Introducing more and more complexity inevitably degrades performance. F5 Networks Inc.'s Big-IP routes traffic among machines. Cambridge, Mass.-bassed Akamai's proprietary technologies reside on a global network of 2,000 servers. The Akamai system routes each request for content to servers that are geographically closer to the customer so the request travels a shorter distance along the Internet. Existing bandwidth gets used more efficiently.
Interruptions mean lost revenue.
The decision to spin off the division as a separate publicly traded company coincided with the need to improve the transaction performance of the site. Back then, the service, hosted by MCI WorldCom Inc. and running on just two Intergraph Corp. servers, couldn't quickly recover from an interruption. Lengthy delays occurred when the second server picked up a request. To assure transaction performance, Johnson needed a product that could reliably handle the streaming audio requests and route each request to the appropriate server. He chose F5 Networks' Big-IP and 3DNS products.