F5 catching up to rivals with its Web-speeding
tools
By Wylie Wong
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
June 15, 2000, 4:30 p.m. PT
F5 Networks, a maker of technology that speeds up delivery of Web content to
Internet
surfers, is close to shipping a faster device that will rival competitors such as Cisco
Systems.
F5 builds appliances that allow Web sites and Internet service providers to manage the
flow of
Net traffic. The devices ease congestion by distributing traffic evenly among servers on
a
network, so none of the servers are overloaded with work.
Analysts say the biggest complaint about F5 in the past was that
its products were slower than its competitors' tools because of the
way they configured the equipment.
To better compete in the growing traffic management market, F5
has created a new product that speeds up its technology sixfold,
from 350 megabits per second to 2 gigabits per second. The new
product is an add-on device that connects to F5's existing traffic
management device, called the "Big-IP Controller."
"This is a critical announcement for F5 because it's much faster,"
analyst Cindy Borovick of research firm International Data Corp.
said. "They've responded to their critics."
F5's new product, with a built-in Intel IXP1200 network processor, is
an add-on card that plugs directly into its Big-IP appliance, which
uses a Pentium processor. Together, the processors divide the
workload, F5 senior vice president Steve Goldman said.
Seattle-based F5 ranks third in the traffic-management device
market with 17 percent market share, according to a recent study by the Dell'Oro
Group.
In a market that reached $106 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2000, Cisco
ranks first
with 30 percent market share. Alteon WebSystems is in second place with 20 percent,
while
Foundry Networks is fourth with 10 percent of the market. ArrowPoint, which Cisco
recently
acquired, was fifth with 9 percent. |
