CAI Networks Offers Load BalancerCAI Networks Offers Load Balancer

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- CAI Networks, a leading provider of Internet load balancers, and AVANU®, CAI's marketing and distribution partner, today announced the availability of the WebMux Pro load balancer for Gigabit Ethernet (1000Base-TX). WebMux Pro joins the original WebMux load balancer, designed for Ethernet/Fast Ethernet (10/100). Both WebMux Pro and WebMux are low cost, high performance, easy-to-deploy load balancers with solid-state-assured high reliability. They incorporate CAI's recently announced Burst Activity Management feature - BAM, which eliminates the possibility of server overloads during bursts of UDP DNS client requests.

WebMux load balancers are stand-alone, self-contained and ready-to-install network appliances that provide high performance management of IP traffic on 10/100 and Gigabit Ethernet networks. To enhance reliability, CAI's WebMux products use solid-state storage eliminating, as a possible point of failure, the hard disk technology used for data storage in other load balancers. The result of WebMux's unmatched reliability and affordable price, which includes a full three-year warranty and three years of free technical support, is the industry's lowest total cost of ownership.

WebMux users range from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies worldwide. Customers include several U.S. government agencies, industry leading managed hosting businesses, electronic clearinghouses and companies with sophisticated commercial websites.

"Reliability and speed are what sold us on WebMux. We have one unit that has been operating for three years, trouble free! The value for our investment far exceeds anything offered by other products," said James Rowan, CTO of QCorps Residential, Inc. (www.qcorps.com) , a resident connection service network company. "I have since upgraded our WebMux to the WebMux Pros to handle increased demand on my system. I could not be more satisfied."

WebMux products deliver maximum performance and flexibility by supporting both network address translation (NAT) and direct (out-of-path) routing. NAT is the default mode and operates as a firewall as well as a load balancer and health checker. Direct routing mode improves performance from 10X to 100X when servers send large responses to small requests. WebMux uses a unique routing algorithm to achieve maximum server performance and user connections. Each WebMux unit is just 14" deep and 1U (1-3/4") high, in a standard 19" rack.

"We are using WebMux products as our firewall as well as load balancers," said Stewart Wilson-Turner, CTO of Voicebank.net, Inc. Voicebank (www.voicebank.net) is the leading B-to-B audio and video audition delivery network in the entertainment industry. "Reliability was a key selection criteria when we were searching for load balancers. We are very satisfied with WebMux, particularly with its ease of setup, hot fail-over and on-going reliability."

WebMux Pro and WebMux include the recently released WebMux Burst Activity Management feature (BAM). BAM solves the system failure problem that historically occurs in intensive Internet applications where client or application servers repeatedly send a large number of domain name services (DNS) requests to the same DNS server. These messages are often seen by the server as one large message and therefore are not load balanced across all the available servers, resulting in slow site response and a reduction in the site's reliability. CAI's BAM solves this problem by properly distributing the DNS requests on a packet-by-packet basis spreading them across the servers.

WebMux Pro Gigabit Ethernet (1000Base-TX), priced at $8999 per unit, balances 5,760,000 concurrent connections with 40,000 new connections per second and 1 Gigabit throughput per second. The WebMux Ethernet/Fast Ethernet, priced at $3999 per unit, balances 1,440,000 concurrent connections with 7,000 new connections per second and 200 Mbits/s throughput per second. WebMux products are manufactured in the U.S.