INFOnline measures 120 million Internet visitors an hour

A10 Networks says that INFOnline, a leader in Internet audience measurement for organisations across Germany, has deployed Thunder Series Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs) to successfully manage data collection activities peaking at 120 million samples per hour.

INFOnline measures usage data for approximately 2,000 websites and Internet connected applications and processes approximately 70 billion data sets each month in a 24/7 operation across two data processing centres. INFOnline customers include some of the largest media brands across the German speaking parts of Europe including the web sites of leading TV channels such as RTL, SAT1, Pro7 and MTV, of travel specialists like opodo and Ab-in-den-Urlaub, of daily newspapers like bild.de or Spiegel Online, as well as radio broadcasters like bigFM and Hitradio FFH.

INFOnline is a partnership between leading German media associations including the Bundesverband Deutscher Zeitungsverleger (BDZV), the Verband Deutscher Zeitschriftenverleger (VDZ), the Bundesverband Digitale Wirtschaft (BVDW), the Markenverband, the Organisation der Media-Agenturen im GWA, the Verband Deutscher Auskunfts-und Verzeichnismedien (VDAV) and the Verband Privater Rundfunk und Telemedien (VPRT).

Since launching in 2004, INFOnline has relied on software-based load balancing technology to help regulate data flowing from websites under measurement to its collection and analysis servers. However, as Thomas Gray, Senior Systems Engineer for INFOnline explained, “The sheer volume of transactions and the small size of each data sample started to cause problems for our BalanceNG load balancing software, so we decided that a hardware option would provide a better long-term solution.”

After evaluating a number of ADC solutions including products from F5 Networks and Citrix, “It was clear that A10 offered the best value and performance with enough capacity to allow us to keep growing, especially with the launch of our new SZMnG services,” says Gray.

Since implementation with the A10 Thunder 1030s in an active / passive configuration, Gray has noted flawless performance. “At peak times, we process around 120 million samples per hour and the A10 controllers have been easily up to the task,” he added.

The A10 Networks Thunder Series ADC appliances fit a wide variety of networks with models ranging from 5 Gbps and moving up to a 150 Gbps high-performance appliance for the most demanding requirements. A10 Thunder supports dual power supplies, solid-state drives (SSDs), with no moving parts (other than hot swap fans) for optimal availability.

A10 Networks Thunder includes appliances equipped with enhanced Flexible Traffic Acceleration (FTA) technology; field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) for hardware-optimized packet processing and enhanced security, enabling highly scalable flow distribution and distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection. Coupled with high density 1 Gbps, 10 Gbps, 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps port options, and the ability to scale out, Thunder ADC meets or exceeds today’s highly demanding data centre needs.