Telehouse Docklands
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Telehouse Docklands (commonly referred to as Telehouse) is a major co-location facility in London's Docklands. It is considered to be the main hub of the Internet in the UK.
The original facility (now Telehouse North) was built in 1990 to act as a data centre and as a disaster recovery site for the city's financial companies. In 1994 it became home of the London Internet Exchange (LINX). The presence of the UK's primary IXP meant that it quickly became the main hosting location for UK ISPs. In 1997 it became only the second non-US location to host a Root nameserver.
This concentration of the bulk of the UK's commercial Internet infrastructure in a single location was noted as a single point of failure when on 8 May 1997 the power supply to a large part of the building was accidentally shut down. Despite extensive provision of resilient power feeds and generators, the site was still susceptible to human error. This event led to some companies relocating their equipment to alternative co-location sites in Docklands and in other parts of the UK.
A second building at the Coriander Avenue site, Telehouse East, was opened in 1999. A small additional co-location facility Telehouse Metro located within the City of London was opened in the late 1990s.
The operating company Telehouse International Corporation of Europe Ltd is controlled by KDDI and they also operate other sites in Europe. Affiliated Telehouse facilities are also located in Asia and America.
