spread messages across some or all of
these routes automatically depending on
load.
Should other messages enter the queue
during busy periods, the system will
begin sending them simultaneously by
threading the messages across all
connections synchronously. This gives
every client a fair chance of immediate
delivery without a significant effect in
performance.
Secondly reading and writing databases
and file locking during this process
takes up precious time, and SMART allows
inbound messages to pool into two
"flip-flop" databases. At any one
moment, one is live and one is offline
while the system processes messages
inside. Switching between them happens
seamlessly in real time and eradicates
file locking.
This system works especially well in
voting environments where we expect to
see massive increases in traffic
in a short space of time. In fact the
system will handle and process in excess
of 10,000 SMS in just over 3 seconds!
On Site Training
Although our services are all based
online, talking through our product over
the phone is not always suitable for
some clients.
We can offer on site training, help with
getting the most from SMS marketing and
a full service walk through at a
location convenient to you. Cost vary on
location, but typically cost between
£150 and £270.
