Internap Rebuilds Patented Routing Software and Content Delivery Network to Optimize Traffic Delivery for Today's Internet Applications

ATLANTA, April 24, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Internap Network Services Corporation (NASDAQ: INAP), a provider of high-performance Internet infrastructure services, today announced the next-generation of its patented, intelligent routing software – Managed Internet Route Optimizer (MIRO) – which optimizes network traffic for applications and content running on its cloud, hosting and colocation services. Architected to navigate the increased complexity of the modern Internet, next-gen MIRO delivers faster, more consistent performance for today's real-time, performance-intensive applications. Additionally, new HTTP caching and web acceleration capabilities in Internap's CDN enable faster and more reliable delivery of dynamic site content.

With the "Internet of things" quickly gaining momentum, the number of connected devices is growing exponentially. A new app economy has emerged to fulfill insatiable business and consumer demands for mobile and web-based services, providing instant access and content delivery on any device, anywhere in the world. These changes have, in turn, created more traffic, networks and end points than ever before. Since 2004, the global routing table, which refers to the Internet's total number of destination networks, has quadrupled in size. The result is a highly complex and congested system of networks that can significantly degrade the performance of Internet applications and services.

Next-Gen MIRO Delivers Infrastructure Traffic Twice as Fast as Leading Carriers
The next generation of Internap's MIRO – which intelligently analyzes performance characteristics across Internet backbones and delivers traffic over the fastest path – is specifically designed to address this Internet evolution. Internap's network engineering development team leveraged the company's almost 20 years of experience with route optimization and performance networking in the complete rebuild of the MIRO engine to support these new Internet requirements. Next-gen MIRO succeeds by continually probing all available network paths and making an average of 250,000 hourly routing adjustments in each of Internap's 87 global network points of presence (POPs). The end result for customers, and their applications, is that MIRO delivers traffic an average of two to three times faster than other Internet carriers. While the major carriers deliver traffic over the worst-performing Internet path nearly 30% of the time, next-gen MIRO steers customers' traffic across the optimal network path more than 99% of the time.

The result is fast, consistent application performance for Internap's cloud, hosting and colocation customers. This is particularly critical for Internet-centric organizations that rely on guaranteed levels of performance and reliability for real-time applications ranging from ecommerce to online gaming and data-intensive workloads like analytics and mobile ad exchanges, among others. MIRO is also the intelligence underpinning Internap's global Performance IP™ transit service, which is used by thousands of businesses around the world that require fast, reliable and consistent Internet connectivity.

In real-world tests of production traffic, next-gen MIRO delivered the following network benefits (which in turn enabled optimal application and website performance):

• Average latency: Next-gen MIRO reduced traffic latency by 44% and 64%, as compared to the best and worst-performing carriers, respectively.
• Successfully identified the best path: Next-gen MIRO identified and routed traffic over the best-performing network path more than 99% of the time.
• Performance consistency: Next-gen MIRO delivered traffic with nearly four times less variability than other carriers, leveling out traffic spikes for consistent, fast performance.
• Optimizations per hour: Next-gen MIRO identified the best Internet route more rapidly, making an average of 1,300 traffic optimizations per customer per hour.
• Network engineering resources saved: Each customer would need more than 300 qualified network engineers to achieve the same level of dynamic route optimization delivered by next-gen MIRO.

Next-gen MIRO is future-proof with IPv6-support and a new probing engine that allows the platform to scale linearly with growth in the Internet routing table and destination networks.

"For organizations relying on a new generation of real-time, data-intensive applications, network reliability and performance are increasingly relevant for their business success and end-user satisfaction," said Steve Orchard, senior vice president and general manager of data center and network services at Internap. "Our next-gen MIRO technology clears an optimized path through the congestion of today's Internet, consistently delivering performance without compromise for our cloud and infrastructure customers."

Any single network carrier provides the optimal path for their customers' traffic less than 20% of the time. Next-gen MIRO continually analyzes each network carrier's performance characteristics, including jitter, latency and packet loss, and dynamically routes customer traffic over the best available path. Backed by a 100% uptime SLA, next-gen MIRO fuels optimized traffic and application performance across Internap's cloud, hosting and colocation services, delivering best performance all the way to the end user.

Internap is currently deploying next-gen MIRO across its 87 POPs worldwide and expects to complete this deployment by the end of the second quarter.

CDN Delivers Advanced Application Acceleration for Hosting Customers
Internap has also enhanced its global CDN to provide improved performance, scalability, ease of use and a rich feature set for infrastructure customers. Robust web acceleration features provide end users with fast and reliable dynamic website content while giving web hosts the flexibility to tightly manage their sites. Key benefits to infrastructure customers include:

• Increased performance: New HTTP caching engine and 100% SSD-based caching server infrastructure deliver higher scalability with a 3X increase in HTTP throughput resulting in faster, more consistent performance even under high traffic loads.
• Better price:performance for cloud hosting customers: Transparent "universal transfer pricing" effectively balances bandwidth price and performance for Internap's public virtual and bare-metal cloud customers through one bucket of usage for both IP and CDN traffic. Customers receive a fixed amount of universal transfer at no charge when they purchase a monthly commit for cloud services.
• Improved flexibility: Provides more than 30 new configurable features – including advanced content security, an improved portal with more flexible configuration and enhanced reseller functions – along with a platform to rapidly develop new ones and respond to customer requirements.

The enhanced CDN is available immediately across Internap's global footprint.

Supporting Materials:

• Blog: Internap's Secret Sauce Just Got Better
• Performance IP™ data sheet
• Content Delivery Network data sheet

Tweet this release: http://ow.ly/w6ihz

About Internap
Internap is the high-performance Internet infrastructure provider that powers the applications shaping the way we live, work and play. Our hybrid infrastructure delivers performance without compromise – blending virtual and bare-metal cloud, hosting and colocation services across a global network of data centers, optimized from the application to the end user and backed by rock-solid customer support and a 100% uptime guarantee. Since 1996, the most innovative companies have relied on Internap to make their applications faster and more scalable. For more information, visit www.internap.com.

Forward-Looking Statement:
This press release contains forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include statements related to the characteristics and performance of our next-gen MIRO and enhanced CDN and the benefits that our customers may receive from them. Because such statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, there are important factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These factors include the actual performance of our services; the reaction and behavior of customers and the market to our services; our ability to react to trends and challenges in our business and the markets in which we operate; the availability of services from Internet network service providers or network service providers providing network access loops and local loops on favorable terms, or at all; failure of third party suppliers to deliver their products and services on favorable terms, or at all; failures in or intrusions into our network operations centers, data centers, network access points or computer systems; our ability to provide or improve Internet infrastructure services to our customers; and our ability to protect our intellectual property, as well as other factors discussed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Given these risks and uncertainties, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as a prediction of actual results. We undertake no obligation to update, amend or clarify any forward-looking statement for any reason.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120426/CL95398LOGO

SOURCE Internap Network Services Corporation