TownNews.com Upgrades Customers to Advanced Technology

The 1,600 online newspapers hosted by TownNews.com are being upgraded to a state-of-the-art load-balancing system.

The Zeus load-balancing system ensures that online traffic is moved in and out of TownNews.com sites in the quickest and most efficient manner possible, resulting in better customer satisfaction and more page views.

Load-balancing software acts as an interactive traffic cop, making sure that all data moves through TownNews.com’s two major data centers as quickly as possible.

In technical terms, Zeus works at the Layer 7, or application level. “Layer 7 technology allows us to run administrative processes on different servers, segregate servers for beta testing, improve diagnostic services, improve load-balancing algorithms, and use lighter weight and faster Web servers for serving images and other static content,” said Brad Ward, senior vice president of Technology for TownNews.com.

Marc Wilson, chief executive officer of TownNews.com, said the addition of the Layer 7 Zeus technology is part of an ongoing TownNews.com program to ensure that online newspaper customer have access to the best interactive technology available on the marketplace.

In addition to the Layer 7 technology, TownNews.com has added Akami edge serving, which distributes content over thousands of web servers across the nation and around the world. The Akami service means that consumers are accessing their online newspapers from servers located within 100 miles of their homes or offices. This local and regional access virtually eliminates long-distance Internet routing that can add time to each page load.

“Between the regional edge serving, the Zeus load-balancing and the many upgrades TownNews.com has made at its central data centers in Chicago and New York, readers of online newspapers hosted by TownNews.com should have the best response time available to any Internet users,” Wilson said.

He added: “Most newspapers, working alone, likely couldn’t afford this kind of load-balancing solution, but working together, the TownNews.com newspapers have access to technology that is second to none. Working together, the 1,600-plus newspapers can afford this technology.”

He said the migration to Akami and to Zeus will be transparent to customers, but that they may direct questions to the customer support staff at 800-293-9576.

Contacts

TownNews.com
Kelly Hendershot, 309-743-0800 ext. 1008
kelly {at} townnews(.)com