Radware (Nasdaq: RDWR), a leading provider of Internet Traffic Management (ITM) solutions enabling continuous access to Web sites, IP applications and content, today announced that the U.S. Postal Service depends on the Web Server Director for Distributed Sites (WSD-DS) to keep its Post Office Management System (POMS) Always On-Line. When U.S. Postal Service representatives log on to the POMS at breakneck speeds, servicing millions of customer requests, it is imperative that their web servers meet the demand.
POMS delivers postal information from a centralized computer center in San Mateo, California. An identical content backup site is also maintained in a Minneapolis data center. The data from 3,100 U.S. post offices is stored on POMS servers, and the USPS plans to add information from 17,000 more post offices by early 2001. The WSD-DS is critical to the POMS operation delivering automatic and transparent local and distributed fail over as well as intelligent load balancing. If servers at either site fail, or if total site failure occurs, the Radware load balancers will automatically and immediately route users around failed units allowing requests to be satisfied.
Because the USPS relies so heavily on the POMS to manage customer service applications, building a fault tolerant and redundant network architecture was an important aspect of it's design. "When we were building POMS, we knew it was a mission critical application," said Mike Dickerson, business systems engineer for USPS. "All the equipment involved would have to be rock solid because we couldn't accept any down time."
All traffic entering the San Mateo computer operation center goes initially to the WSD-DS. The Radware load balancer monitors the health and availability of all the servers in the POMS cluster and forwards the request to the machine best able to respond back to the customer. User requests are intelligently balanced, based upon user defined traffic thresholds. A second WSD-DS unit at each location provides local redundancy "Radware's mission is to help our customers build bullet proof Internet sites that consistently provide their customers with the data they need to do business 24 hours a day 7 days a week," said Doron Meirom, president and CEO of Radware Inc. "The addition of the WSD-DS units to the POMS network enhances the overall fault tolerance, scalability and optimization of resources. The bottom line is that POMS customers experience less downtime and web wait. We are proud to be part of the network that keeps the USPS Always On-Line."
To further augment its overall fault-tolerant design, the USPS located two more WSD-DS units in its Minneapolis computer operation center. If a disaster occurs at the San Mateo center, user requests are automatically and transparently rerouted to the Minneapolis campus. Integrated DNS agents in the Radware load balancers provide automatic site failover using non-proprietary Internet DNS services. Another advantage of using Radware load balancers is the ability to schedule routine maintenance without causing user outages. POMS servers require routine upkeep and upgrades, but due to the U.S. time zones, USPS has only a six-hour window to complete these ongoing tasks. The WSD allows servers to be administratively activated and deactivated and automatically detects when a server is taken off line or re-introduced into the farm. If a POMS server is taken down for maintenance, the WSD-DS automatically routes the customer service requests to the server in the farm best able to serve the customer request. When the server maintenance is finished the WSD recognizes the server is back on line and re-introduces it into the server resource farm.
The USPS's reputation of delivering in rain, sleet and snow now applies to correspondence via the Internet. By employing the Radware WSD-DS units the USPS is confident in its promise to deliver customer service 7x24.
About Radware
Radware develops, manufacturers and markets products that manage and direct Internet traffic among network resources to enable continuous access to Web sites and services, applications and content based on the Internet protocol. Radware offers a broad range of Internet traffic management solutions to service providers, e-commerce businesses and corporate enterprises that require uninterrupted availability and optimal performance of IP-based applications that are critical to their business. Radware's Internet traffic management solutions enable its customers to manage their network infrastructure to bypass system failures and to scale their network infrastructure to accommodate increasing IP traffic. Radware's products improve the productivity of network infrastructure by distributing traffic within a network to optimize the use of available network resources. Radware's products can be deployed either as independent solutions to address specific application needs at a particular location within a network or as an end-to-end integrated solution to manage traffic throughout a network.
This press release may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, general business conditions in the Internet traffic management industry, changes in demand for Internet traffic management products, the timing and amount or cancellation of orders and other risks detailed from time to time in Radware's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including Radware's Form F-1.