mp3.com uses ISLD (from following article)
digisle.net
The Digital Island Solution:
Deploying IP Applications Worldwide
JUNE 1999
Introduction
As companies embrace the Internet to more effectively market, sell,
service and distribute their products and services, they believe that
"the Internet changes everything." As e-commerce becomes
pervasive, more companies-including traditional brick and mortar
establishments-are attracted by the promise of the Internet as a
"panacea" for new market entry and increased revenue.
In truth, the Internet changes nothing.
Companies believe that the Internet levels the playing field. What they
don't understand is this: running a successful Internet business means
that as they learn to be World Wide Web specialists, focusing on their
core business competencies is more important than ever. The
fundamental principles that apply to traditional business still apply to
Internet-centric businesses. All businesses still need to attract
potential buyers, effectively manage and promote inventory, deliver
products and services in a timely manner, and ensure a positive
customer experience.
In addition, doing business on the Internet can create brand new
problems you never anticipated-based not on what your company can
deliver, but on what the Internet was never intended to do: enable
E-business, in high volume, all over the world. Customers will identify
your company with any problems in your E-business
implementation-even the problems that are not your fault, such as slow
downloads and packet loss.
From a technical perspective, poor customer experiences that come
from a slow and unreliable Web site have many causes. Sometimes
it's as simple as lack of network bandwidth or high volumes of traffic.
Sometimes it comes from lack of management or control over
distribution. Often it's because of servers not in your control, on this
continent or another. Increasing demand may press the network's
ability to scale, depriving both new and established customers from
the swift service.
From a business perspective, how can you deliver the right content to
the right people, quickly and reliably, for the right price?
Digital Island understands the Internet; we know its capabilities and its
limitations. We have designed a solution that leverages the best of
private and public networks to help businesses prosper.
The Digital Island Solution
Digital Island offers the first fully integrated solution-a solution that
allows businesses to use the Web as a controllable, scalable,
cost-effective business medium-while ensuring the best possible
customer experience. The Digital Island Solution includes full
applications hosting and content distribution services, all of which are
supported by Local Content Managers, Data Centers, the
Traceware™ Internet Atlas, and the Intelligent Network.
The heart of our technology, a three-tiered distributed architecture, is
also the beginning of your global business solution.
Why is a Distributed Architecture Important?
Because your business needs to scale.
Today, MP3.com has more than 27 million songs that users can
download and listen to, anytime they visit the MP3 Web site. MP3
uses a file format that compactly stores audio information, and sounds
nearly flawless when downloaded. Amazingly, one megabyte can hold
one minute of music. The music industry paints a glowing picture of
MP3's potential, claiming that music distribution costs are drastically
lowered because no physical goods need to be transported.
Many businesses don't anticipate the problems-or the costs-that come
with global e-distribution; they assume that a Web site will make them
global. MP3's distribution model does make local market entries
easier. What the industry hasn't considered is how to ensure
consistent, reliable service when those local markets become global
markets, requiring global delivery. And the cost of distribution is still a
factor. While not a building and physical transport, there are still costs
associated with distribution-putting together a Web site, guaranteeing
rapid connectivity for end users, and putting together a sales and
support organization to meet the needs of end users when they do
request live interaction.
There's only one way to enter a global market and ensure customer
experience: businesses need a distributed architecture that can scale
from thousands to millions of end users, all over the world, without
compromising customer service. In the E-business world,
manufacturing and physical distribution are no longer required, but
high quality, consistent content distribution becomes paramount.
The need for a distributed model for delivery of products and services
isn't unique to E-business. Traditional businesses rely on a distributed
model to bring their product close to their customers. When a
publisher releases a new book, for example, consumers don't have to
drive to the printer to pick up a copy. The idea is absurd, primarily
because of the headaches it causes customers. Instead, publishers
and retailers created a distribution model that included regional
warehouses and local booksellers.
Interestingly, the same principles can be applied to the delivery of
digital content and services. The public Internet and many Internet
Service Providers (ISPs) lack the kind of hierarchy that can efficiently
support and cost-effectively route and deliver content to customers.
Distribution, whether it's physical or digital, requires consistent,
reliable, and fast delivery to customers. If content is only stored on
North American servers, MP3 customers in Europe or Asia have to
wait for their music, and risk packet loss or degraded audio when
receiving information from that server.
Digital Island understood that the Internet could not address the
problems facing global organizations, and in response, designed a
distributed architecture infrastructure that logically addresses the
distribution needs of Internet-based companies by bringing content
close to the end user.
Digital Island's Three-Tier Architecture Advantage
A well-designed three-tier network architecture balances data
distribution and the laws of economics to deliver content and services
at a low cost-to-performance ratio. Digital Island's three-tiered
hierarchy provides a unique solution that optimizes content distribution
and enhances the end-user experience. Figure 2, below, illustrates the
Digital Island three-tier architecture.
Inside enterprises, the core layer of the network is the apex of the
hierarchy, providing a switching path between services at the
distribution layer. In large-scale networking environments, core
network infrastructures are often managed and operated at both the IP
and datalink layers. Managing both the IP and the datalink layers
allows greater control and flexibility, providing further insurance that
upper layer services won't be affected by inadequate bandwidth
inside the core. Within the core, bandwidth, not capital equipment, is
the primary cost. Since backbone use can be more effectively
optimized at the datalink layer, virtually all major Network Service
Providers-such as UUNet, MCI, and Sprint-manage their own layer
two and three infrastructures to maintain adequate bandwidth.
Consequently, the core is carefully monitored and managed to ensure
optimal efficiency, performance, and reliability. Failures within
companies core network infrastructures usually result in drastic impact
to end-user services.
While the core provides critical switching paths, the distribution layer
delivers goods and services. Like the factories before them, Data
Centers are workshops where information products are created,
maintained, and delivered to end users. Key distribution layer
components focus on these operational areas to ensure that network
resources won't inhibit application performance:
High speed LAN access to Data Center servers;
Multiple server load balancing;
Geographic load balancing between servers at different Data
Centers; and
Numerous physical and logical paths to the access Layer,
connected to end users.
In contrast to the distribution layer, the access layer's biggest
challenge is balancing the need for excellent end-user access against
the economics of service localization. Whenever possible, services
should be pushed to the edge of the network for local storage and
delivery, where bandwidth is inexpensive and consistent, ensuring
reliable access. To effectively push those services close to end users,
costly remote processing and storage are required. And as new
remote facilities are added to serve regional users, costs escalate
and systems management becomes increasingly difficult.
Ideally, IT managers need to have immediate access to local
processing power and storage to serve local customer bases. With
this kind of power and storage, costs would go down as new
customers were served.
Digital Island Applications Hosting and Content Distribution
Digital Island's Application Hosting and Content Distribution Service
leverages our distributed star architecture, combined with Local
Content Managers and TraceWare™, to store and deliver content
close to end users, reducing transport costs and improving customer
service. Using the most advanced caching, mirroring, and networking
technology, Digital Island pushes appropriate content to the edge of
the network, where users can retrieve it locally. For example,
frequently accessed information like Web home pages, graphics files,
and audio/video streams, can be located close to users-reducing the
cost of transport and providing the end user a more "local"
experience. The network infrastructure uses TraceWare, an Internet
atlas, to route data either centrally or regionally as required by the
transaction type. Our optimized content distribution hierarchy
guarantees fast, consistent, and reliable end-user experiences.
Local Content Managers
Digital Island's Local Content Managers (LCMs) are distribution sites
strategically placed around the globe to bring content closer to end
users. LCMs allow multinational corporations to quickly, consistently,
and reliably deliver high-volume content to millions of end users
worldwide simultaneously-including bandwidth-intensive applications
such as streaming audio/video files, software releases, MP3 audio
files, and online publications. Caching, mirroring, and in-country
backbone peering let LCMs simplify administration and significantly
reduce operational costs.
Caching
Caching is the ability to dynamically pull content from an original
server for placement on LCMs. Caching plays a critical roll in
enhancing end-user performance around the globe while simplifying
management for individual IT teams. Cacheable content includes Web
sites using standard HTTP, GIFS, or anonymous FTP.
Mirroring
Mirroring allows Digital Island customers with non-cacheable content
to better reach global end users by replicating their content directly in
country. Examples of non-cacheable content include authenticated
FTP files, authenticated Web sites, or encrypted and compressed
software packages. Digital Island posts customer content in a secure
staging area where it is transparently "mirrored" or replicated to LCMs
across our Intelligent Network. Content is quickly delivered to the
mirrored sites, and then goes live worldwide simultaneously. End
users accessing the content are transparently directed to the nearest
mirrored site, making their online experience consistent, reliable, and
fast.
In-country Backbone Peering
The ability to reach end users quickly, reliably, and consistently is
directly related to the number of direct connections within each
market. Each LCM peers directly with multiple backbones in-country
to provide high-speed access to end users within that market. Digital
Island directly peers with more backbones around the world than any
other hosting provider in the United States.
Digital Island's LCMs are active in the United States (Honolulu, Silicon
Valley and New York), the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia and
Japan; with next-phase expansion to France, Sweden, Singapore,
China (Hong Kong) and Brazil by summer 1999.
Data Centers
Digital Island Data Centers serve as the distribution layer for
customers who want to provide services to their global end users. All
of our Data Centers provide 24-hour support, high security, and
extensive disaster recovery. Digital Island Data Centers are
characterized by solid processes and procedures in infrastructure
fundamentals ranging from wiring, power, physical and logical
security, cabinets, to LAN connectivity. This allows Digital Island to
provide a higher layer of customer service and support for all our
customers, regardless of which Service Package they use. These are
some of the key processes and procedures used in all Digital Island
Data Centers:
Clean wire - the ability to easily install and remove servers
without jeopardizing other servers in the Data Center is critical.
CleanWire is Digital Island's structured approach to Data Center
wiring. It provides our customers with faster installations, quicker
troubleshooting, and a more reliable physical infrastructure.
Intelligent LAN - not all Local Area Networks are created equal.
While it's relatively easy to set up a router and a switch, building
a fast, scalable networking environment for server computing is
not simple. Intelligent LAN is Digital Island's internal standard for
ensuring that the LAN does not become the bottleneck in
accessing customer services.
Intelligent build - creating a production-ready computing
environment is critical when doing business on the Web.
Intelligent build is the Digital Island standard for all of our server
management customers. It's designed to provide a stable,
secure, and highly fault-tolerant systems environment for
production-ready global computing. From the latest patch
installation to systems security management, Intelligent build
ensures customer uptime and performance. For customers
demanding the highest server availability in the industry,
Intelligent build is the standard.
TraceWare ™
Digital Island's patent-pending TraceWare is an Internet atlas that can
be integrated into any E-business application. It adds reliable
geographical information for any Web browser to most commercial
applications. TraceWare-enabled e-commerce applications are
tailored to comply with local regulations and can address challenges
such as local currencies, tax laws, and customs. TraceWare enables
multinational companies to know their customers and to provide the
look and feel of a local transaction-anywhere in the world.
The Intelligent Network Advantage
The Digital Island Intelligent Network does not transit traffic between
continents. It deploys business applications to multiple continents
simultaneously. Because of its manageability, scalability and
reliability, Digital Island's distributed-star architecture is superior to
meshed networks.
Digital Island's Intelligent Network combines the most advanced
networking technology with a global fiber-optic network to provide
optimum reach and performance. Our Intelligent Network offers
customers a broad range of Quality of Service options designed to
support the most demanding network-reliant applications, including
e-commerce, multimedia broadcast/streaming, and IP telephony.
The Intelligent Network consists of a distributed star architecture with
an ATM backbone that connects to, and is supported by, redundant
Cisco routers located at four geographically dispersed Data Centers.
The distributed star architecture minimizes the number of separate
transmissions, or hops, necessary to transmit data, resulting in greater
speed and reliability. Digital Island's distributed Data Centers permit
the Intelligent Network to disseminate information reliably on a global
basis. Using TraceWare, a sophisticated Internet atlas, Digital Island
optimizes data transmissions internationally, delivering data directly to
users in country. The Digital Island Intelligent Network increases the
speed and reliability of data transmission and circumvents the need to
use inter-exchange points as a switching path between networks.
The Intelligent Network peers with ISPs in each country, providing
customers with direct access to local markets worldwide. Because we
have direct connections to major ISPs, Digital Island's customers
avoid the oversubscribed U.S. Internet infrastructure, bypassing
congestion and improving end-user experience (Figure 2).
Digital Island Delivers E-business Advantages
Digital Island's Application Hosting and Content Distribution Service
realizes the promise of the Internet for E-business. Digital Island
incorporates leading technology advances to provide a one-stop
solution for companies that need to expand their presence in global
markets.
Digital Island can solve your application hosting and content
distribution challenges. We ensure the right customer experience for
the right price; guarantee management and control; and help you
rapidly distribute goods, services, and distributed applications-not just
in North America, but in all of your current and potential markets, all
over the world.
Contact Us
For more information about Digital Island and its services, please
send e-mail to info@digitalisland.net or call us at +1 (415) 228-4100. |
