Fiber in the islands , Digital Island uses Hawaii's cable hub to dodge Internet snarls >BY CHRIS BUCHOLTZ, Intelligence & Software Editor

While the success of the Internet may have been unexpected, the accompanying traffic problems shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the topography of the public network. The Internet was born in the U.S., and most of the world's traffic reflects this by traveling across a North American network at some point. Consequently, the congested U.S. mainland Internet infrastructure is causing companies that need a reliable World Wide Web presence to look for detours.

One company, Digital Island, has found a solution to this problem by being in the right place at the right time-Hawaii, to be exact.

Digital Island's strategy to avoid the traffic jams of the mainland is based on the Hawaiian Islands' strategic geographical position. Because of its placement as the western-most developed territory in the U.S., and its importance as a fallback position in the event of political upheaval in Asia, government planners mandated that all transoceanic fiber optic cables pass through Hawaii.

"Hawaii has the most abundant supply of fiber optic cable in the world," said Ron Higgins, president of Honolulu-based Digital Island. "This gives us the ability to offer a worldwide network that's independent of the U.S. network access points. For companies that need an international presence, that's a big advantage.

The concentration of fiber capacity in Hawaii provides Digital Island with the basis for its managed star network. This network allows customers to provide "single-hop connectivity to important information without having to mess with the mainland network access points," an important consideration for international customers whose local telephone system may already hamper performance, said Higgins.

Instead of marketing itself as a simple access point to the Web, Digital Island offers a solution that includes virtual server distribution, reserved bandwidth, global encryption, localized delivery, security and firewall protection, extensive site management reports, and around-the-clock managed network operation-key applications for companies relying on the Internet as a vital component of their businesses. "They're going for success in Web hosting rather than in pure access," said John Coons, director and principal analyst at San Jose-based Dataquest. "They're capitalizing on the congestion in the U.S. by providing predictable and reliable Web server services, which they couldn't do from the middle of the U.S.

The first company to use these services is Cisco Systems, which had been finding it difficult to manage servers distributed throughout the world. The company's need for 24-hour access to these sites made Cisco's problems even more acute.

"Cisco is an amazing first [customer] when you realize that they make the equipment that runs the Internet in the U.S. and even they don't want to use it," said Coons.

By concentrating their servers under Digital Island's roof, managing the servers is made easier as well. Other attempts to provide high-availability server access have focused on mirroring sites or distributing copies of information to a number of servers. "Managing that many locations can be very difficult," said Higgins. "Because we offer reliable, high-bandwidth access, managers can put their pages in one centralized location, which simplifies management considerably.

Basing such a service in Hawaii provides a simple solution to international Internet needs, a solution so simple that Higgins was shocked to find that a major telecom company had not already taken advantage of the islands' fiber assets.

"BT, Cable & Wireless and these other large, facilities-based global providers are busy getting people on the ground in markets all over the world, which is almost the opposite of what Digital Island is doing," said Coons. "They've found a great work-around for the time being that will let this little guy play in the big guys' market."