Leading integrated communications cloud service Youme enhances global user experience with Zenlayer

Challenges

Global enterprises have distributed users, and the infrastructure conditions of the regions where users are located are often quite different. Compared to mature markets with competitive options, in emerging markets such as India, Indonesia, Brazil, the Middle East, South America and Africa – 4G networks are not mainstream. In fact, 3G and even 2G are still widely used in these emerging markets, where network speeds are relatively slow, and costs are high.

For gaming companies that need to quickly seize market share, knowing how to rapidly improve user experience in distributed, complex and weak network environments is crucial for their success.

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E-Learning Company Uses Zenlayer Edge Data Center Services to Rapidly Grow Their Network

Overview

Talk-Cloud, an e-Learning platform used by universities and other online education providers, was experiencing expo-nential growth and needed rapid deployment of new network nodes to maintain customer satisfaction. The heart of their platform is two-way livestreaming, an application extremely sensitive to latency issues and network instability. By using Zenlayer Bare Metal Cloud and Edge Data Center Services for their network needs, Talk-Cloud was able to increase coverage by 40% while reducing latency by 5% and costs by 20%.

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Transform Digital User Experience with CDN & Dynamic Caching

Many of us would recall when even a simple task, like webpage loading, appeared to be a lifetime wait. In the last two decades, web browsing experience has come a long way, and now not only do we browse faster – we surf, shop, learn, get entertained, and virtually live our lives on a browser. We are in a digital era where even ordering a pizza is a click away. With being online becoming a norm in this virtual age of smartphones, the seamless performance of a brand on digital platforms plays the most significant role in engaging a visitor.

How do we make digital platforms highly interactive and personalized without sacrificing performance? Content Delivery Network (CDN), along with Dynamic Caching, helps achieve this.

In this blog, let’s look behind the scenes and learn about the role of CDNs in improving website performance with dynamic content caching.

What is dynamic content? How does a CDN manage dynamic page caching?

Typically, a website comprises of both static and dynamic content. Static content refers to content stored on a server, which remains the same every time it is presented to the users. Texts, images and files can be static. Dynamic content is any frequently changing content based on user-specific factors of locations, time of visit and device type. The dynamic content gets modified in real-time, letting websites adjust to different site visitors by delivering information based on who the viewer is. The online store experience is not the same for a regular shopper and a first-time customer. Online shopping, credit card transactions, response to sale offers and banner advertisements are some examples of dynamic content. Online news websites, weather updates on our mobiles as per location, blog feeds, social media feeds and video chats are additional examples of dynamic content. Ecommerce and media sites use the power of CDNs to keep their content updated with the real-time information.

CDN refers to a network of powerful servers placed in geographically distinct locations aimed at enhancing the performance of websites, applications and video streams. Caching is the process of storing data in a temporary storage area called cache. A cache helps to achieve a highly efficient data retrieval and enables quick access to the stored content. Caching reduces the page loading time, thus providing a more responsive site for its users. Dynamic content is difficult to cache as it is specific to each user or event, and the same data cannot be served to multiple users. However, with advanced technology and intelligent caches, CDNs can be configured to quickly check requests and adjust the caching logic’s actions as per the requirements.

How dynamic caching happens?

Webpages are created using HTML documents and are the foremost connection point between the website origin server and the browser. The more visitors, the more stress is caused on the origin servers. Caching of the HTML document ensures that only the caching server is involved, thus freeing up the website servers for important transactions. When a visitor browses a website using a CDN, a local copy of the content from a nearby cache server is served, which allows the website to load fast. These Proxy cache servers and points of presence (PoP) are placed in different parts of the globe based on regional traffic patterns. Active locations with a large number of users may have many data centers and remote locations while non-active locations may have only one PoP to cover a large geographic area. The dynamic content acceleration service is responsible for efficient connectivity between the network PoPs, thereby reducing response time. This service can leverage a private backbone Software Defined Network (SDN) and attains enhanced ‘back-to-parent/origin’ network connectivity.

Some benefits of dynamic caching for an enterprise include:

Decreased hosting and server costs
Reduced bandwidth costs
Enhanced personalized user experience
Improved access speed
Decreased load on origin server
Dedicated caching layer
Reliable content delivery
Secure and stable CDN cache servers

With the rise in data consumption, there is a growing need for an infrastructure that is capable of delivering faster speeds, quicker downloads and seamless streaming. Content Delivery Networks with Dynamic Caching is a critical piece of building that ‘extra’ edge over competition. With these technologies in place, digital strategists are able to gather visitor data like frequency of visits, and pages visited to deliver a personalized user experience at no additional cost. Visitors are spending more time on sites as they are now seeing content relevant to them. During peak traffic events like sports events, Christmas or Thanksgiving, the insights help make the performance predictable. Usage of multiple devices is not hampering performance even by a little.

The near future will witness more content being created and delivered over the web, and this may lead to enormous congestion of data. The most promising solution may lie with upcoming modern content delivery service providers.

In The Hub Ep 24 – A New Direction For SCTE – w/ Melissa Cogavin

In this week’s episode, we speak to Melissa Cogavin – Managing Editor at SCTE, the Society for Broadband Professionals. We hear about Melissa’s impact within the Film and Cinema industries, where the SCTE is headed in 2021 and what Melissa envisions for the future of the broadcasting industry.

Optimizing OBVans Production Workflows with full support for P2 structures as an output

The Customer

MOG has been providing high-quality, cost-effective solutions for OBVans Production for years. More than ever, Broadcasters and Media Companies need to optimize rack usage, without compromising video quality, while still ensuring its multiple distribution and storage needs.

By performing multiple operations in a single box, mDECK is the ideal match for an OBVan environment, as it guarantees a smooth ingest, transcode and playback of multiple channels in any formats, simultaneously.

MOG deployed a custom solution based on CyBC’s (Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation) requirements, based on P2 structures. Read the Full Case Study below.

Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CyBC) – is Cyprus’s public broadcaster which started its operation in 1953. It transmits island-wide on four radio stations, two television channels – and one satellite channel for the Cypriot diaspora.

The Challenge

CYBC reached out to us to upgrade their OBVans Production ecosystem.

Their main goal entailed having a P2 structure as an output, and get P2 structures rewrapped from mxf Op1A, 2 to record AVC-I 100 and DVCPRO50 from OB Vans productions, for compatibility issues with existing infrastructure.

It’s worth noting that it’s standard to have P2 structures as an input, but not as an output, so a customization was required.

The list of requirements consisted in:

A newly updated workflow solution for their OBVans – meaning a compact and powerful infrastructure – that allowed MxfOP1a as an input, and having an output of P2 MXF;
Automatic jobs – an automated process, that allows for the network watch folder to rewrap for Op1a to P2 structures;
Automatic deletion of the output file when the job is complete;
Different P2 structures should be created equal to the number of input files dropped.

The Solution

Powerful and compact, mDECK Densu A-2 was the chosen model to help our client with all the challenges they were facing.

Completely prepared to capture, file-based ingest and playback, this product was the most inclusive solution.

An optimal configuration, mDECK Densu A-2 gives the ability for quality control and feed monitoring, while offering a total of four media operations which in this case, was defined to be three file-based operations and one playback operation, working simultaneously.

As we said before, for compatibility issues with existing infrastructure, the main intention was to have P2 structures as an output, but also get P2 structures rewrapped from mxf Op1A, 2 to record AVC-I 100 and DVCPRO50 from OB Vans productions.

mDECK Densu A-2 is the perfect compact professional media deck appliance to ingest, transcode and play FHD video streams and multiple formats.

Having unique output structures is not a standard input requirement, which made for an interesting project and deployment. We were proud to deliver a customized solution, fully adapted to CyBC’s needs, and we’re excited to follow-up on mDECK’s new developments and features for the future.

How about you, what are your challenges nowadays?

Share them with us!

BaishanCloud strengthened its CDN globally by upgrading its PoPs in Europe

BaishanCloud added another terabit-per-second level protection against DDoS in its global CDN, providing more robust security support for clients’ international businesses.

Recently, BaishanCloud (Baishan) launched an upgrade for its Points of Presence (PoP) in Frankfurt, Germany. On top of Baishan’s current CDN network structure, the upgrade enables cloud security features, including global Anycast traffic cleaning service, Anti-DDoS protection, SCDN, WAF, Bot management, etc.

As Frankfurt is the core transportation hub in Europe and the world, the PoP in Frankfurt becomes a critical part of Baishan’s global edge-cloud network to gather global abundant network backbone resources. The upgrade of the PoP’s security capabilities helps optimize the protection in Europe and even in the world.

Based on the client needs, Baishan focuses on three primary areas — infrastructure, security, and developer support. Relying on the global edge cloud platform, Baishan constantly strengthens the core product functions of CDN, SD-WAN, DDoS, WAF, iPaaS, Serverless, etc. Baishan continues to upgrade technologies and solutions, enhance global resource service capabilities, and provide high-quality edge-cloud services to many large enterprise clients worldwide.

Take Frankfurt as an example, through global Anycast near-origin data cleansing, Baishan’s PoPs achieved robust defense against UDP and DDoS attacks. With 99.99% availability worldwide, Baishan’s CDN further reduces the impact of network issues to end-users, which ensures stable and high-quality performance for clients.

Consistently expanding coverage and depth of global cloud distribution resources are the fundamental key for CDN service to help clients develop businesses worldwide. Baishan has a globally distributed edge network covering 250+ cities in 6 continents with direct connectivity with over 100 ISPs worldwide to provide stable performance and service quality in the global market. From anywhere in the world, users can enjoy the cloud services offered by Baishan at the closest PoP and experience the quality improvement of performance, safety, and innovation efficiency. Baishan will continue to upgrade product technologies and solutions while building more edge PoPs around the world to provide a better, more stable, and secure user experience.

BaishanCloud is a leading global data service provider specialized in cross-border content delivery and edge security in China and Asia. To get more articles on trendy topics related to cloud delivery, streaming best practices, edge security, cloud technology in China and Asia, please visit www.baishancloud.com and subscribe to the BaishanCloud newsletter.

In Conversation with Xytech

We catch up with Greg Dolan, Chief Commercial Officer at Xytech to discuss their MediaPulse Media Orchestrator. We hear how the workflow streamlines and automates content processing workflows and information flow across departments and vendors.

We also discuss Xytech’s recent acquisition of ScheduALL and what it means for both companies and also customers.

In Conversation with Matrox

We caught up with Jean Lapierre, Senior Director, Advanced Technologies to discuss Matrox® VERO.

Jean tells us about what VERO is and what stimulated its development, why they build a new device rather than just use a simple SDI-to-ST 2110 gateway.

We also talk about how VERO includes a capture function and why someone would need that in a signal generator. Finally, we hear how VERO is useful for any users that may need a ST 2110 reference source.

Leading integrated communications cloud service Youme enhances global user experience with Zenlayer