E-commerce Merchants Deliver the Goods With ArrowPoint's E-commerce Content Services Suite.WESTFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 15, 1999-- Web switching Using a Web switch to route Web traffic to the server that can process it most efficiently. See Web switch. pioneer announces industry's first cookie switching, encryption key caching and hybrid transaction binding technologies for e-transaction assurance and personalized services ArrowPoint Communications today announced a new e-commerce content services suite that provides e-commerce Web sites with reliable, error-free browsing and unbreakable connections for high-volume e-commerce transactions. The suite extends and enhances ArrowPoint's Web switching architecture with the industry's first cookie switching, encryption key caching and hybrid transaction binding technologies, to enable next-generation e-commerce content services and an end to "lost shopping carts." The suite also enables e-commerce application service providers (ASPs) to deliver fee-based site differentiation services including scalable e-transaction assurance, site and system security, flash crowd insurance, personalized offerings and rapid fulfillment of digital products and services. The suite will be offered as a standard component on both the CS-100 and CS-800 platforms and is available to existing customers as a software-only upgrade. ArrowPoint's e-commerce content services suite introduces first-ever solutions to connection and security problems that have hindered e-commerce by frustrating customers and jeopardizing - or losing - business. It equips e-commerce sites and their application hosting providers with new capabilities that provide significantly improved levels of speed, reliability and scalability, helping merchants achieve site differentiation, personalization, customer retention and "word of mouth" customer acquisition. Customers using these features to speed content delivery and keep e-shoppers coming back include eCal, Nettaxi.com, ToySmart.com, MotherNature.com and ThingWorld.com. ArrowPoint's e-commerce application hosting customers include NaviSite, EMC (1) (EMC Corporation, Hopkinton, MA, www.emc.com) The leading supplier of storage products for midrange computers and mainframes. Founded in 1979 by Richard J. Egan and Roger Marino, EMC has developed advanced storage and retrieval technologies for the world's largest companies. Internet Services Group and Global Crossing. "Site differentiation increasingly depends on delivering premium, often personalized, services to users. ArrowPoint's Web switches have pioneered a new product category that is helping to keep our portfolio of e-commerce and application hosting companies competitive leaders in their industries," said Bill Hawkins, executive vice president of Internet technology for CMGI CMGI Commonly Maintained Grounds Infrastructures CMGI College Marketing Group Information (Services) . "Their proven stability and support for cookie-based sticky connections create a scalable and reliable Web infrastructure that meets the demands of next-generation e-commerce and Web site services." Better customer services keep 'em coming back for more ArrowPoint's e-commerce content services suite stands on the industry's first cookie switching, encryption key caching and hybrid transaction binding technologies. Together, these three technologies add up to a new way of balancing reliability and security with high performance. They enable guaranteed transaction completion, reduced overhead for processor-intensive encrypted traffic, and user-to-server "sticky connections" between non-secure and secure session protocols, respectively. Cookie switching enables reliable e-transaction processing for non-secure site traffic and delivery of personalized and premium site services. Only ArrowPoint Web switches read full URLs, where others read, if any, only partial strings of fewer than one hundred bytes. Only ArrowPoint's Web switches dynamically find user cookies embedded anywhere in HTTP headers HTTP Headers form the core of a HTTP request, and are very important in a HTTP response. They define various characteristics of the data that is requested or the data that has been provided. to deliver cookie-based sticky connections where competitive solutions read cookies in "fixed" locations only. This ensures users are never load-balanced away from a Web server in mid-transaction, preventing frustration from lost shopping carts or vanishing information forms, even when they enter a site from popular mega-proxies that assign multiple IP addresses during users' shopping sessions. Cookie switching also enables scalable delivery of premium services for preferred customers as well as personalized content offerings and applications such as eCal's popular online calendaring system. "eCal has been using ArrowPoint's switches with their ability to make load balancing The fine tuning of a computer system, network or disk subsystem in order to more evenly distribute the data and/or processing across available resources. For example, in clustering, load balancing might distribute the incoming transactions evenly to all servers, or it might redirect them decisions based on cookies to enable sticky connections and to deliver personalized content reliably, without lengthy download times," said Trip Denton, eCal's chief technology officer. "User personalization and security are eCal's strengths. ArrowPoint's Web switches' ability to read cookies enables sticky connections between servers and users. This ensures we can deliver personalized, private content to a high number of users quickly, securely and unfailingly, without waiting or down time. The ArrowPoint technology also optimizes our response times and content delivery by enabling us to divide different kinds of content between the more than two-dozen servers across our site - a new form of load balancing only ArrowPoint can deliver." ArrowPoint also supports encryption-based sticky connections - a fundamental requirement for sites containing highly personal information, online credit card processing or extremely high-value purchase transactions. But secure sockets layer (networking, security) Secure Sockets Layer - (SSL) A protocol designed by Netscape Communications Corporation to provide secure communications over the Internet using asymmetric key encryption. (SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) The leading security protocol on the Internet. Developed by Netscape, SSL is widely used to do two things: to validate the identity of a Web site and to create an encrypted connection for sending credit card and other personal data. ) creates significant server overhead, particularly from repeated client-server negotiation of "keys" needed to maintain session encryption for a single user. ArrowPoint's unique encryption key caching eliminates this overhead, providing secure content delivery with no compromise to site security. In addition, ArrowPoint saves session IDs to maintain SSL sticky connections indefinitely. For example, when a user is interrupted while completing a mortgage application form, Web servers often "time out" the SSL session, causing traditional load balancers to connect the user with a different server upon his return and losing all information in the user's form. Only ArrowPoint saves the SSL session ID information - re-connecting users to their original server and ensuring their application information is never lost. ArrowPoint's hybrid transaction binding maintains "stickiness" when users move from cookie-based "shopping" connections to SSL-based "purchasing" connections, permitting sites to optimally balance both performance and security needs, and eliminating dropped shopping carts that create costly service disruption and loss of customer goodwill. With traditional load balancing technology, establishing a new SSL session breaks the shopper's original server connection, causing his or her shopping cart to vanish. ArrowPoint ASP and e-commerce customers are already using e-commerce content services suite features for first-time-ever applications such as scalable e-transaction assurance, personalized and premium services, proactive content provisioning and flash crowd insurance. "Only ArrowPoint's Web switches were capable of optimizing delivery of ThingWorld.com's streaming audio A one-way audio transmission over a data network. It is widely used on the Web as well as company networks to play audio clips and Internet radio. Computers in home networks stream audio (mostly music) to digital media hubs connected to home theaters. and video content, such as the World Wrestling Federation and New England Patriots  Editing of this page by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled until (UTC) due to vandalism. football team, to tens of thousands of users simultaneously," said Peter Kirwan, NaviSite's CTO (Chief Technical Officer) The executive responsible for the technical direction of an organization. See CIO and salary survey. . "With ArrowPoint, we can offer a competitive advantage for our customers, and for ourselves, in the highly competitive, high-end Web hosting Making a Web site available on the Internet. Many ISPs host a few personal Web pages for an individual at no additional cost above the monthly service fee, but the address is subordinate to the ISP; for example, www.friendlyisp.com/pat_smith. arena." ArrowPoint's architecture offers all the right tools for the job ArrowPoint's architecture uses a balance of centralized and distributed resources for the two key parts of the job: flow set-up and flow forwarding. The only Web switch built from the ground up for Web traffic, ArrowPoint's Web switches marry substantial centralized symmetric multiprocessing See SMP. (parallel) symmetric multiprocessing - (SMP) Two or more similar processors connected via a high-bandwidth link and managed by one operating system, where each processor has equal access to I/O devices. and memory resources needed for flow setup and "rules processing" with distributed application-specific integrated circuit (hardware) Application-Specific Integrated Circuit - (ASIC) An integrated circuit designed to perform a particular function by defining the interconnection of a set of basic circuit building blocks drawn from a library provided by the circuit manufacturer. (ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) Pronounced "a-sick." A chip that is custom designed for a specific application rather than a general-purpose chip such as a microprocessor. )-based processors for wire-speed forwarding of Web flows, all in a single platform. Flow set-up requires a Web switch to route requests for specific content based on URL URL in full Uniform Resource Locator Address of a resource on the Internet. The resource can be any type of file stored on a server, such as a Web page, a text file, a graphics file, or an application program. , or even user cookie, to the best site and server. ArrowPoint's content policy engine consists of four MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second) The execution speed of a computer. For example, .5 MIPS is 500,000 instructions per second; 100 MIPS is a hundred million instructions per second. RISC processors running a real-time operating system (operating system) Real-Time Operating System - (RTOS) Any operating system where interrupts are guaranteed to be handled within a certain specified maximum time, thereby making it suitable for control of hardware in embedded systems and other time-critical applications. with over 512MB of memory. The content policy engine provides the substantial resources needed for high-speed flow setup - to read full URLs, dynamically locate "mobile" user cookies anywhere in the HTTP header A record sent by clients and servers communicating with each other via the HTTP protocol. The header is a stream of text that may be sent without any content following it or with the content that it describes. , and to apply multiple complex policies to route content requests to the best site and server in real time. Flow forwarding is handled by ArrowPoint's distributed flow forwarding engines. Up to 16 distributed ASICs with up to 128MB of memory optimize these engines for wire-speed delivery of user content requests. In contrast, competitors' Web switches lack the multiprocessing resources needed to apply complex policies for flow set-up, relying on single ASIC with only 2 MB of memory to handle both flow set-up and flow forwarding for uplinks. "Large-scale e-commerce and online communities face a host of crippling problems, such as high traffic volumes, flash crowds, sluggish content delivery, and "content-blind" load balancing that causes poor server utilization, error messages DOS and Windows error messages are listed individually in this database by the message that is displayed when they occur. See also DOS error messages and Application Error.  and dropped shopping carts," said ArrowPoint's CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. and founder Cheng Wu Cheng Wu (程武; b. 201) was an officer under the Cao Wei of the Three Kingdoms period in China. Cheng Wu was the son of Cheng Yu. Cheng Wu served under Xiahou Mao when fighting against the army under Shu, then having Xiahou Mao surround and then attack Zhao Yun as to . "ArrowPoint gives e-commerce ASPs and their clients competitive site differentiation, reliable and growth-proof e-transaction services and an end to annoying errors and dropped connections that drive customers to competitors' sites. Other vendors offer Web server switching. ArrowPoint's focus is Web service switching - that's about creating new Web revenue opportunities for our customers." Now standard on all ArrowPoint Web switches, e-commerce content services suite is immediately available to current ArrowPoint customers as a free software maintenance upgrade. About ArrowPoint Communications ArrowPoint Communications has pioneered Web switching, the next generation networking Next Generation Networking (NGN) is a broad term to describe some key architectural evolutions in telecommunication core and access networks that will be deployed over the next 5-10 years. technology that optimizes Web response times and reliability for a consistently positive user experience. ArrowPoint's products are used in a broad range of applications, including electronic commerce, Web publishing Creating a Web site and placing it on the Web server. A Web site is a collection of HTML pages with the home page typically named INDEX.HTML. Web sites are designed using Web authoring software which provides a graphical layout capability or by hand coding in HTML or both. , Web caching and value-added Web hosting services. The company is headquartered in Westford, Mass., with regional offices in Alton, Hampshire, United Kingdom and Singapore. For more information, call 978.692.5875 or visit the company Web site at www.arrowpoint.com. |
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