Redline Networks Web I/O Accelerator Speeds Images to Online Shoppers at Design Within Reach, Reduces Furniture Retailer's Bandwidth and Server Usage
Campbell, Calif., September 18, 2003 — Furniture retailer Design Within Reach has improved its customers' online shopping experience and reduced its own networking expenses using web I/O acceleration technology from Redline Networks, Inc.
Since deploying Redline's T|X 2200 Web I/O Accelerator in May, Design Within Reach has seen high-resolution images downloaded to its online customers 30 percent faster than before, according to Davis Luk, the company's technology director. He also said bandwidth usage has dropped by about 20 percent.
Design Within Reach aims to bring innovative furniture designs, often with a European flair, to design professionals and design-savvy consumers. Much of the company's business is done through its web site, http://www.dwr.com. And at 14 retail "design studios" across the United States that showcase a representative sampling of merchandise, on-site Internet kiosks enable salespeople to show customers the full range of available products.
Customers Want To Download Designs Fast and In Fine Detail
"The nature of our business demands that our site use extremely high-quality, high-resolution images," Luk said. "Customers want to look closely at a chair or sofa, zooming in and really seeing the fine details of the piece. That takes a lot of network bandwidth, and it puts a lot of pressure on our servers."
Before deploying the Redline product, Luk evaluated Content Distribution Network (CDN) services, which use caching technology to relieve high-traffic web sites. "CDN required significant code modification to our servers," he said. "And because our servers update their content so often, the CDN nodes would have to pull down fresh content from our site very frequently, which could actually increase our bandwidth usage."
The Redline solution was a better fit for his network, Luk said, because it works not by caching data, but by offloading most TCP and HTTP duties from the web server — allowing the web server to satisfy more HTTP requests in less time using fewer resources.
The Redline T|X 2200 took Luk's staff approximately a half hour to install, and user downloads of text and high-quality images were immediately accelerated by as much as 30 percent — results confirmed by Keynote Systems, an Internet performance management and testing service used by Design Within Reach to measure its web site performance. An additional benefit was that bandwidth usage went down an estimated 20 percent, primarily because of compression and the fact that no caching was required.
"It's good to know that moving forward we'll have additional bandwidth headroom," he said. "The T|X 2200 will more than pay for itself in a matter of months. And our bandwidth cost saving can easily exceed $20,000 in the first year when compared to using a CDN solution."
During the initial evaluation of the T|X 2200, Luk added, "we took one of our servers out of the rotation and saw no performance change at all. So we know now that with the Redline installed, we could cut back on at least one server if needed, with no impact on web I/O speed. We're considering removing our load balancer as well."
About Redline Networks
Redline Networks' Application Processor appliances enable companies to significantly accelerate download times and cut bandwidth costs while increasing the transaction capacity and security of their existing web infrastructure. Deployed at web sites and enterprises worldwide, Redline products offload I/O responsibility from web, cache and application servers and optimize content in real time to speed download times and radically improve data center performance, capacity, cost savings, and security. Redline Networks customers typically experience a return on investment (ROI) of less than three months. For more information about Redline Networks and its products, visit http://www.RedlineNetworks.com.
