Tired of working with Web server heavyweights like Dell, Sun, and IBM? Check out an equipment maker who is refreshingly focused on doing one thing only for ISPs.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [April 19, 2002]

With just 16 employees and a very narrow focus, this Seattle, Washington-based equipment maker just might beat the behemoths at their own game. Xoasis Networks is the equipment making side of a business that started as an ISP and Webhosting service and its recently entered the hotly contested low-end, full-featured Web server arena.

Competing with gear made by Sun Cobalt, IBM, and Dell takes courage—and a firm belief that your company builds a better product. But Matt Godden, Xoasis president, says it shouldn't be this easy to make a better product.

"All of our competitors are offering Web servers as just one of their product lines, but we specialize in Web servers," Godden explains. "Let's say McDonald's starts serving tacos. You'd still get a better taco at a real Mexican taqueria. We feel that we're providing superior performance, reliability, and security—everyone else is just fast food."

Xoasis uses only top-shelf brand name hardware to build its BlackBox Server Appliance. Xoasis memory is from Kingston, the RAID is Mylex, the drives are from Seagate, Western Digital, and IBM, the case and motherboard are from Gigabyte, and the processors are Genuine Intel processors, with the current versions of the products using 1 GHz Pentium III processors.

The system ships with Xoasis' proprietary operating system that includes a clustering feature. The system is based on freeBSD 4.4. Additional software includes Apache Web Server, Exim mail server, Qpopper POP3 Access, ProFTPD FTP Services, and BIND 9 DNS services—perennial favorites among ISP systems administrators.

As a hosting and colocation service provider, Godden says that Xoasis has become intimate with the failings of rival products.

"Most products use a queuing system for website changes. The changes go into a database, the database outputs flat text files, and the program reads the flat text files," Godden explains. "Xoasis can read in real time, both in and out of the database."

Xoasis designed a test to demonstrate the efficiency provided by type of processing. Using Apache Benchmark, Xoasis pitted its 1 GHz 256 MB RAM unit against a 1 GHz 512 MB RAM Sun Cobalt Raq XTR. The results show that Xoasis completed 500 concurrent requests in 0.551 seconds, while the Sun Cobalt product took about 40 times longer to complete this particular task.

Godden has big plans to upgrade Xoasis' offerings. Next month he hopes to debut a box with a speaker and a microphone hookup utilizing voice recognition software. This will allow a technician to query a server status with simple voice commands, like "bandwidth site 3" or "temperature fan 1," and receive vocalized answers from the box.

Godden is also working with billing platform providers BillMax and Rodopi to build billing application program interfaces (API)s for Xoasis products. Godden expects to have this enhancement ready next month, too. Also in May, 2002 Xoasis will start shipping its first Penium IV server products.

A little further into the future, Godden hopes to ensure that Xoasis products are infinitely upgradeable. "Our unit holds a full motherboard. We hope to be able to send out a tech to upgrade the motherboard," he says.

As far as the ISP market's initial response to Xoasis, Godden says, The company has seen a lot of enthusiasm. "We showed it off most recently at the ISP Business Expo 2002 and got a great response," he says.

Pricing and availability
There are two versions of the current Xoasis Networks BlackBox Server Appliance. The KTX1-1 (the 1U version) starts at $2,799 for two 60 GB Seagate hard drives, 1 GHz Intel Pentium III processor, and 256 MB of Kingston PC-133 RAM. The KTX-2 (the 2U version) starts at $3,999 for two 1 GHz Intel Pentium III processors, three 18.2 GB IBM UltraStar hard drives, and 256 MB of Kingston PC-133 RAM. Rack mount rails, cable, and keyboard are extra.

Xoasis Networks' products can be ordered and configured online. To configure a product, simply select the "purchase now" option to bring up the configuration menu.

—End