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. 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.
Instead, they are changing the way their networks handle traffic - turning to smart devices aimed at getting specific parts of the job done faster. 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.