Inktomi Inc, the caching and search engine company which last week enjoyed a spectacular IPO (CI No 3,454), has pulled off a sale of both its products to broadband internet service provider @Home Corp. @Home’s a pretty exciting customer for us, said Paul Gauthier, co-founder and CTO of Inktomi, this is a key win. @Home plans to use Inktomi’s search engine on its portal site, http://www.athome.com, and to deploy Inktomi’s Traffic Server inside its backbone as a high-end network cache. A cache keeps spare copies of frequently requested documents, so that subsequent users can get near-immediate access to this popular information. A lot of people think that when you’ve got high speed broadband on the last mile, the problem is solved and you don’t need caching, says Gauthier. In fact, it’s much more crucial to have caching on high-speed networks, so you can deliver on the promise of broadband. Without caching, broadband ISPs risk alienating subscribers who do not see perceptible improvements in response times. Customers are paying for premier service, but when they are off that last mile, they’re back on the congested internet with everyone else, he says. @Home will use Inktomi’s Traffic Server to keep as much of its network traffic as possible inside that fast last mile. How much is enough? The metric we use is the hit rate, what fraction of access requests hits the cache, says Gauthier, our customers are seeing hit rates of 35 to 60%, depending on the kind of traffic and the amount of bandwidth available.
