VentraIP deploys DDoS mitigation after attacks

Web host VentraIP has taken up a distributed denial-of-service mitigation service as it eyes international expansion.

The company experienced "a couple" of DDoS attacks back in June, and immediately set about sourcing a mitigation solution, which it installed in July.

According to CEO Cheyne Jonstone, the new system has already been used to successfully mitigate DDoS attacks on two occasions.

"It was vital for us to have something in place because there's nothing worse than not having a solution other than to down transit links because you can't do anything about [an attack]," Jonstone told iTnews.

"Our transit providers all have fairly decent DDoS mitigation services themselves but it's not something you want to rely on."

The company settled on a system by Black Lotus, after evaluating several products that also included systems from VeriSign and Arbor Networks.

Black Lotus uses patent-pending analytics technology to monitor and scrub network traffic.

"We'd been conducting trials [of Black Lotus] late at night where we would flick it on and flick it off [so] that customers wouldn't notice it," he said.

Jonstone said the technology choice had "nothing to do with cost. It was more to do with how [the prospective service] integrated best with our network and the future plans for our network".

The company has been readying a United States expansion for some time now, which would significantly increase its attack surface.

VentraIP has also been ramping enterprise-grade capability and had multiple layers of customers to consider.

"We've come a long way since the early days," Jonstone said.

"We now have a fully operational wholesale platform so not only do we have our own retail customers we have to look after, we have to look after our wholesale customers and their customers."

VentraIP is also a domain registrar, which brings with it additional customers and responsibilities to overseeing organisations such as auDA.