Faster e-comm on the cheap
These five technologies boost site performance yet are easy on your wallet.
By Brett Mendel
Network
World, 02/18/02
E-commerce sites are like organic entities. They must be constantly fed with attention and resources to stay productive. But lately, doing more with less has become the IT department's mantra. This is especially so for e-commerce, according to Network World's 2002 IT spending survey. The 598 IT professionals surveyed ranked e-commerce software next to last for budget increases in 2002. The challenge for network executives will be to keep Web site upgrades rolling without spending more than last year. To that end, we've scouted out technologies, products and services that aim to tune your site's performance but cost $10,000 or less.
Relieving the dial-up burden
Not long ago, bandwidth, servers and other hardware were considered inexpensive commodities that could be lavished on Web infrastructures. Not anymore.
"We're no longer in a supplier's fantasyland," says Peter Christy, co-founder of NetsEdge Research Group. "Companies still need to spend, but they need to be much more specific about what they spend on."
In response to that is a new breed of products that off-load functions from overburdened Web servers. These highly specialized products, which have started to become available in the past year or so, can handle specialized tasks more quickly than servers and often reside in front of or next to the servers.
BizRate.com, an online comparison-shopping service in Marina del Rey, Calif., saw such a need when it entered a partnership in August with service provider NetZero. With that partnership came an influx of Web users that strained servers by connecting to the BizRate site with low-speed, dial-up modems. BizRate's previous users typically relied on broadband sessions that didn't require as much time connected as do dial-up sessions, says Jody Mulkey, vice president of data systems at BizRate. "When a dial-up user connects to a server directly, the server maintains that connection until the data payload is delivered," he says. "That just takes longer for dial-up than broadband."
Mulkey estimates dial-up could take as long as 10 to 20 seconds to ask for and receive a Web page, compared with nearly instantaneous response with broadband.
The company decided to install T/X Real-Time
Accelerator from Redline Networks. The device's main purpose
is to set up and manage Web-user connections in front of the
server farm. Approximately 220 user sessions coming into the
Redline accelerator have been consolidated into six dedicated
network connections into the Web servers, Mulkey says.
"That lets our servers just serve up Web pages," he says. Plus, the accelerator handles its task of managing connections more efficiently than the servers could.
Besides the capability of handling more simultaneous connections, BizRate has noticed that the accelerator's HTTP compression tools yield upward of a 2.5-to-1 data-compression rate, Mulkey says. By going this route, the company has avoided paying $10,000 to $20,000 per month for additional bandwidth, he says.
T/X 2100, an entry-level device launched last spring, is geared for Web operations of up to 32 servers. It is just one product in the $10,000 price range designed to free Web servers of communications tasks.
Better page request routing
Similarly, Request Switch from NetScaler addresses bandwidth usage by managing server connections. It uses Layer 7 routing for intelligent distribution of incoming requests to the appropriate servers. NetScaler's 6100 and 6300 models cost $7,500 and $10,000, respectively.
"The NetScaler device handles a good bit of the communications overhead so our servers aren't getting bogged down in servicing requests," says Randy Reisinger, COO of Bargain America, a San Jose online retailer. "This helps deliver pages faster because the servers' CPU capacity is left to service customers."
Bargain America's performance bottlenecks largely resulted from delivering all pages dynamically. The company's U.S. site sells consumer goods such as ties, watches and music CDs to people in Japan. Product and pricing information can change by the minute, so almost all the site's pages are constructed on the fly. As a result, server capacity became a primary concern.
Reisinger estimates that the Bargain America Web servers can handle five times as many simultaneous users as they could before being fronted by Request Switch. Bargain America began using Request Switch two years ago, at the beginning of NetScaler's beta-test program. Request Switch became commercially available in November. Use of Request Switch also reduces the number of servers the company needs to buy, Reisinger adds.
Which load to off-load?
| How
to be fast and free
Sometimes
the best Web site enhancements are those that
can be had for free - or nearly so.
One
common method is to migrate Web servers from Microsoft
Windows NT to Linux. The open source operating
system is typically viewed as more powerful, efficient
and secure than NT.
Click
here for more
|
|
Redline and NetScaler fall into a relatively
new category of companies making "reverse-proxy" products,
so called because they sit between a company's Web server
and the Internet. The idea is to intercept traffic and provide
a certain function before the request hits the Web server.
A reverse proxy can specialize in Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) acceleration. SSL accelerators off-load encryption processing for secure e-commerce transactions and are available from companies such as F5 Networks, Packeteer, nCipher, Rainbow Technologies and SonicWall.
Caching is one of the latest functions reverse proxies are addressing. Reverse proxy caches can sit in front of a Web server to dole commonly accessed data out of cache, as opposed to traditional caches on the client or ISP side. Again, this frees Web servers to create pages from more dynamic content.
Array Networks, CacheFlow and Swell Technologies are among those making such devices for less than $10,000; some also include features such as load balancing and SSL acceleration. SpiderSoftware makes software that provides caching functions but resides on the Web server.
"Reverse proxy caches can be very helpful when navigation patterns among users have a lot in common, as frequently accessed content can be made available more quickly," says David Schatsky, research director at Jupiter Media Metrix.
Conversely, sites that serve a lot of different content might
benefit little from such a device. "Our cache-hit ratio would
be so low, it wouldn't be worth it," BizRate's Mulkey says.
The company would only consider caching if at least 70% of
site users' requests were the same, he adds.
Content delivery network services from companies such as Akamai Technologies, Digital Island and Speedera Networks also can provide caching without having to install additional hardware. These services instead rely on their own networks to cache data as close as possible to the location where requests originate, thereby speeding delivery. Although these services can top the $10,000 mark in ongoing fees, they can be cost-effective if they help companies avoid even greater bandwidth costs necessary to keep up with site demands.
A complement to these services comes from FireClick, a start-up that provides a preloaded cache service. FireClick's NetFlame uses proprietary technology to track a site's browsing patterns and downloads pages that it predicts users will request before they actually click on that link. Having content ready before the request is made has sped access times by approximately 30% at Bargain America, Reisinger says.
Bargain America spends roughly $1,500 per month on the FireClick service, although prices can vary depending on the amount of data being cached.
Slow-speed users have noticed performance improvements with FireClick, Reisinger says. The company also uses Akamai's service, mostly to deliver content to high-speed users.
The content delivery services and the NetScaler device work different angles of Bargain America's Web traffic: In Japan, caching speeds last-mile delivery, whereas in the U.S., the accelerator facilitates bandwidth management in front of the company's Web servers.
Fast content on the fly
Faster content delivery can be achieved in still other low-cost ways. Pacific University in Forest Grove, Ore., uses Packeteer's AppCelera ICX-55 for on-the-fly HTTP and image compression.
This became necessary because the university's optometry program uses many high-definition images for its Web-based distance learners. This caused the site to screech to a halt, especially for dial-up users. Besides compression, the AppCelera appliance helps with rate control, metering out data at the maximum bandwidth a user's connection can handle. This process eliminates retransmissions because of overloaded connections that are dropped, says Ted Krupicka, Pacific's associate director of university information services. Overall, he estimates the university has saved about 60% in bandwidth usage since installing the $8,000 appliance in August.
Pacific also uses another Packeteer device, PacketShaper, to prioritize bandwidth based on application. MP3 downloads get the lowest priority, while off-campus users accessing the distance-learning, enterprise resource planning and e-mail applications get the highest. The university has used PacketShaper since it and AppCelera became available in late 2000.
"This has really saved us from having to buy additional bandwidth," Krupicka says. "If we didn't have this device, we'd need three or four more T-1 lines on top of the two we already have just to keep up with the demand in peer-to-peer traffic."
All told, that could save the university upward of $6,000 per month.
So whether it's bandwidth optimization, content acceleration or reverse proxy caching, network executives have several technologies to choose from when addressing e-commerce site performance. And the price can be right.
Mendel is a freelance writer in San Francisco. He can be reached at brett@mendel.net.
Related links
How to be fast and free
More with Less
Make the most of our your budget, staff and resources.
Slim down, shape up
Putting your network on a simplification diet can pay off.
Keeping costs in check
Five tips for squeezing more out of your IT budget.
Redline Networks
NetScaler
FireClick
Packeteer
Apply for your free subscription to Network World. Click here.
 
Request a reprint or permission to use this article.
|
