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Martello BLOG

They say that a dog is a man’s best friend, so when there is a pup in need, any animal-lover would be compelled to help in any way that they can. Whether it’s adopting a pet of your own, donating your time or money to a shelter, or creating awareness around an issue that is being ignored, people go out of their way to try and help animals in need. When Martello’s Product Manager, Dave Spence became involved in Ottawa Dog Rescue, it quickly became a family affair.

After the launch in 2016 of Martello’s Employee-Directed Gift Program, employees were empowered to make a deeper connection and financial contribution to the community organizations that matter the most to them. Through this program, Martello has been able to contribute to local sports teams, getting kids out on bicycles, helping students travel and provide aid to those who need it, providing education support to indigenous students, supporting a hack-a-thon for health, giving support to a Cochlear Implant group, and serving underserved communities.

For Dave, the choice of which charity he wanted to support was easy.

Dave and his wife Sheila have been involved with Ottawa Dog Rescue (ODR) for the last 5 years. Ottawa Dog Rescue’s mandate is to help abandoned, abused and surrendered dogs find well-suited forever homes in the Ottawa area. This all-breed, all-size, all-age foster-based rescue was founded in August 2013 by a group of dedicated dog-lovers and experienced rescuers. All rescue dogs are provided with temporary foster home care until they’re found a well-matched and carefully screened forever home.

“In the past 5 or so years we have fostered over 10 dogs that were waiting for “furever” homes. We currently have 2 dogs that are with us permanently through ODR,” Dave said.

The Spence family not only welcomes foster dogs into their home, but they also help fundraise for the financial burden that the organization faces each year.

The couple helps with many of the events that the charity hosts each year and every August, they contribute to the organization of an annual garage sale which has raised over $3,000 in the last 4 years.

Sheila also started the city’s first “puppy yoga” class at Inner Soul Cycle and Yoga. These events allow for prospective adoptees to meet and interact with puppies who are waiting on new homes all while raising money for the cause.

“Dave and family are amazing fosterers for our organization and have helped save, rehabilitate and find homes for numerous foster dogs,” Andrea Valois, President and Co-founder of Ottawa Dog Rescue said.  “He is an integral part of our team. We are a 100% volunteer run charity and the funds we raise go towards substantial medical care, supplies and training for the dogs entrusted in our care.”

The money Martello donates to the cause will be used to help feed and care for dogs that come into the program. Every dog that comes into the program has to be given a clean bill of health and many need to be spayed or neutered, so the vet bills can definitely add up for the organization.

Along with rescue, the organization aims to educate the public by bringing awareness to responsible pet ownership and stress the importance of spaying and neutering your pet.

Without the help from committed volunteers like Dave, foster homes, local veterinarians and financial support, ODR wouldn’t be able to meet its goals.

The rescue is about saving lives and they strive to make a difference – one dog at a time

“We could not accomplish this mission without dedicated and supportive volunteers such as Dave,” Andrea said.

Follow Martello’s culture on Twitter using the hashtag and stay tuned to our blog for more in this series.

As the global routing table increases, routers are using more memory to hold these tables. Naturally, memory on network hardware has its limits and when we reach that threshold what can we expect? An event that potentially could cause significant disruptions across the Internet, the so-called “768k Day” is closer than you think. This day is anticipated to be coming this month when the global Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing table is expected to exceed 768,000 entries. BGP is a routing protocol used to transfer data and information between host gateways, the Internet or autonomous systems. Without it, the Internet wouldn’t work.

So why is 768K day a big deal?

Let’s rewind 5 years. In 2014, there were concerns over what has come to be known as “512k Day”. This name was given to the moment when the Internet routing table was going to exceed 512,000 BGP routes.  Many ISPs and other organizations had provisioned the size of the memory of their routers for a limit of 512K route entries. Once the route entries exceed that maximum capacity some older routers suffered memory overflows which caused their CPUs to crash. These crashes caused significant packet loss and traffic outages across the Internet, including some large provider networks. Engineers and network administrators scrambled to apply emergency firmware patches and set a new upper limit of 768k entries. Since memory is expensive, many vendors saw 768,000 as a decent trade-off for memory utilization.

512k Day was an Internet milestone much like the y2k crisis at the end of the 90s, and a wake-up call for a lot of ISP and Internet organizations. This looming issue wasn’t a secret, yet many providers were caught off-guard with outdated network equipment that had a ripple effect into Internet outages.

Fast forward 5 years later, and the upcoming  768k Day is becoming an echo of 512k Day, but with a higher threshold. This time around, things will be slightly different though. Most large providers who felt the impact of 512k Day have learned their lesson and have likely prepared and maintained their infrastructures to accommodate the next level of usage. As a result, we hope not to see the same level of outages as we did in 2014.

A lot of smaller ISPs, data centers and other providers may not be as well prepared, however. When you look at Internet paths, a good amount of service traffic goes through these “soft spots” of Internet infrastructure. These areas of the Internet where maintenance on legacy routers can be easily missed, meaning we may still experience issues or outages on 768k Day.

While BGP is the core to the functioning of the Internet, there are more flexible solutions to provide business continuity for enterprises and end users.  Link management is a technique which has been in use for a number of years, but cost and complexity have hindered many organizations’ efforts in taking advantage of this increase in productivity. BGP programming is the traditional method of achieving the result, but it is a costly approach. One aspect of BGP that users must keep in mind is that it is not designed to do link balancing, but to perform internet connectivity.

ISPs now offer managed BGP services but such services have a high price tag attached to them and can create other types of issues, related mainly to responsibility for problem resolution. BGP also has limited link management abilities forcing a specific link per traffic type and does not have the ability to dynamically redirect traffic.

Want to learn more about link balancing? Download our eBook!

So it should go without saying that if you make sure your network is up to date before 768k Day arrives then you have nothing to worry about!

Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group is a British international hotel management company offering luxury hotels, resorts and residences in Asia, Europe and the Americas. With many locations across some of the world’s most prestigious destinations, Mandarin Oriental strives to provide 21st century luxury with oriental charm through distinctive design and a strong sense of place.

Challenge

The Internet has revolutionized how mobile workforces access information while away from the office, enabling them to keep up with their customers and their offices faster than ever before. To
meet this need, hospitality providers began offering their customers high-speed Internet access (HSIA) in guest rooms a few years ago. Mobile workers grew accustomed to this service, quickly setting a new level of expectations for their stays.

Currently, Internet access is considered as critical as plumbing and electricity in guest requirements — if not more.

The Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group has a rich history that goes back to the late 1800’s with the opening of the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok. They have continued to evolved with the needs of their guests over the years, and delivering quality HSIA was part of that. However, with the increasing bandwidth requirements of applications such as Skype, Netflix and YouTube, the strain on Mandarin Oriental Hotels’ networks increased every year.

“Customer satisfaction was negatively affected. We were looking for a way to perform ISP failover to provide better internet connectivity to our guests.”
Javier Garcia
Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group

Solution

The Mandarin Oriental team decided to try Martello’s Elfiq Link Balancing solutions. The recommendation had come from peers in other companies who were already clients of Elfiq Networks.

Not only did the product solve the bandwidth challenges, but it could also be deployed in such a way that could protect hotels against both planned and unplanned outages alike. Available in “failover kit” pairs, Elfiq devices can add a second layer of security and resilience. Should one device become unresponsive, a second one will seamlessly continue traffic management and operations while alerting the IT department.

 

Today, most Mandarin Oriental properties own LBX2600 Series Failover Kits from Martello’s Elfiq Networks. The Hotel Group can count on a solid international network of value-added resellers to assist local properties in purchasing and deploying new devices when the need arises, and on Martello and Elfiq’s professional services team to perform remote configuration.

Adding more circuits can be done seamlessly and effortlessly, on demand, without the worry of unused bandwidth, and can be put to use from the very moment it is hooked to the Link Balancer.

 

“We have deployed the LBX2600 Series in most of our properties around the world, allowing us to offer uninterrupted HSIA to our guests. I would recommend these solutions to any hotel property.”
Javier Garcia
Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group

 

Download the Case Study