We are excited to announce an addition to our global network in Canada with the operational launch of our PoP (point of presence) in Vancouver, BC. With the opening of this second data center in Canada, Incapsula is positioned to offer even better service to a region with high internet usage and a growing economy.
Our focus is to provide improved website performance and availability for our customers in the region. The new Vancouver PoP will help our customers improve service to clients in western Canada. With the addition of the Vancouver PoP, Incapsula customers in Canada will enjoy high availability and load sharing.
Enhanced Data Privacy
The Vancouver PoP along with the Toronto data center enables compliance with local data privacy regulations, of both the Canadian Privacy Act and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) for customer traffic. Based on these regulations sensitive data should not be transmitted outside of Canada due to:
- Possibility that regulations in other countries the data passes through, such as the United States Patriot Act, will allow disclosure of sensitive data protected by the Canadian regulations
- Federal requirements for use of cloud computing that requires sensitive government data to remain within the country
With the current routing protocols (anycast/BGP), an end user’s request might be routed outside of Canada, such as to a PoP in the neighboring United States. To prevent this, the site with sensitive data must be served by only PoPs in Canada.
Improved Customer Service
The new local data center in Vancouver will also improve response times to commerce sites. Besides providing a geographically closer PoP drop, Incapsula will also use a local Canadian peering provider. This direct connection provides faster access than is available via the local transit provider, where requests could pass through multiple hops before reaching their destination.
With customers extremely sensitive to network latency, if a site is not highly responsive, customers may leave and not return. A local PoP and peering provider brings website content closer to visitors, ensuring the best possible user experience.
Network performance report after the launch of the data center in Vancouver
The PoP in Vancouver, together with our global network of modern data centers, positions us to mitigate some of the largest attacks on web sites and infrastructure with zero disruption to ongoing customer website operations.
To meet the needs of customers, the PoP comprises our full suite of highly-regarded DDoS protection services, including:
- Network layer DDoS scrubbing with 24×7 monitoring and mitigation, which typically is activated in <1 second.
- Always-on application layer protection based on bot detection.
- Infrastructure protection for subnets and individual IP addresses. Note that Incapsula provides many of the same benefits as those who are currently using clean pipes from their ISP.
- Name server protection for DNS-targeted attacks.
In addition to DDoS protection, our new PoPs also incorporate our website performance and security services, including:
- Global CDN for intelligent caching and content optimization
- Web application firewall (WAF) to protect against data breaches
- Load balancer for maximum application availability and performance
- IP security to ensure private and secure communications
Our mitigation platform, Behemoth 2, on which the Vancouver PoP is built on is designed to meet the following goals:
- High performing platform with increased scrubbing capacity that meets the rise in attack volumes.
- Less time to mitigation by detecting and mitigating attacks at a sub second resolution.
- Ability to scale by eliminating bottlenecks which present scalability issues.
Location, Location, Location
Canada, and specifically Vancouver, is an important market poised to grow due to two main factors.
- Economy – According to the Conference Board of Canada Vancouver and Toronto led growth in Canada in 2016 with a 4 percent rise in GDP. Canada created 277,000 jobs over the last two years, with 94 percent of all job growth coming from Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. Vancouver in 2016 had a record job creation of 60,000 and record 27,000 new housing starts.
- Internet Usage – According to a report in 2015 by comScore Canada, Canadians visited more web sites and spent more time online than users in any other country. In 2016, Canadian internet users accounted for .9 percent of the world’s Internet users with 32+ million users which is equivalent to 88.5 percent of the population.
What’s Next?
With the addition of this PoP, Incapsula now has 38 global points or presence serving over 4.7 terabits of capacity to our customers and their end users.
Incapsula continues to expand our global infrastructure. We have additional strategic PoPs are under construction that are scheduled to come online in 2017. Keep an eye on our PoP map for the latest developments.
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