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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / JUNE 9, 2003: VOL. 2 NO. 23
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Breaking News -
Networking:
CacheLogic Enables ISPs With P2P
Cost Control Solution
CacheLogic Ltd, an innovative startup focused on providing solutions to
alleviate the infrastructure costs associated with Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file
sharing on ISP (Internet Service Providers) and corporate networks, has
announced the launch of the company and its first family of products for ISPs.
Currently in trial with four of the five Tier-One ISPs in the United Kingdom,
the Cachepliance range of P2P appliances dramatically reduce the economic
burdens associated with subscribers using Peer-to-Peer file sharing
networks.
CacheLogic software technology transparently re-architects the protocols
associated with Gnutella and FastTrack, the underlying technology found at the
heart of 95% of the Peer-to-Peer networks, including the popular KaZaA and
Morpheus clients. By using the Cachepliance, Peer-to-Peer file trading is
encouraged on the ISPs own network, as opposed to the traditional approach of
seeking out other peers scattered across continents -- all without impacting
the end-user experience in any way. Should a file not be found among the ISPs
own peers, the search request is allowed off network and then cached locally
for use among the ISPs subscribers.
ISPs can expect a network bandwidth saving of 95% related to protocol
"chatter" and 50%+ on file transfers by installing sufficient Cachepliance
devices to support their broadband users. It is estimated that the typical ISP
will see a return on investment within 3-6 months of installing a Cachepliance
and can save millions of dollars per year on bandwidth costs.
The Cachepliance devices act as a high-performance caching router that
transparently alters the topology of the Application Layer P2P networks to
make them more sympathetic to the underlying physical network of the ISP. This
dramatically reduces the level of unnecessary protocol chatter that is
continually broadcast around the network due to the nature of Peer-to-Peer and
which can result in more than 5 Gigabytes of unnecessary traffic for large
ISPs. When combined with the company's advanced caching functions, ISPs are
assured that content that would otherwise consume expensive network resources
are delivered from a local cache whenever possible.
The appliances are deployed at the edge of the network between the Internet
and the ISPs internal network, transparently relaying and caching content
where necessary.
Two Cachepliance models are currently available:
- The Cachepliance 4000 is designed for larger ISPs for use at the core of
the network. Each CP4000 appliance can support 50,000 subscribers and can be
deployed in clusters to support extremely large subscriber bases -- the device
ships with 1.4 Terabytes of RAID hard disk storage.
- The Cachepliance 2000 is designed for smaller ISPs or for use in local
Points of Presence (POPs) by larger ISPs. Each CP2000 appliance can support
30,000 subscribers and comes with 700 Gigabytes of RAID hard disk storage
installed.
Both products are fully interoperable to allow organizations to deploy an
efficient and collaborative architecture for dealing with P2P traffic
usage.
Quotes
"While ISPs are desperately seeking to reduce their spiraling bandwidth
costs
related to Peer-to-Peer file trading, they also recognize file sharing as a
significant driver of new broadband subscribers to their networks," said
Michael Hoch, Research Director, Internet Infrastructure for Aberdeen Group
(Boston). "The question is, how to best manage bandwidth costs without
negatively impacting the end-customers. Traffic shaping and bandwidth caps
have not proven to be popular with users, because they decrease speed and
limit accessibility. A caching solution can work, if the vendor can build a
solution that works for all P2P protocols and that manages the ISP peering
connections as well."
"As one of the UK's leading broadband providers, we constantly face the
challenges of providing a quality network whilst maintaining tight cost
controls," said Fergal Butler, internet technical consultant at Telewest
Broadband. "We are always looking for innovative technologies that will
potentially provide us with major cost savings without impacting the quality
of our service to our customers."
"CacheLogic provides the answer to the biggest problem facing ISPs today --
how to contain costs while simultaneously maximizing their existing broadband
infrastructure," said Adam Twiss, CEO of CacheLogic. "Anytime you can go to a
potential customer and tell them they can basically have a 5X increase in
broadband subscribers without adding new bandwidth you're certainly going to
get their attention. Traffic shaping and bandwidth caps are not the right
solution to eliminating customer churn -- we believe they contribute to it,
whereas our caching and unique protocol re-architecting provides the best of
all worlds to the customer and the ISP."
Product Availability and Pricing
Cachepliance products are available immediately -- the Cachepliance 4000 is
available at a cost of 50,000 pounds Sterling, or 1 pound Sterling per
subscriber ($1.64 as of May 30, 2003) with a service cost of 10,000 pounds
Sterling per year to cover service and updates for new Peer-to-Peer protocols.
The Cachepliance 2000 is 30,000 pounds Sterling with the same service cost.
Email sales@cachelogic.com for
further
details.
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