A Swedish company believes it has come up a system that could help relieve some of the decongestion on the internet using substantially sized memory caches serving large numbers of users. Stockholm-based Mirror Image Internet Inc has launched the FullSpeed Internet System, a storage hardware and software combination aimed at internet service providers serving dial-up or leased line customers. The system uses a two-level architecture. The Mirror Image cache router sits between the modem pool or local area network and the border router, and when users request a file from a remote web site, the file is stored, so that the next users is served from the cache router. The router is transparent to browsers, unlike typical proxy servers, and is said to deliver cache hit rates of between 35% and 70%. The Mirror Image Terabyte server delivers second-level caching via regionally deployed exchange point caches, and serves an entire region’s network of cache routers, storing hundreds of gigabytes of data. A File Verification system checks files to make sure that the cached data is kept up to date. The company claims the system should speed up the download time of typical; home pages residing on the web by up to five times. Established last year, Mirror Image currently employs 25 people at offices in Sweden, the US and UK. It has already raised some $5m with a partial, 25% float on the Swedish Stock Exchange.
