Inktomi Corp revealed yesterday the fruits of its previously-announced decision to market an enterprise-class version of its Traffic Server web caching software, a budget version of its flagship carrier and internet service provider software. The Traffic Server E5000 and E200 represent scaled-down versions of the carrier-class product, at a knock-down price.
E5000 and E200 take into account the structure of corporate intranets and extranets, with the larger E5000 playing a æhubÆ role for major continental HQs, with multiple E200s located in smaller regional offices. The software is customizable to take into account the differing network speeds across the globe. A US E5000 could be tailored to talk to its spoke E200s at T1 speeds, for example, while offices in Europe, where cross-border bandwidth is more expensive, the caches would cater for 64Kbps connection speeds. Both packages come with streaming media support, usually an optional add-on, built in. A spokesperson said that plug-ins developed for the carrier-class product by third party developers should be compatible.
Inktomi named among its customers Sun Microsystems Inc (which uses it internally), and investment banks Merrill Lynch, Bristol Myers-Squibb and Fidelity. The E5000 supports 5,000 users, can be clustered, and costs $20,000, while the E200 supports 200 users, cannot be clustered, and costs $5,000.
