Hot on the heels of Cisco Systems recent acquisition of Arrowpoint Communications, two sets of competitors are taking the partnership route to better integrate Internet performance-enhancing technologies.
Next week Alteon Networks and Lucent Technologies will announce an OEM deal that brings together Alteon's Layer 4 and Layer 7 switches and Lucent's WebCache caching appliances.
Lucent will incorporate Alteon's AceDirector 3 Fast Ethernet and 180e Gigabit Ethernet Web switches into its IPWorX family of caching appliances. The company will also rename the products the WebDirector 80 and WebDirector 180.
Lucent has added new firmware and software in the Alteon devices so that its Web caching appliances "push and pull content across a network of caches," said Alex Lago, director of product management at Lucent's Internetworking Systems Division.
A centralised controller in the IPWorX caching family directs the Alteon Web switches to send client requests to the most appropriate caching appliance in the network -- depending on location and most recently accessed or most frequently accessed content.
The private-label Web switches are available now from Lucent.
Here comes the 'Akamaiser'
F5 Networks and Akamai Technologies, meanwhile, on Wednesday teamed up to combine F5's BIG-IP technology with Akamai's dynamic "Akamaisation" plug-in capability.
F5 will integrate the Akamaiser technology in its BIG-IP Enterprise Edition load-balancing device and in a special version of BIG-IP that incorporates the Akamai technology in a less-expensive appliance.
The goal of the integration is to route users to the closest available content on the Akamai network. BIG-IP does this by translating content on the fly into Akamai Resource Locators, automatically directing certain requests to the Akamai network.
"Someone who uses BIG-IP with this feature can subscribe to the Akamai network and say, 'Everything in JPEG goes to Akamai,' and then their network serves up from the best source," said Dan Matte, director of product management at F5 Networks. "We let people define as narrowly or as broadly which pieces go out to the Akamai network, and they don't have to modify the content on their site."
The Akamaiser feature in the BIG-IP controllers will be available in the third quarter. The new feature will not affect pricing, officials said.
