Case in Point ASPs such as Digex, Inc. are already moving in this direction. Digex is building content awareness into its network infrastructure via server load balancing, caching, and Layer 3 QoS capabilities that enable policies for content storage, distribution, and access. The company guarantees its customers application availability and continuous access to the hosted applications without any single points of failure. Complex Web sites must be actively managed, not just hosted. Cisco technology underpins the Digex network at multiple levels.
Direct connections ensure that users receive the most efficient service possible.
At the intelligent network level, Cisco technology is essential to load balancing, traffic shaping, and disaster recovery between data centers. Digex has standardized on Cisco LocalDirector for load balancing within data centers and DistributedDirector between data centers. In the near future, Digex plans to make use of Layer 4 services such as connection-based server load balancing, which makes it easier to support multiple servers with a single virtual IP address. Eventually, the roadmap will lead to content-based server load balancing, which improves the reliability of complex transactions on multiple systems by ensuring that all necessary content and computing resources are available before initiating a transaction. The configuration of our routing equipment is 100 percent redundant and available.