Internap acquires Sockeye, netVmg

Service will cater to sites served by multiple ISPs.

Internap is buying two makers of Internet route-optimization appliances in an effort to extend its service-level agreements to cover network performance from customer site to customer site, not just within Internap's network.

The service provider, which sells high-reliability, high-performance Internet connections among other services, has announced that it plans to buy Sockeye Networks, which sells appliances and managed services. Internap also has completed the purchase of netVmg, which sells similar route-optimization appliances.

Route-optimization gear chooses the best paths for Internet traffic to take at customer sites that use more than one ISP. It does so by probing to see how well each ISP is performing and then choosing the best one, based on performance and cost. Customers might want the best performing link regardless of cost, or they might settle for a poor-performing connection that is inexpensive if performance isn't crucial.

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

Internap is buying two makers of Internet route-optimization appliances in an effort to extend its service-level agreements to cover network performance from customer site to customer site, not just within Internap's network.

The service provider, which sells high-reliability, high-performance Internet connections among other services, has announced that it plans to buy Sockeye Networks, which sells appliances and managed services. Internap also has completed the purchase of netVmg, which sells similar route-optimization appliances.

Route-optimization gear chooses the best paths for Internet traffic to take at customer sites that use more than one ISP. It does so by probing to see how well each ISP is performing and then choosing the best one, based on performance and cost. Customers might want the best performing link regardless of cost, or they might settle for a poor-performing connection that is inexpensive if performance isn't crucial.

Internap uses similar technology in its ISP network. Rather than connecting customers to Internet network access points (NAP), the company connects them to any of a dozen or so service provider networks that make up the core of the Internet.

These connections are made at 32 Internap points of presence called private NAPs (P-NAP) that monitor how well each core-network provider's network is performing and funnels traffic to the one performing best. Internap offers SLAs for availability, delay and jitter between P-NAPs. Adding netVmg and Sockeye equipment to its technology will let Internap extend its SLAs beyond the P-NAPs to customer sites.

Internap says it will continue to support Sockeye customers that buy its managed GlobalRoute service supported by Sockeye gear, but over time will replace it with its own service that is based on netVmg's Flow Control appliance. The plan is to integrate features of netVmg and Sockeye platforms into one customer premises equipment (CPE) appliance and incorporate those features with Internap's intelligent route-control platform called Assimilator.

Internap says it plans to add CPE-based managed security services to its offerings and will base that on either a single hardware platform that it would develop or on a rack of separate appliances.

Whether Internap effectively can coordinate its development team with those of netVmg and Sockeye, given that they are based in Florida, California and Massachusetts, respectively, remains to be seen, says Jennifer Liscom, an analyst with Gartner.

RackMy.com, a St. Louis application service hosting provider, uses netVmg gear to divide its traffic onto the IP networks of three service providers, says Mike Palmer, CTO at RackMy.com. He worries that Internap might pull the netVmg gear from the market and make it available only to Internap managed-service customers, leaving him to look for another vendor. Internap says it doesn't plan to do that.

"We use the platform to create a high-performance network. We want our customers to get out of our network as fast as possible and on to their destinations," Palmer says.