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Follow UsEric Lai
SAN FRANCISCO: A San Francisco start-up announced on Monday, a new
interactivity-enhancing service that will allow Web publishers to continually
update their sites with real-time information while consuming a minimum of
network bandwidth.
Bang Networks says its service will allow Web publishers to continually
update things like sports scores, stock prices, or auction bid prices, without
forcing an entire Web page to be ‘reloaded’ by the Internet user.
The service is reminiscent of another once-promising Internet technology
called ‘push’ that emerged four years ago amid similar claims by proponents
that it would enhance interactivity on Web sites. Push fizzled out soon
afterward, as users complained of information overload while companies blamed
push broadcasts for slowing down other network traffic to a crawl.
However, Bang executives say they have solved most of the technical problems
that was associated with push. "Push was infamous because it would bring
down networks by clogging them. We, on the other hand, reduce network
traffic," said Tim Tuttle, a co-founder and chief technical officer for
Bang.
Bang, along with Silicon Valley-based Fine Ground Networks, which is offering
a similar service, is optimistic of the future for the technology as it feels
such Web sites would be attractive due to their ability to provide increased
interaction between Web site and the user at a lesser cost. This, a long-time
goal of most Web publishers, is yet to be realized.
"This is really interesting and innovative, and expands the
possibilities of providing rapidly changing information," said Internet
market research firm, Jupiter Communications analyst Peter Christy.
Backed by tech-heavyweights, such as Netscape Communications co-founder Marc
Andreessen and MIT technology guru Nicholas Negroponte, Bang has already signed
up Web site operators like Dow Jones, CBS
SportsLine.com, and Excite Inc., to
test or use its content delivery service.
Today's typical Web page is heavy on graphics and pictures, with hundreds of
individual elements that could take up hundreds of kilobytes of data. But a user
who presses ‘Reload’ on his Web browser in order to obtain the
most-up-to-date stock price or sports score theoretically would not need to
download the entire Web page again, but only the tiny amount of data that has
changed.
Bang enables this, by keeping a live but dormant connection to all of the
users of a particular Web site. Whenever the Web publisher updates the Web page,
it also sends the updates to Bang's nationwide US network of router hardware.
These routers then send invisible updates of the Web page to each live user,
without forcing him or her to ‘reload’ it.
Items that Web publishers want updated, such as a scoreboard, a stock price
ticker even a rotating banner advertisement - only need to have their ‘tags’
slightly modified to work with Bang. "We think Bang has the potential to
save us a lot of bandwidth," said Dan Leichtenschlag, chief technology
officer of CBS SportsLine.com, a popular sports news Web site.
CBS SportsLine is testing the Bang service for live updating of sports
scores. Its current system, which relies on a Java-programmed platform, that
experts have said can occasionally be susceptible to hiccups, also swallows up
massive amounts of bandwidth around 920 megabits per second during the peak of
the NCAA basketball tournament.
Bang's service does not conflict with caching services like Akamai
Technologies Inc. which accelerate download speeds for Web sites, and could even
be used in conjunction, Tuttle said. Prices of the Bang service start at around
$2,000 per month, rising with the more Web page items that a Web publisher
wishes to continually refresh.
(C) Reuters Limited 2001.