Network Physics Helps Hotwire.com Travel Site Deliver Deals Faster to Internet Visitors.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- NP-2000 Improves User Experience, Troubleshoots Problems Faster; Delivers Bandwidth Savings and Improves Teamwork Between Network and Software Engineers

Network Physics, the leader in network application management across converging networks, today announced that discount travel site Hotwire.com, is using the Network Physics NP-2000 appliance to improve the experience of users booking travel, while allowing the company to troubleshoot problems faster, reduce bandwidth costs, and improve cooperation between network and software engineers.

Hotwire credits the NP-2000 with a tremendous improvement in its ability to manage the company's web site. "The NP-2000 has given us a scientific approach to managing the site, making the hard data we need easily available for analysis and thus enables us to forecast, act, and react, much more appropriately," said Brian Tam, senior network engineer at Hotwire. "And now, when my boss comes down and asks me 'what's up with the network,' I can give him a complete answer -- in terms of the impact on our business -- in ten minutes or less."

Delivering the Best Deals

Hotwire is a leading Internet discount travel site dedicated to delivering consistently lower prices on airfare, hotel rooms, car rentals, vacation packages and cruises. The company negotiates deep discounts from its travel suppliers to help sell their excess inventory, and offers advanced search technology to help consumers find the best deal for their needs.

Instrumenting the Internet

As is often the case in companies dependent on the Internet to reach customers, Hotwire's networking team found itself at somewhat of a disadvantage, according to Tam. "When you're dealing with the Internet, you can't instrument it like you can an application or a server that you own and control. Previous to our purchase of the NP-2000, we didn't have the necessary information we needed to really nail down network problems, so problem solving was often a process of educated guesswork and a lot of iterative tweaks."

Delivering Useful Information Almost Immediately

Looking for a way to give the network team more leverage over the unpredictable nature of the Internet and a better handle on the user experience of Hotwire visitors, the company installed the NP-2000 at their co-location facility for an evaluation, which rapidly turned into full-time use. "The box was up and running in 30 minutes," said Tam, "and delivering useful information -- data that we'd never been able to see before -- almost as quickly."

Managing the User Experience

Tam added, "Not only does the NP-2000 deliver a wider range of metrics than what we've been able to gather previously, but the immense flexibility of the user interface lets me zero in on what's important very quickly. I can see at a glance whether we're dealing with a back-end or network problem and get the right team members involved from the very beginning. So not only do we solve problems faster, but we can give the software engineers the data they need to improve application performance from their end too."

Also important is the historical data furnished by the NP-2000. "The fact that the box not only delivers real-time data, but keeps historical data so easily accessible, is invaluable for long-term troubleshooting of subtle application problems," added Tam.

Saving Bandwidth Costs and Managing ISPs

The NP-2000 also delivered notable bandwidth savings. "Our co-location provider enables us to change which ISPs we use to connect to the Internet very quickly," said Tam. "We're multihomed, and the NP-2000 gives us a very clear picture of which ISPs the majority of our customers are using to access our site. By then routing traffic through lower-cost ISPs that nonetheless deliver good performance, we're enjoying a considerable cost savings; in this way, it's like the NP-2000 paid for itself in a couple of months."

About Network Physics

Network Physics enables enterprises to eliminate response time problems across converging networks. The company's patent-pending technology applies proven physics methodologies to the new network ecosystem -- internal and external networks used by, but not completely controlled by or visible to networking staff. The Network Physics network application management solutions assure the delivery of an enterprise's most critical networked business services by giving IT staff breakthrough visibility of these services via network views based on business-level groupings of actual traffic flows. This enables customers to maximize service quality and uptime, optimize alignment of IT operations with business priorities, and reduce operating costs by finding problems faster and smarter. Network Physics was founded in March 1999 and its products are currently being deployed at a wide range of Global 2000 corporations, including Fortune 100 companies and two of the top 10 international banks. For more information, please visit the company's web site at www.networkphysics.com.