keeping up with the 'competition' ...
-----
Internet Week
February 08, 1999, Issue: 751
Section: News & Analysis
Cisco Adds Muscle To Web Caching
John Fontana
Cisco next month will unveil a new caching device that nearly triples the horsepower of its current offering, an attempt to overcome user indifference to its initial offering.
Code-named Robin, the cache appliance-which attaches to one or more Cisco routers-will support up to 2,000 simultaneous connections, including multiple Ethernet and Fast Ethernet links, according to a source who has previewed the device. The rack-mountable box will take one unit of rack space, considerably less than cache devices from other vendors.
Cisco's Cache Engine product-which can link to one router at a time-only supports 900 simultaneous connections, offers one Ethernet or Fast Ethernet connection and is not rack mountable.
Officials at Cisco declined to comment on the company's plans to launch new caching appliances.
Cache Engine was panned by critics when it shipped in September 1997 because it lacked the performance of competitive devices. Experts said Cisco's product has not fared well against those made by leading cache technology vendors, including CacheFlow Inc., Inktomi Corp. and Network Appliance Inc.
Cisco's Cache Engine "actually inhibited the growth of the cache market," said Peter Christy, an analyst at Collaborative Research, a consultancy. "It was not good enough to sell in volume, but not bad enough to count them out. It sort of froze the market," he said.
"We found the Cache Engine was not sized for large environments," said Scott Conti, network operations manager for the University of Massachusetts Office of Information Technologies. Conti has 6,000 workstations but found the device better suited for about 1,000 workstations. "We could save 25 percent of our bandwidth with caching, but we found it was more expensive to buy multiple Cache Engines than it was to buy 25 percent more bandwidth." Conti said he has not seen any new caching products from Cisco, but would do a cost evaluation on any new device.
If Cisco delivers a competent new product, it could displace Inktomi as the top cache vendor by piggybacking sales with its router and switching hardware, Christy said. The caching appliance market is in its infancy, but Collaborative Research predicts that today's embryonic market will hit $2 billion by 2002.
"A well-designed cache can have a positive impact on network performance," Christy said.
The previewing source, who requested anonymity, said, "No one has tapped the corporate market for these devices. I think Cisco is aiming more for price/performance and more toward the edge of the network." Under that strategy, IT managers would be able to place the devices at various points in the network and at branch offices, improving performance by caching Web traffic close to the end users.
Robin, which looks similar to Cisco's Catalyst 2924 workgroup switch, has an external SCSI port that would allow future links to other systems, such as storage devices. It also has multiple internal high-speed SCSI disks, reverse proxy support and can be clustered with other units.
"Nobody has seen what [Cisco] might offer for that [SCSI] expansion port, but it might address users who want to support large cache farms," the source said.
Robin is much smaller than Cache Engine and its competitors. Five of the new Cisco units can fit in the same space as one cache device from another vendor, the previewing source said.
Cisco could demonstrate the new product at the National Laboratory for Applied Network Research's cache "bake-off" in March, according to the source.
Caching appliance competitors remained skeptical of Cisco's ability to compete in their market. "While [Cisco has] been developing a strategy, we've been developing a following," said Kelly Herrell, vice president of marketing at CacheFlow. "The trick of caching is in the software. Cisco is fixing the iron, but what about the software?" he said.
Cisco will answer that question next month, when it is expected to release version 2.0 of its Web Cache Communication Protocol (WCCP), a package that has been licensed to other caching vendors since last November. WCCP, a feature of Cisco's Internetwork Operating System, is used by routers to intercept HTTP requests and redirect them to a cache.
Inktomi and Network Appliance are among the companies that will license the technology.
Caching is becoming more important because it reduces the distance that Web content must travel to reach its destination. It also boosts Web response times on both external and internal servers.
Robin's pricing could range from $12,000 to $15,000, according to the previewing source. Cisco's current Cache Engine product costs about $15,000.
POWERING UP
Cisco has added horsepower to its newest cache product. Features include:
-Multiple 10/100-Mbps Ethernet ports
-Connections to multiple routers
-Support for 2,000 simultaneous connections
-Multiple internal high-speed SCSI disks
-External SCSI port for future expansion
-Reverse proxy support
-Rack mounted (one rack unit in size) |
