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REFRESHING "REFRESH"

Entrepreneur, August, 2001 by Amanda C. Kooser

We all know bandwidth is limited and costly. Imagine for a second the wait you face when you hit "Refresh" to get the latest version of a Web page. Multiply that by all your Net users, and you're looking at a lot of bandwidth being spent to needlessly update entire pages, when only small bits of data--such as stock quotes or auction bids--have changed.

Caching, the most popular method of enhancing bandwidth, doesn't address this inefficiency; it only stores old content closer to users' browsers. But two companies--Bang Networks (www.bangnetworks.com) and FineGround Networks (www.fineground.com)--have recently come up with solutions for sending new content to users' Web browsers without requiring page reloading.

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Bang and FineGround get to the same result via different "dynamic content accelerator" technologies. Bang's DirectPath service is powered by a network of specialized hardware routers and software that streams only new data to browsers without resending whole pages. FineGround's Condenser solution is a software approach that runs on Linux and Solaris servers. It eliminates redundancies in updated Web pages and only sends data that's changed. The company touts up to 40 times more bandwidth savings than with caching alone and impressive increases in download performance.

These new technologies aren't affordable yet-- FineGround's Condenser, for instance, starts at $50,000. They may also never become as cheap and ubiquitous as laser printers, but competition and time could bring them within reach of bandwidth-starved entrepreneurs with lots of dynamic Web content. Meanwhile, you can keep a lookout for leading sports and news sites like CNN.com and CBSSportsLine.com to offer the first glimpses of content acceleration.

Business Services Industry

REFRESHING "REFRESH"

Entrepreneur, August, 2001 by Amanda C. Kooser

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