Ending the "World Wide Wait"

Inktomi today launched "Traffic Server," its commercial network cache designed to increase network efficiency and end what is often called the "World Wide Wait."

The launch is both expected and the latest offering in a competitive market. Intel, Cisco, Novell, among others, also are offering caching technology as a way to ease Internet congestion.

Inktomi contends that Traffic Server delivers bandwidth savings equivalent to more than three T3 lines, or 135 megabits per second. That translates into an estimated savings of more than $1.8 million annually for Internet service providers, backbone carriers, and telcos.

Inktomi also confirmed previous reports that it has forged a marketing and sales relationship with Sun Microsystems for the Traffic Server product. It said the technology now is being evaluated by UUNet, Nippon Telephone and Telegraph, and OzEmail in Australia. Inktomi also teamed with Sun on audited benchmark tests for the product.

"The high number of Internet users and the insatiable demand for Internet data is causing bandwidth capacity to triple every year," said Inktomi chief executive David Peterschmidt. "Today we believe that up to 80 percent of data traffic on the Internet is redundant. Traffic Server is designed to reduce this data redundancy by 40 to 50 percent."

Traffic server runs on Solaris and is expected to be available for Intel's architecture in 1998. Pricing starts at $19,995 per CPU.

Also today, Network Appliance said its NetCache Web caching product reached two milestones: there are more than 2.5 million users relying on NetCache-based sites, and Singapore Telecom is deploying NetCache.