To continuously count IP traffic, Digital Island runs NetFlow on its border routers. Flow records are synchronized centrally and aggregated by destination country to sum outbound gigabytes sent by each server. According to John Stewart, director of Systems Engineering and Security at Digital Island, destination billing offers competitive advantages to companies that operate internationally, the majority of Digital Island's customer base. A domestic and international usage summary is included with each Digital Island invoice. Online web-based reporting with geographic breakdown is also a standard feature of this premium network service.
Authenticated customers can securely access private ongoing usage detail, displayed by country.
And Digital Island has repeatedly proven NetFlow's accuracy. This innovative billing approach, combined with direct access to global regions, are key service differentiators for Digital Island. Our competitors said they did it, but we really do it. NetFlow was placed into production use at Digital Island without difficulty, just two months after initial deployment. Digital Island developed its own aggregation and billing software to complement NetFlow services because no commercial usage-based billing applications existed in 1996.