By Nathan Segal
Looking for a new alternative for your bandwidth needs? Then have a look at StreamingHand, a new service that offers a different approach for flexibility and control of bandwidth access. With this service, users don’t have to worry about binding, long-term contracts. StreamingHand allows bandwidth to be utilized only when necessary and in the amounts required. According to the company press release, StreamingHand is attracting attention from some of the largest names in the “gaming, peer-to-peer, networking and streaming industries, including Gigex, Playnet, Toadnoded and Inoize Networks.”
StreamingHand has created a pricing system that allows for the fluctuating bandwidth needs of streaming media providers. This is particularly effective when media and software downloads occur during peak usage times or following a product release.
Due to the speed of the Internet, time often defines the difference between failure and success. With current pricing strategies, users are often locked into fixed term and volume contracts. To make matters worse, it is difficult, if not impossible, to project your bandwidth needs from day to day, much less from year to year.
Some of the issues that content providers have faced are “A best-guess approach to bandwidth projections, long and frustrating negotiations, and fixed term and volume contracts with little flexibility.”
In contrast, StreamingHand offers cost-effective content distribution, better bandwidth management, lower bandwidth costs due to greater efficiency, no term or minimum monthly payments, bandwidth on demand and greater flexibility. How this is all accomplished is due to the use of Merkato, a software platform developed by InvisibleHand Networks. Merkato makes use of two algorithms governing Progressive Second Price (PSP), an auction mechanism, and Hold Option, a reservation system.
With Merkato, buyers can bid on bandwidth, compute market prices and allocations, and by using industry standard network management protocols, conceive real-time allocations by interfacing with a carriers routes. Merkato provides a number of tools and automatic software agents to help buyers with price discovery, quantity of their bids, projections, purchases and overall bandwidth management. The Merkato tools and agents can be configured and run from any web browser with Java enables. StreamingHand is available to all content providers. You can co-locate your equipment at their facilities or a carrier neutral partner facility, or mirror some or all of your content on the StreamingHand enterprise class servers. Using a Java-based interface, you can automate as much of the process as your see fit. The buying agent’s parameters can be configured at any given time, or the agent can run on its own once it has been configured.
StreamingHand offers a presentation sowing how their software works using the PowerPoint Viewer. If you don’t have this plug-in you will need to download it.
Additional Notes Since StreamingHand doesn’t constrain users with long term contracts, you are not prevented from realizing reductions in rates as bandwidth lowers in cost over time.
When configuring the buying agent, you can design it to accommodate bandwidth when it needs to burst up. Using this service, you can buy the precise amount of bandwidth needed for flash or burst situations before they occur.
Even if you are involved with a one-year bandwidth contract, you can still take advantage of the StreamingHand Service, which offers the technology of resource redirection.
StreamingHand technology assures you of bandwidth allocations at eh network edge in contrast to best-effort bandwidth (today’s bandwidth purchasing system.) The result is that congestion and contention issues are alleviated at the network edge. Additionally, traffic can be re-routed automatically to obtain optimum service levels in as short as five minutes.
Important Note
Since the StreamingHand bandwidth pricing model is based on real-time purchasing, there is no and , meaning that you can try out the service at any time.
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