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Content delivery start-up draws big-name investors

A new Internet infrastructure company dubbed Surgient Networks attracts $10 million in funding from a handful of big-name Net figures.

John Borland Staff Writer, CNET News.com
John Borland
covers the intersection of digital entertainment and broadband.
John Borland
A new Internet infrastructure company dubbed Surgient Networks has attracted $10 million in funding from a handful of big-name Net figures.

The company says it's in the content delivery business, an area now populated by Akamai Technologies, Exodus Communications and a growing number of other firms. The industry is aimed at making sure individual Web pages, streaming media files, or other pieces of Net content don't get jammed up in Internet bottlenecks.

Several ideas have emerged for doing this, ranging from distributing thousands of small Web servers into individual ISP networks to beaming the content directly from satellites, skipping the slowest transfer points on the Web.

Surgient hasn't said exactly what it will do, other than attack bottlenecks in Web downloads, however.

Nevertheless, the list of investors is enough to keep the company on radar screens.

The $10 million funding round is being led by Austin Ventures, a large venture capital firm based in Texas, as is Surgient itself.

Also participating are Bill Joy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Compaq co-founder Rod Canion, America Online co-founder Marc Seriff, and former Federal Communications Commission chairman Reed Hundt.

Agave Capital, an angel investor fund run by several former Cisco executives also contributed.