Web Hosting Without Big Bandwidth Bills
An NYU research project called Coral proposes to solve the problem of "Slashdotting" -- a large group of users all suddenly trying to access the same server. Coral is peer-to-peer content distribution network. It is comprised of a network of web proxies and nameservers. It allows a user to run a web site that offers high performance and meets sudden, massive demand without paying a fortune in bandwidth charges. Online since 2004, Coral currently receives almost 20 million requests per day from over 1 million unique clients. Slashdot, Fark, and Digg are among sites that currently use it. Given the recent activity at CES and Macworld around digital content distribution, Coral and similar schemes are likely to see significantly more use.
