As more companies depend on doing business over the Internet, the e-commerce networks that support those efforts have to be reliable, secure and fast. Preparing for Campus Infrastructure Unlike traditional corporate networks, where a controlled number of users elicit fairly predictable server demands, the peaks and valleys in demand for 'Net content require network professionals to learn new ways of setting up their infrastructures.
Customers are no longer just throwing Web servers at network performance problems.
The things that we wanted to do creatively and what was required to make those things happen in terms of infrastructure didn't always work. For example, network managers can turn to caches, which hold content in memory and quickly serve it - making them an ideal choice for busy retail and media sites that get repeated requests for static content, such as catalog images. A good example of how cache devices can help sites quickly scale to meet peak demand is the recent Euro 2000 soccer tournament. The site that broadcasts coverage of the event over the Internet withstood the rage of more than 1.4 billion hits from June 10 to July 2, when the final match was captured by France. Coordinators say the site's success had a lot to do with advance planning and testing, as well as cache devices that doled out content, including real-time video, audio and stories in five languages from nine data centers around the world.