Akamba Turbo-Charges Web Servers

By Michael Foley
iApplianceWeb
(06/29/01, 08:55:56 AM EDT)

Akamba Corporation is providing Web hosting facilities with an accelerator for Web server systems. Its Velobahn card appliance is an add-on to existing systems that offloads the front-end work to allow Web servers to operate at peak efficiency. Velobahn expands Web server capacity by taking over the HTTP transaction processing function. The Akamba appliance supports popular OS platforms including Linux, Windows 2000, Solaris, and FreeBSD.

Velobahn is a single-board computer system with embedded software designed to integrate into front-end Web servers. Velobahn offloads tasks associated with client/server connections from the host system, enabling the server to handle more HTTP requests. Velobahn's main benefit is that it increases Web server capacity and improves response time for overloaded servers.

Velobahn plugs into a standard PCI short card slot. It has a RJ-45 Fast Ethernet 100Base-T connection that operates at 10Mbps or 100Mbps. It uses a Motorola Power PC (MPC745) processor operating at 330MHz and comes with 256MB of SDRAM and 2MB of SBRAM. The added memory aids in HTTP connection management.

Velobahn will be distributed worldwide through VARs and system integrators at a list price of $3,250.00.