Former Netscape execs launch P2P company

A group of former Netscape executives will officially launch Kontiki, a peer-to-peer content distribution company on Tuesday.

Formerly known as Zodiac Networks, Kontiki, has been in stealth mode since it was established in November. Financial backers, including Benchmark Capital and The Barksdale Group led by former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale, have pumped a total of $18 million into the venture.

Kontiki's CEO is Mike Homer, who oversaw Netscape's Web site Netcenter, while Wade Hennessey, a former Netscape exec, is the start-up's chief technology officer. Netscape founder Marc Andreessen is also a technical advisor.

The company's service, called the Kontiki Delivery Network, will be targeted at enterprises and media companies, such as CNN, 60 Minutes and Charles Schwab, wanting to deliver content to end-users. The network will go into beta launch privately on Tuesday, and publicly in September.

The network is expected to deliver video, audio, music, software and games.

The service works as follows: users select the type of content they want to view, such as news content from CNN or a weekly company address from a CEO. The content would be pushed from the Kontiki Delivery Network to users' computers and stored there until they want to view it.

However, the content can't be forwarded from one user to another due to Kontiki's added security controls, according to Homer. Each content file is encrypted and given a unique network identifier. Once the file is sent through the network and decrypted, the network identifiers are compared and if any bit of the file is altered the file would be discarded, he says.

Michael Hoch, an analyst at Aberdeen Group, says Kontiki's launch comes at time when the content delivery space is relatively new.

"There's plenty of opportunity ... and this is as good of a time as any," Hoch says. "The important point for them is to get their solution out there, start showing customer betas and actual customers." Kontiki says it will reveal customers in the coming weeks.

Hoch believes that unlike Kontiki's rivals, such as Akamai Technologies, the start-up is offering optimized media delivery, which gives it a bit of an edge. In addition, because of its Netscape management pedigree, "they know about consumer-oriented technology and how to please the end-users," he says.

The Kontiki Delivery Network has a fixed activation fee and monthly service fee based on broadband consumption and how many applications the content provider uses.