Putting location and load balancing together

By Jennifer Mears
Network World Web Acceleration Newsletter
Original Article

Last fall, this newsletter told you about an appliance in the works from Coyote Point Systems and Digital Envoy, one that combines global load balancing with geotargeting capabilities. The companies say Emissary is now in late beta tests and is scheduled to ship March 1.

The companies have dubbed the appliance Emissary and say it is the first traffic management product to speed the distribution of content geared for users in specific geographic areas.

The cost is $25,000 for the appliance, plus a usage-based subscription fee for the " geolocation " services. That usage fee is determined by how specific the geographic targeting needs to be - whether content is geared for a specific country, region or city - and the volume of content delivered. A spokesman says those subscription rates will likely range from $1,000 per month for a small enterprise to more than $20,000 per month for a large enterprise or content delivery network.

By using Emissary, enterprises will be able to target content to specific areas. So, for example, a company could include certain advertisements and promotional materials that would be viewed by Web surfers in Boston, while different content would be sent to users accessing the Web site from Los Angeles. At the same time, Emissary monitors geographically dispersed server farms to determine which server can best serve the content. And it will bypass servers that are down, reducing the risk of broken connections.

Emissary combines Coyote Point's Envoy and Equalizer intelligent load-balancing products with Digital Envoy's NetAcuity geotargeting technology.

Jennifer Mears is a senior writer at Network World, covering ASPs, Web hostings companies, enterprise portals and CDNs. She can be reached at jmears@nww.com.