Mars Mania Posing No Problems for Earthlings Rushing to the Web to Download the Red Planet, Speedera Reports

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 28, 2004-- Speedera Networks Inc., a leading global provider of on-demand distributed application and content delivery services, today announced that content it is delivering from NASA's Web portal for the twin Mars Exploration Rovers is setting records for the largest scientific event ever viewed on the Internet. During the live streaming of the Saturday landing of the second Mars rover, Opportunity, peak traffic reached almost 50,000 simultaneous online viewers -- even more than viewed the landing of Mars Exploration Rover Spirit earlier in the month. For the month of January to date, the NASA site has received more than four billion hits, with Speedera's network handling peak loads of nearly seven gigabits per second. Traffic numbers continue to swell as Opportunity transmits stunning pictures of the Red Planet.

Speedera reports that the reliability and performance of the NASA portal have exceeded the space agency's expectations. Using its global on-demand computer network, content is replicated to Speedera servers around the world to provide massive delivery capacity and shorten download times for users. In most cases, users are able to download the NASA web pages in under two seconds, despite the site's rich graphical content (which substantially increases the page weight of the site), the sheer volume of traffic and the wide audience dispersal with 25% of site visitors coming from outside the United States. Speedera worked with its content management partner eTouch Systems Corp. of Fremont to help deliver the NASA Web portal.

"The contributions by Speedera and eTouch were fundamental in helping to support the public's access to the images and information from the Mars Exploration Rovers," said Jeanne Holm, NASA's portal project manager and chief knowledge architect. "The four billion hits on NASA's Web sites since January 3 have been served flawlessly through eTouch's content management solution and Speedera's global, on-demand delivery services. Without them, we couldn't bring the surface of Mars to Internet users around the world."

"We chose Speedera as a strategic partner to help deliver the Internet dimension of the Mars mission because of its proven track record in delivering large scale global events and high traffic sites," said Aniruddha Gadre, CEO of eTouch Systems. "eTouch provides the technology to publish and manage the stunning Mars pictures and make them beautiful. Speedera provides the network, storage and computing services to disseminate these images globally, and also enables streaming media as another facet of the multimedia Mars experience."

Speedera is a service provider in the business of providing capacity on demand for distributed application hosting and for content delivery, on a massive scale. The company handles high volume media sites with rich graphics and streaming media, such as those of Fox Broadcasting, Sony Music, Univision, Comcast, the National Hockey League and many others. As well, the company provides services to several other sectors, including high technology, online marketing, Internet retail and the Federal Government.

The amazing technical achievement of landing two rovers on a planet 100 million miles away and then transmitting photographs of the Red Planet, unmatched in detail compared with anything ever before seen, has paid off for NASA. The space agency reports that recent customer satisfaction scores from its regular surveys show the highest ranking ever for the NASA Web site, with a score of 81 on a scale of 100. For the surveys taken since January 3, when the first rover Spirit landed, NASA consistently has scored 79 or above.

"Imagine, four billion hits served and nobody has had to wait in line," said Ajit Gupta, president and CEO of Speedera Networks. "Millions of people are jumping onto the network and finding the wonders of space just a mouse click away -- and with virtually instant access. This is a significant milestone for the Internet and for organizations that take advantage of globally distributed on demand computing services to deliver rich Web content to users around the world."

The following NASA Web site metrics cover the period Jan. 3-26, 2004 (source: NASA):
* The amount of information viewed through the NASA portal is six times bigger than all the words in all the books in the Library of Congress -- a staggering 115,000,000,000,000 bytes.
* The number of unique visitors is more than 33 million, each viewing 17 pages during their eight-minute visit on the NASA portal.
* Requests for Mars information on the NASA portal have surpassed records set by the 2002 Olympics, peak traffic to all IRS-related sites combined, and all other Government events.
* To download this much information from a home (dial-up) connection would take 1,015 years, and to download directly from the rover would take 3,045 years.
* The NASA portal traffic since January 3 exceeds the yearly traffic for any other Government sites.
* It took less than two weeks for NASA's portal during the 2004 rover landings to exceed its entire traffic from the previous year.

Speedera Networks, Inc. is a leading global provider of distributed application and content delivery services. The company's SpeedSuite family of services provides on-demand services that cost-effectively solve the performance, scalability, availability and security problems of delivering web sites. Speedera's edge delivery network is deployed in the Americas, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, with connectivity to over 1000 carrier networks, controlled by a patented global traffic management system. Customers include leading organizations such as DoubleClick, Fox Broadcasting, Macromedia, NASA, Network Associates, and Univision. The company's channel partners include Softbank Broadmedia/Club iT, AboveNet, and Inflow. For more information about Speedera, please call 408-970-1528, visit www.speedera.com or email info@speedera.com.