Vendors Inject Intelligence Into Net Traffic

While there are several intelligent routing products on the market, each takes a slightly different approach. Essentially, the technology routes traffic based on performance and ISP cost/usage metrics and takes into account application requirements and budget constraints. The technology in turn monitors Internet connections to determine the connection with the best performance or price.

For applications such as voice and video or services such as realtime quotes, which require fast and reliable routes, the technology chooses a connection based on performance. For non-mission-critical applications, the technology routes the traffic based on the lowest cost.

Equinix, Mountain View, Calif., wanted to adopt intelligent routing but struggled to pick a vendor, as its ISP, content provider and network service provider customers built out geographically dispersed Internet connections after Sept. 11. The company operates seven Internet Business Exchange centers that serve as hubs for IP networks and Internet operations with 70 percent of the customer base multi-homing.

Questions about service provider and carrier financial stability have also boosted the need for multi-homing for the company.

"Customers want multiple networks for redundancy, but they want to reduce costs while they leverage multiple networks for increased performance," said Jay Adelson, CTO and founder of Equinix. "That's a tall order."

Equinix went with netVmg's Intelligent Route Control product, Adelson said. "With customers like the Washington Post or a financial services firm, traffic has to be monitored and routed in realtime, which is what netVmg does," Adelson said. "A lot of the other products claim to route traffic in realtime, but they don't."

Equinix currently offers intelligent routing as a pay-as-you-go managed service. Adelson said a customer test group stands to realize a 30 percent to 40 percent reduction a year on transport agreements with carriers because of Intelligent Route Control.

Voice and data services provider Focal Communications opted to integrate Sockeye's GlobalRoute technology with its service offerings. The Sockeye Network appliance sits next to Focal Communications routers to determine the flow of customer voice and data traffic.

"We make a promise to customers that our routing is better than the next guy's, and with Sockeye we can back up that promise," said Michael Mael, president of Focal Communications, Chicago. "Sockeye gives reports that show customers how much our service improves performance."

While netVmg is software-based, Sockeye's technology is positioned as an ASP offering. Sockeye was spun out of Akamai and has a deal with Akamai to access its system of more than 13,000 servers on more than 1,000 networks. Sockeye taps the system to run its routing service.

Another intelligent routing player, RouteScience, has developed a networking device called PathControl that is installed at a customer's edge routers. Andy Gottlieb, vice president of marketing and corporate strategy, said PathControl saves companies anywhere from 15 percent to 20 percent on bandwidth costs and in some cases more than 50 percent by routing traffic over lower-cost ISP links.

Several of these companies are mulling a channel strategy. RouteScience, San Mateo, Calif., plans to introduce a program for service providers by the end of the year.

"We plan to introduce a channel program because we will come out with a technology at a lower cost that is optimized for site-to-site applications," Gottlieb said. "Site-to-site connectivity, meaning VPNs, for replacing private point-to-point frame relay with Internet connections is a much bigger market that appeals to a broad base of service providers."