We chose the name Advection to describe the very different content flow on our streaming network compared to others. Other networks move content directly from the source to the destination, like a railway or, more prosaically, a river. By contrast, on our network, media spreads from server to server like the fog rolls in.

There’s a lot of math behind our approach, but a better way to understand it is in pictures.

Photographs of Advection in Action

In Cedric Lahaeye’s amazing aerial photography, we found some extremely rare photographs of moisture advection at work. In the second photo, imagine a water truck on the road through the village. Then imagine the advection fog rolling through...

Advection fog appears when a layer of warm moist air encounters cooler ground. Moisture condenses along the edge between the temperatures, spreading the temperature difference further.

Cedric’s photographs show the advection fog phenomenon clearly. As the moisture condenses, the effect resembles a breaking wave or an avalanche. That water truck on the road doesn’t stand a chance.

Advection occurs implacably, covering the entire terrain. In these images, the condensation front advances at about 10 knots.

Thanks to the sun and the snow, the phenomenon yeilds some beautiful photos of Eperlecques forest and the Calais coast in the distance.

When you’re imagining how your content spreads through the Advection.NET streaming network, remember these photographs and you won’t be far off.

While the photos shot from the air in France are the most dramatic examples of advection we’ve seen, it seems fitting that the most common place to witness advection fog in America is San Francisco, one of the two most important Internet hubs.

Origin of Advection and Advection.NET Service Marks

Advection is the transport of a conserved scalar quantity that is transported in a vector field, like cream in coffee. Even without stirring, differences in temperature cause the cream to spread throughout.

ad·vec·tion (ăd-vĕk'shən) n.
1. The transfer of a property of the atmosphere, such as heat, cold, or humidity, by the horizontal movement of an air mass.
2. The horizontal movement of water, as in an ocean current.
3. The network delivery of streaming media at hurricane force.

The Department of Atmospheric Sciences (DAS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign defines “advection” as “transport of something from one region to another”, especially moisture, temperature, and vorticity. The horizontal transport of moisture is key to the development of precipitation. If little moisture is available, it is unlikely that precipitation will form. However, when a vortex is supplied with an abundance of moisture, heavy precipitation will develop.

While Advection™ describes our streaming algorithms, we are also an international content delivery network. The original intent for domain names was that the last three letters would indicate whether the name was for commerce (.com), not-for-profit (.org), government (.gov), education (.edu), or an Internet infrastructure company (.net). Though “.com” is the most popular extension, “advection.net” is actually the correct address. We use the full name to remind people.

Conveniently, the term “.NET” was co-opted by Microsoft for their web services strategy to connect information, people, systems, and devices through software. Using technology provides the ability to quickly build, deploy, manage, and use connected solutions with Web services. Practically speaking, web services accelerate integration. We write “.NET” in “Advection.NET” in all caps to remind people we’ve built a broad set of web services to help companies (including those with PHP, Java, or other open source web services) needing to integrate streaming and paid-media into their existing web sites.

Origin of Locus Product Trademark

A content delivery network is a widespread and nebulous thing. The network is not the sum of it’s parts, or the warehouse of a computer reseller would be a network. On the contrary, the nature of a network is found in the flow of its lifeblood, the movies, music, writing, and imagery, churning from machine to machine to satisfy the crowds’ ever-increasing thirst for entertainment.

To chart this mighty torrent's flow takes dedicated explorers. To control it, equally dedicated engineers.

lo·cus (lō'kəs) n.
1. A center or focus of great activity or intense concentration: “the cunning exploitation of loci of power” (Clifton Fadiman).
2. Mathematics. The set or configuration of all points whose coordinates satisfy a single equation or one or more algebraic conditions.
3. A server appliance that optimizes streaming delivery across a highly utilized server farm.

Our Locus™ appliances and software package our experience and research to give you the control you need over your media delivery. We identified the points, one or two in each server, and one or two in each datacenter, where the most power can be gained with just a small elegant effort.

Origin of Auragan Corporate Name

Auragan™, parent of Advection.NET™, is a developer of technologies and techniques to maximize both the financial and network performance of your Internet applications and assets, whether delivered from a data center or within your enterprise.

Auragan™, and many of our internal products, are names from a language called Occitan, spoken only by a small few in the mountains on the border between France and Spain.

hur·ri·cane (hûr'ĭ-kān') n.
1. A severe tropical cyclone originating in the equatorial regions of the Atlantic Ocean or Caribbean Sea or eastern regions of the Pacific Ocean, traveling north, northwest, or northeast from its point of origin, and usually involving heavy rains.
2. A wind with a speed greater than 74 miles (119 kilometers) per hour, according to the Beaufort scale.
3. Internet delivery resembling a hurricane in force or speed.

Auragan means hurricane in the Occitan language, from French ouragan or Spanish huracan, from Taino hurakan; akin to Arawak kulakani, thunder.

Auragan™ and Auragan Logo™ Copyright © 2001