The Planet Enhances Virtual Private Rack Solution With Gigabit Speed, VPN Services

HOUSTON, July 1, 2008 – The Planet, the world’s largest privately held dedicated hosting company, today announced the addition of Gigabit speed and Virtual Private Network (VPN) services to its virtual private rack solution.  These upgrades offer the benefits of enhanced network performance and increased functionality for virtual racks.  

         The upgrade to 1Gbps network connectivity allows customers to transfer data faster between servers both within their virtual rack environment and to other servers on the Internet.  As a result, customers can host higher-scale, more complex environments and offer more bandwidth-intensive services such as streaming media. The cost for Gigabit Network Uplinks is $10 per month per server.

         The Planet is also adding VPN services – at no additional charge – to all customers with dedicated firewalls in their virtual rack environment. This value-added service offers customers remote access to their network and greater security.  Customers can choose between site-to-site IPSEC VPN or Cisco AnyConnect VPN for individual end-users.

         “We introduced virtual racks to provide a cost-effective, automated solution for large and small complex hosting environments,” said Urvish Vashi, The Planet’s director of product management. “By adding these upgrades, we’re able to better meet the needs of one of our fastest-growing customer segments.”

         Virtual rack customers are now able to utilize higher-capacity firewalls and load balancers with these upgrades.  These advanced hardware add-ons include the Cisco ASA 5520 and Cisco ASA 5550 firewalls, as well as the powerful Server Iron 4G load balancer.

About Virtual Racks

             Virtual racks enhance security, particularly for companies running advanced, high-performance applications that require flexibility in multi-server environments:

Unlimited server-to-server transfer:  Multiple servers within the same virtual rack have unlimited connectivity so customers don’t pay for bandwidth between servers.

Reduced risk of bandwidth overages:   Virtual racks allow customers to pool bandwidth across all servers in the environment.  The Planet eliminates the guessing game of which server will accumulate overages, only to find others below their limit.  Pooled bandwidth allows servers to share the bandwidth included with every server purchased from The Planet.

Access to advanced security and hosting technologies:   A complete hosting solution for complex environments requires advanced firewalls and load balancers.  Virtual racks allow customers to take advantage of these solutions across their multi-server applications.

             To learn more about The Planet’s private rack solutions, please visit the Web site at

http://www.theplanet.com/hosting-products/private-racks/.

About The Planet      

             The Planet is the leading provider of On Demand IT Infrastructure solutions, hosting more than 22,000 small- and medium-size businesses and 6.7 million Web sites worldwide.  By offering the best choice of servers, software tools and world-class support, backed by state-of-the-art facilities and unmatched network connectivity, The Planet helps turn information technology into a powerful competitive advantage that enables customers to successfully grow their businesses.  For additional information, visit http://www.theplanet.com.   

# # #