The Planet Partners with EdgeCast for Content Delivery

HOUSTON, Dec. 22, 2008 – ThePlanet.com Internet Services, the global leader in IT hosting, and EdgeCast Networks, the superior, cost-effective rich media content delivery network, today announced the selection of EdgeCast for The Planet’s new hosted Content Delivery Network (CDN) product offering.  The EdgeCast CDN provides a world-class platform that offers customers the cost benefits and flexibility for controlling their own CDN, while eliminating the expensive capital investments and operational hassles typically associated with the technology. 

           CDNs rapidly distribute Web content to end-users through an interconnected computer network, caching data on multiple servers and delivering the content to users based on their geographic location. It also dramatically increases the number of concurrent users who can access data from a single Web site.  EdgeCast points of presence (POPs) are located in San Jose; Los Angeles; Ashburn, Va.; New York; Chicago; Dallas; Atlanta; Seattle; London; Frankfurt; Hong Kong; Tokyo; and Sydney.  

 “Over the past year, we’ve received significant interest from customers who are looking for an enterprise-class, cost-effective CDN solution to more quickly deliver content to their geographically dispersed customers,” said Bryce Edwards, general manager for The Planet’s Complex Infrastructure Solutions.  “For customers with complex content-driven sites, a CDN solution is absolutely critical.  Through our EdgeCast partnership, customers gain immediate access to hundreds of edge servers located around the world.”

The Planet’s live streaming CDN service provides both Windows Media and Adobe Flash, as well as Silverlight and Move networks, for globally broadcasting to audiences on a massive scale.  The broadcast quality eliminates choppiness, broadcast drops and excessive buffering.  For live-event streaming, customers receive optimal performance for both their specific global region and for their “last-mile” bandwidth provider.

About The Planet’s EdgeCast CDN Solution

Customers now have the benefit of purchasing lower origin server bandwidth utilization, while improving their own end-users’ experience:

Media Control Center:  Provides customers with the ability to interact with various products, obtain important information, view reports and analytics, upload content and manage their media.

EdgeDirector:  This patent-pending routing mechanism and global load-balancing technology serves content requests from the location closest to the end-user.  Traditional CDNs use DNS routing methods that require multiple levels of triangulation before content can be served.  EdgeDirector combines robust pre-set routes with proprietary routing protocols, which ensures that client content is immediately delivered directly from The Planet CDN POP fastest for them, regardless of location.

Delivery Speed:  CDN edge servers are deployed around the world, so EdgeDirector users receive requested content from the fastest point of presence.  This precise traffic router – with its underlying routing logic – makes intelligent decisions based on the user’s IP address.

Scalability:  The Planet’s customers gain immediate access to hundreds of edge servers located around the world, with dozens of Gigabits per second Tier-1 bandwidth.  In addition, customers no longer face issues created by special events, traffic bursts and popular videos.

Redundancy:  Each POP is highly redundant and resides in some of the world’s most sophisticated data centers.  If one POP should fail, other locations assume the load, which offers a seamless user experience.  With this infrastructure backup, customers can be assured of redundancy in delivering mission-critical data to their users.

One Price for All Services:  The Planet’s CDN doesn’t differentiate between caching or streaming content delivery, which allows the company to offer a top CDN experience at a very affordable price.

For more information on The Planet’s CDN offering, please visit the Web site at the following address:  http://www.theplanet.com/dedicated-servers/hosting-products/cdn/

About EdgeCast Networks, Inc.

           EdgeCast offers a superior, cost effective global content delivery service that gives its customers and partners competitive advantage in the delivery of digital media.  Its world-class content delivery platform provides customers the cost benefits and flexibility of controlling their own content delivery network while freeing them from capital investments and operational hassles.  To learn more, visit www.edgecast.com.

About The Planet

The Planet is the leading provider of On Demand IT Infrastructure solutions, hosting more than 25,000 small- and medium-size businesses and 14.1 million Web sites worldwide. The Planet Alpha division provides the widest array of self-managed dedicated servers and advanced services backed by 24x7x365 support. The Planet Northstar Managed Hosting division combines a proactive methodology and seasoned IT experts to deliver a fully managed hosting solution. With the best choice of servers, software tools and world-class support, backed by state-of-the-art facilities and an enterprise-class network, The Planet turns IT into a powerful competitive advantage that enables customers to grow their businesses. For additional information, visit www.theplanet.com.

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