A10 Networks Accelerates the User Experience for Taobao

SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- A10 Networks(TM), the technology leader in Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs), today announced that Taobao, a subsidiary of China-based Alibaba Group and the largest online retail site in the world, has deployed A10's high performance AX Series appliances as its application delivery and server load balancing platform. With nearly 100 million registered users, data center traffic can be taxing on network and application servers; and rapid business growth necessitated superior Internet application performance as Taobao's previous server load balancer solutions reached their capacity. To better handle traffic surges and deliver a faster user experience, Taobao selected A10's AX Series after an evaluation proved superior performance, scalability and reliability.

"We were impressed with the higher Layer 4-7 performance that A10's AX Series delivers versus the old systems we've been using. This enables operational efficiency by allowing us to consolidate from two platforms to one," said Cao Yi Feng, Operation Director at Taobao. "The AX Series met our business requirements not only with performance, but also with stability, scalability and tremendous value. With AX Series, we not only ensure a fast user experience, but also lower our overall cost per transaction."

AX Series Platform: Industry's Best Performance & Scalability with Headroom for Growth

Taobao's operations are supported by over 10,000 servers located in a few data centers, and many content delivery network (CDN) sites. In the data centers, the AX Series ADCs perform core Layer 4 server load balancing, High Availability and DDoS security protection. In the CDN sites, the AX Series deliver Layer 7 server load balancing and application acceleration/optimization services such as connection reuse and URL-hashing to ensure a fast user experience.

The AX Series platforms are powered by the revolutionary Advance Core Operating System (ACOS), including Flexible Traffic ASICs, which move key functionality into the hardware to deliver the industry's highest performance, freeing the main CPUs for application processing. Built on an innovative multi-core CPU, shared memory architecture, the AX Series platforms have the capacity to handle high performance, ensuring maximum headroom to add features and a lower cost of ownership. With the AX's industry leading performance, Taobao was able to install two systems for every four they deployed in the past, translating to a 2:1 data center consolidation ratio, and operational efficiency.

All AX Series platforms include the full suite of Application Delivery and Load Balancing functionality:

• Application Availability and Load Balancing
• Application Acceleration for Layer 4 to Layer 7
  • Including RAM Caching, Hardware Compression and SSL Offload
• Application Security, including DNS Application Firewall & DDoS Protection
• aFleX Layer 7 TCL Scripting for Deep Packet Inspection and Control
• aXAPI - REST-based XML API for Custom Management
• Virtualized Management
  • Role-Based and Partition-Based Management
  • Seamless Management for Multiple Devices
• Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB)
• IPv4 & IPv6 Load Balancing and Management
• Advanced NAT features including Large Scale NAT (LSN) and Dual-Stack Lite (DS-Lite)
• Full Web GUI and Industry Standard CLI
• Simultaneous Layer 2/Layer 3 Operation
• High Availability

"We are proud to deliver Taobao, China's largest online retail site, the advanced, high-performance application delivery platform it requires for its multiple data centers and content delivery network sites," said Lee Chen, Founder and CEO of A10 Networks. "The AX Series delivers tremendous value to the world's largest online retail websites."

To read the full Taobao and A10 case study, please visit: http://www.a10networks.com/resources/files/CS-Taobao.pdf

About A10 Networks

A10 Networks was founded in Q4 2004 with a mission to provide innovative networking and security solutions. A10 Networks makes high-performance products that help organizations accelerate, optimize and secure their applications. A10 Networks is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices in the United States, United Kingdom, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Brazil, Japan, China, Korea and Taiwan. For more information, visit http://www.a10networks.com

SOURCE A10 Networks