Bandwidth-Starved Europe Gets Caching Software Early

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May 07, 1998 (12:00 AM EDT)

Bandwidth-Starved Europe Gets Caching Software Early

By Lee Kimber,

Israeli load-balancing product specialist RADware has become the latest technology vendor to spot the potential for selling caching products to bandwidth-challenged European ISPs.

RADware said it brought forward the European launch of its intelligent in-line cache-server management and load-balancing product, Cache Server Director, after realizing ISPs in Israel are paying five to 10 times more than their U.S. counterparts for Internet bandwidth.

Cache servers are used by ISPs to store large or frequently accessed files from the Internet, so their subscribers are able to access them quicker than by accessing the server where the files originated. Cache Server Director uses RADware's load-balancing technology, which evenly distributes data between servers, to manage the data stored by cache servers.

A study of European bandwidth costs prompted the company to start shipping Cache Server Director from May and hold off shipments to the larger U.S. market until after summer, said Sharon Trachtman, vice president of marketing at RADware.

In the United States, the cost of bandwidth is minimal, said Trachtman. "But in Europe, ISPs are more careful with bandwidth because it is so expensive. We are approaching these countries because it would be more appropriate around the world than in the United States," she said.

RADware said Cache Server Director worked by remembering which server had cached a page, but it would also intercept Internet address requests and redirect them to the cache or the original site. That feature could prove useful to U.K. ISPs that had installed cache servers but found customers were frightened off by the perceived complexity of configuring their Web browsers to use them.

RADware had planned to pitch itself against well-established hardware vendors such as Cisco, which has, increasingly, offered intelligent add-ons for its cache products. But Trachtman said increased interest in Europe from cache product vendors Network Appliances, Inktomi, and Cisco would create market opportunities rather than competition for RADware because Cache Director was an add-on cache management product.

RADware also announced Web Server Director for Network Proximity -- a load balancer that used complex algorithms to assess which server was closest to a user in network and load terms. Aimed at ISPs, large carriers, and corporates, it could monitor network resources worldwide to assess which server to redirect a user request to, the company said.