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THIS INTERNET 'DOORMAN' DECIDES WHO'S ON FIRSTTHE EXPLOSIVE POPULARITY of the Web has earned it a derisive nickname: the World Wide Wait. Usually, delays in receiving Web pages on a PC screen are caused when the communications line from a Web server to the Net gets overloaded. Someone with a high-speed Net connection may hog the line's capacity and make people with slower connections wait endlessly. Because there has been no way of guaranteeing different levels of service, Web sites have had to treat all visitors equally, on a first-come, first-served basis. Until now. Packeteer Inc., a Campbell (Calif.) startup, has a device called PacketShaper that acts as a sort of doorman for Web sites. It helps operators allocate a site's capacity as they please. They can set it up to ensure that requests for certain popular Web pages always get top priority. Or, the device can reserve a block of capacity just for use by people at a certain set of Net addresses--a company's own engineers, say, who need access to a product-design database. Packeteer is scheduled to ship its $7,250 product in January.
EDITED BY JOHN W. VERITY
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Updated June 14, 1997 by bwwebmaster
Copyright 1996, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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