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Exodus Communications Inc. Tuesday expanded its Streaming Media Performance Monitoring service to include measurement of Real Networks and Microsoft streaming media formats.

Tentatively scheduled to be commercially available in Q1 2001, this capability, along with their existing solution for Apple QuickTime streams, allows Exodus to measure the performance quality of streaming audio and video of the top three stream formats.

"Exodus is responding to the increasing demand for complex streaming services," explained Andy Kamlet, director of product management for Exodus' Performance Optimization group. "This enhanced performance monitoring service, combined with Exodus' Streaming Media Design and Delivery services, as well as our testing capabilities for streaming content, enables Exodus to offer the most comprehensive streaming media solution available on the market today."

Designed for stream hosters, content distribution networks and encoders, and content producers and owners, Exodus' Streaming Media Performance Monitoring service will provide metrics that users can view in various ways to monitor stream quality and troubleshoot problematic areas of performance.

The service offers performance measurement relative to an established Performance Notification Threshold (PNT) value, set by the user based on a number of critical stream statistics, which vary by stream type. Based on these specified values, Exodus provides users with e-mail notification of performance problems when established threshold levels are crossed, allowing the responsible parties to address performance issues before they become serious.

Exodus' service will provide an analysis of the quality of stream delivery available. The service gives companies access to quantifiable and objective customer experience information, enabling them to identify poor performance, attribute accountability to those responsible and remedy errors quickly and accurately. Because the media format utilized determines the metrics that are measured, Exodus offers different monitoring and reporting capabilities for each type of stream.

"As Web-based businesses begin to add more sophisticated multimedia content to their sites, the availability of a comprehensive, versatile streaming performance solution that provides information in real-time becomes crucial," added Kamlet. "Exodus' Streaming Media Performance Monitoring provides services for archived, live and on-demand streaming audio and video content based on the three most popular stream formats, on a 24 hour per day, seven day per week basis."