ChinaCache is the first and biggest Chinese provider of Content Delivery Network (CDN) service. At a press conference on Tuesday, CEO Wang Song announced the completion of the company's second round equity financing totaling US$31.5 million in April and the total network capacity has reached 200Gbps last month.

Wang Song,CEO of ChinaCache, the first and biggest Chinese provider of Content Delivery Network (CDN) service.[File Photo]

Wang proudly claimed, "About 60 percent of the funds will be used to strengthen the company's efforts in research and development and accelerate its system expansion. And our network capacity will continue to increase after reaching 200Gbps, every week the capacity increases by 10Gbps. We will reach 300Gbps capacity in the near future."

In an exclusive interview with ChinaDaily website, Wang vividly explained what CDN is. He said CDN is a virtual network that covers the Internet and distributes information to nodes in different areas. For example, if a Beijing web user wants to check a Shanghai-based website, he will encounter low speeds due to the basic structure of network of the two regions.

But with CDN, the Shanghai website information will be delivered to the server closest to the user, from which the web surfer can get what he wants much more quickly. And the bigger the network capacity is, the higher the speed will be. Wang adds, increasing capacity is like widening a road where cars can pass more quickly.

He continued to say, "CDN is seen as a responsible courier, and what our company does is set up servers in many Chinese cities and rent them out to various websites, so that they do not need to spend a huge amount of money to settle servers by themselves. They can pay us to do this for them since we have over 170 of them in more than Chinese 50 cities."

Being the biggest CDN provider in China and Asia, ChinaCache covers more than 75 percent of the CDN market in China with the first CDN provider license issued by Ministry of Information Industry. However, CDN technology has its own disadvantages and the main one is its high cost by establishing the infrastructure, including the server. As a result, only those high-profiled websites, like Sina.com, Sohu.com, CCTV, Nokia and government websites can contract CDN services.

To help lower the cost, ChinaCache is researching the benefits of Peer-to-Peer technology, which is a type of transient Internet network that allows a group of computer users with the same networking program to connect with each other and directly access files from one another's hard drives.

Wang also explained ChinaCache's future plans, which may include a listing on the Nasdaq next year. The company is also entertaining many clients hoping to adopt CDN technology to deliver stock trade information online. "We are seriously considering this possibility," said Wang.Although ChinaCache is already Asia's largest CDN provider, CDN technology is still in its infancy in China , as only five percent of networks nationwide are using it.

"My company is a little child compared to overseas counterparts," he says with a smile. But for him, Chinese competitors lag far behind. "They lack enough experience, funds and clients to really compete with us. So what we are doing is developing our own technology and do not think too much about the competition."

He added in the United States , a new CDN company named Limelight is booming by serving websites offering online videos and becoming a strong competitor to another rival CDN company called Akamai.

"We have learnt from this and began to cooperate with video websites like Tudou.com in China to get the market before those other smaller CDN companies," Wang said. "We are happy to accept their challenges in the future."

Forty-five year-old Wang Song was born in Beijing and started to work in a state-owned institute after graduating with a computer science degree at 20. But this young extrovert was bored by the research job and began to look for more interesting work opportunities. So he quit his job and worked as a representative for two US-based IT companies from 1995 to 1997. He thought it was a pity he didn't have a chance to work in the US.

But after establishing ChinaCache in 1998, Wang was able to seize the chance to develop Chinese CDN technology in 2000. "I initially wanted to buy technology from US-based Akamai company, but failed because of the high price they were asking for. So my company started to research CDN on our own. But I was a little foolish for not realizing how difficult it was to do in the first place," he said with a laugh.

ChinaCache survived the "dot-com bubble" collapse, which happened right after the company was established, believing that "if we stick to our business for a long time, we will become the best one in the field. So we gave up the idea of shifting our business to another direction," Wang explained.

"But who knows what would have happened if we changed our business direction at that time. Chinese search giant Baidu.com was among those who wanted to develop CDN before the Internet bubble collapse. They are very successful today and we are considering working with this kind of search engine to expand our business."

And with ChinaCache firmly established in China' s Internet industry, Wang will make sure he stays one step ahead to continue to dominate the field.