• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, June 26, 2009

Web video delivery startup Nokeena Networks has raised $6.5 million in a second round of funding led by Mayfield Fund.

Founded in early 2008, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company plans to use the funds to further develop its core technology, which aims to help media companies achieve a higher-quality video experience online. Appealing to video-crazed content publishers, aggregators and online distribution networks, Nokeena recently introduced Media Flow Director, a software-based media delivery service that claims to support the delivery of up to 40,000 streams of "guaranteed uninterrupted throughput" from a standard server.

Break Media, for one, has enlisted the Media Flow Director to support the delivery of user-generated content.

Rajan Raghavan, co-founder and CEO of Nokeena, remarked on the difficulty of securing venture capital in the current recession. "Our ability to complete this investment in the current economic environment underscores the immediate and prospective value we are delivering."

The continuous consumption of high-quality media over PCs, high-definition TV and mobile devices has indeed generated huge increases in the volume of online traffic that must be delivered by media publishers and distributors.

Year-over-year, total online video streams were up 34.8%, which amounts to a whopping 10,043,049,000 streams in May, according to according to Nielsen Online VideoCensus. To boot, the time that U.S. consumers spent watching the Web video was up a full 48.9% year-over-year that month -- which translates to 188.7 minutes spent. Nokeena previously brought in $8.7 million from Clearstone Venture Partners and Trinity Ventures -- both of which participated in this latest round.

Nokeena faces keen opposition from larger rival companies like BitGravity, Akamai Technologies and Limelight, to name a few.