Highly reliable, highly scalable, very low cost computing platform
It is obvious that the Internet, becoming a mass phenomenon, it will have to serve even larger user populations than it does today. It is a challenge to build and support infrastructures which serve not just hundreds of thousands of users but millions. At the same time users expect these services to be provided at a very low cost or even for free. Consumers and suppliers expect to be able to communicate in highly personalized ways. This makes it necessary to have infrastructures which serve millions of users in an individualized way for virtually no cost.
The basic solution to this need are systems based on arrays of machines which make the platform not just expandable but at the same time more reliable. While there are several installations which use load-balancing schemes for certain services, the futureLAB team has taken this concept one step further by building a system which uses the same concept orthogonally for all services and all the background tasks. Having functionally optimised the platform, we deliver the lowest possible start-up and operational costs using modular off-the-shelf hardware and open source software.
While our ISP platform is perhaps the most significant application to date, others do exist. Any application where many users "touch" (store, send, change, receive, etc.) large amounts of data are suitably operated on an infrastructure such as ours. Other applications include (but are not limited to):
- On-line photo albums where terabytes of information is stored, edited and shared require large amounts of storage space and fast image rendering for 1000s of simultaneous users
- Mail systems
- Instant Messaging Solutions
- Gaming or other forms of on-line entertainment
|
