Novell ICS Provides Web Caching Scalability that Customers Can Afford

PROVO, Utah — April 6, 1999 — Novell, Inc. today emerged as the leader in performance and price/performance value for Web caching, a fast growing category of Internet solutions for accelerating the performance and efficiency of the World Wide Web. These results are based on a report released Friday, April 2, by the National Laboratory of Applied Network Research (NLANR) following their first Web Cache Bake-Off, March 15-17, 1999. The 1,500 requests per second produced by the Novell Internet Caching System™ (ICS) Powered by Dell® represent the best single-system performance ever measured by NLANR. These results demonstrate the performance and scalability advantages of Novell ICS appliances from Dell and other leading hardware vendors.

NLANR's Web Polygraph benchmark and the resulting Bake-Off report were developed to objectively compare the various Web cache solutions in the marketplace with the goal of providing a fair real-world performance comparison between them. Customers can use the performance measurements and analysis in the NLANR report to make purchasing decisions regarding Internet caching solutions no matter what size network or Web presence they maintain.

"NLANR's Web Cache Bake-Off results validate Novell's leadership position in the caching market," commented Drew Major, vice president and chief scientist, Novell. "Caching is a prime Internet growth opportunity for Novell, our customers and partners. The Web Polygraph benchmark, representative of real-world Internet usage, is a valuable tool for customers to compare the different vendors' caching solutions in the market. Since the Bake-Off event, we have already begun making improvements to the Novell Internet Caching System, and our customers can expect even better performance when it ships through Compaq and Dell channels."

Cache appliances based on Novell's Internet Caching System will accelerate nearly every aspect of Web performance across the Internet, intranets and extranets including the e-business transactions that traverse those networks. Dramatic improvements in response times and lowered network telecommunications costs are hallmark benefits of this relatively new Web phenomenon. Collaborative Research, the publishers of the 1998 Internet Caching Report, estimates the caching market will reach $2 billion by the year 2002, with caching appliances representing 80 percent of that market.

Web Polygraph Caching Performance Measurement

Due to the growth in the Web caching marketplace over the last two years, there has been a need to provide customers a standard way to compare competitive cache solutions. To alleviate this problem, NLANR developed a freely available high-performance Web cache benchmark called Web Polygraph. Polygraph specifies a number of important workload parameters such as a real-world document hit ratio, non-cacheable content, realistic object sizes and server-side delays. For details on the Web Polygraph test as well as the official report from the first NLANR Web Cache Bake-Off please visit: http://bakeoff.ircache.net/.

Specific measurements called out by the Web Polygraph in the NLANR report include:

• Response time — a measure of how quickly the cache can respond to a request for a Web page. The cache solutions were tested to see how quickly they could respond to requests under light to very heavy workloads. While other systems showed degradation of response time under a heavy load, Novell Internet Caching System response time didn't change significantly as the load was increased. This behavior indicates that customers can rely on Novell Internet Caching System for predictable and reliable Web cache performance.

• Price vs. Performance — a measure of the cost of the entire system divided by the actual performance in terms of requests per second served. Both of Novell's submissions performed very well at significantly lower prices than other vendors' solutions. These Web polygraph results, combined with ICS's clustering capabilities, indicate that Novell, with its OEM partners — Compaq and Dell — are providing a new definition of cache scalability that customers of all sizes can afford.

Novell Internet Caching System

Announced recently at BrainShare '99, the Novell Internet Caching System is a scalable, plug-and-accelerate caching appliance architecture available for license by Intel architecture-based OEMs. Novell's Internet Caching System, with its new cache object store, dramatically improves the speed and efficiency of delivering Internet content to employees, business partners and customers within corporate intranets and extranets as well as across the Internet. Novell's Internet Caching System can accelerate any Web site up to ten times the performance of common Web servers, host over 100,000 persistent connections, and dramatically reduce the hassle and expense of scaling traffic across multiple Web servers. Novell ICS, which can be easily installed in any Cisco, Unix, NT or NetWare network, enables content publishers, ISPs and enterprises to deploy high performance, content-rich Web storefronts that increase buyer satisfaction, attract new customers and drive new revenue opportunities.

Both Compaq Computer Corporation and Dell Computer Corporation have licensed Novell ICS and announced their intent to deliver multiple ICS-based cache appliance solutions to the marketplace. Additionally, several leading industry vendors, including Alteon, Foundry, Intel, Log-On Data, Mirror Image, N2H2, SkyCache and others have endorsed Novell Internet Caching System as the premier caching solution for ISPs and enterprise customers. For more information, please visit www.novell.com/products/nics.

About Novell

Novell, Inc. (NASDAQ: NOVL) is the world's leading provider of directory-enabled networking software. Novell solutions give businesses total control of their private networks and the Internet, simplifying the management of user access and identity. Novell's worldwide channel, consulting, developer, education and technical support programs are the most extensive in the network computing industry.

For information on Novell's complete range of products and services, contact Novell's Customer Response Center at (888) 321-4CRC (4272), or visit Novell's Web site at http://www.novell.com. Press may access Novell announcements and company information on the World Wide Web at http://www.novell.com/pressroom.

Internet Caching System is a trademark and Novell is a registered trademark of Novell, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective holders.

Press Contacts:
Gordon Evans
Novell, Inc.
Phone: 408-577-6371
Internet: gmevans@novell.com

Kellee Marlow
Cunningham Communications
Phone: 650-858-3790
Internet: kmarlow@ccipr.com