VeriSign plans to spend more than $100 million over three years to expand the infrastructure that helps direct most of the world's Internet traffic.
VeriSign runs one of the key pieces of the infrastructure that makes the Internet run: "switchboards" that direct every piece of traffic to Web locations with a .com or .net at the end of their address.
Every time a Web surfer enters an Internet address, it first travels through a VeriSign server, which directs it to its final destination. The system also handles other types of Internet exchanges, including ones that are originated via computer or handle phone calls.
VeriSign said it plans to upgrade the capacity of its switching system to four trillion transactions a day from its current daily level of about 400 billion. It expects to complete the work by 2010.
The system handles about 26 billion transactions on a typical day.
Demand is expected to soar over the next few years as the Internet is increasingly used for purposes beyond surfing the Web - including telephone calls, Web surfing over mobile devices and electronic commerce transactions.
"We must make sure VeriSign's infrastructure is ready to support a new era of the Internet, the Any Era, where billions of users demand anywhere, any time, any device access to communications, information and entertainment," VeriSign CE Stratton Sclavos said in a statement.
VeriSign, which provides Internet security products in addition to infrastructure services, had 2006 revenue of $1.6 billion.
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