Open Source Global Load Balancer Builds Content Delivery Network

August 16, 2007; 03:55 AM
The free electronic publication, o3 magazine, which focuses on Linux and Open Source solutions for Enterprise Networks, has moved its services to a new Content Delivery Network. This Content Delivery Network is powered entirely by Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), which makes it unique. The publication which is known for pushing the bleeding edge of Open Source, has documented the entire solution in their latest issue.

"Open Source is all about sharing ideas and making technologies accessible to everyone. This has been the goal of o3 magazine since the beginning," said John Buswell, Chief Technology Officer at Spliced Networks LLC. "Global Traffic Management is a great solution, but an elusive one due to the high cost of the technology. The solution we came up with eliminates the need for Global Traffic Management appliances and Global Server Load Balancing switches. We estimated cost savings of around US$26,995 per site with our solution. Considerably more when you realize it also does SSL/TLS offload and Content Delivery Network deployments require a minimum of two sites."

Spliced Networks is the small business that publishes o3 magazine. At the heart of the solution is a Russian built Open Source project called Nginx, or Engine-X. Nginx is a powerful, yet lightweight web server. The content delivery network, which is built using this Open Source technology, is truly global with data-center locations in Hong Kong, Germany, the United Kingdom and six locations spanning the United States from coast to coast.

"Simply point a web browser at www.o3magazine.com and the network will do the rest," explains John Buswell. "If you are located in Europe, you will be redirected to either www.o3magazine.co.uk or www.emea.o3magazine.com. The solution provides businesses with a great deal of control. You can make sure customers see only the content
that is relevant to their region. This is just the beginning, there is a great deal of potential here and we will be contributing projects that will help polish the solution."

The cost savings of the Open Source solution grows exponentially as the Content Delivery Network scales upwards. Spliced Networks estimates their current network would have cost over US$250,000 to implement with the leading commercial solution. Spliced Networks took the solution one step further and applied it to dynamic web 2.0 applications. The content delivery network uses Varnish Cache, a high performance web accelerator or reverse proxy, OpenVPN and Mongrel to provide globally distributed access to centralized web 2.0 applications. Spliced Networks believes this is the first Global Content Delivery Network built exclusively with Open Source from end to end.

The publication is available for download from the o3 magazine website -- http://www.o3magazine.com The free digital publication is distributed in PDF format over a global content delivery network. The next issue of o3 magazine will look at Agile Product Management using Open Source solutions. The publication is created exclusively with open source tools. Bandwidth and colocation in the United Kingdom are provided courtesy of Othello Technology Systems Ltd.

About Spliced Networks LLC
Spliced Networks LLC. (http://www.splicednetworks.com) is the developer of AppOS, an enterprise grade Linux appliance platform. Spliced Networks makes high-end enterprise grade solutions accessible to all businesses, by helping them leverage powerful Open Source solutions. Spliced Networks also publishes o3 magazine, a popular and free Enterprise / Open Source digital magazine. Spliced Networks is a registered trademark of Spliced Networks LLC. Based in Athens, Ohio, Spliced Networks is privately owned and operated.

About Othello Technology Systems Ltd.
Othello Technology Systems Ltd. (http://www.othellotech.net) are a UK Ltd Company, who have been providing internet solutions through dial-up & dsl services, domain name registration, hosting, dedicated server and colocation services for over 10 years, operating in the United Kingdom, Netherlands and the United States, and with customers worldwide.