Bringing Content Closer to the Consumer: Event Proxy Cache Technology

- Steve Wilson, director of systems engineering at SuperLumin Networks (www.superlumin.com), says:

A slow Web browsing experience is frustrating, to say the least. Trade shows and other corporate events are all too often case studies in network congestion. The networks and their Internet links are temporary constructs not often up to the load of hundreds or thousands of attendees using laptops and tablet devices at the same time. Even if the initial network performance is good, usage quickly ramps up as the event gets underway. That’s when the trouble begins. As usage ramps up, users will inevitably experience slow Internet browsing, unreliable network connections, and sluggish load times.

While Web performance has quickly become critical to everyday business productivity, new event acceleration technology is helping to improve network speed and enhance the attendee experience at trade shows—evident in a recent case study showcasing the 2012 Digital Marketing Summit.

With almost 5,000 attendees expected at the 2012 Adobe Digital Marketing Summit, network planners faced quite a challenge. Their main concern was to sustain high-quality Internet performance, even though the event featured an agenda full of video seminars to stream, programs to download, and most attendees would be using tablets and laptops to stay in touch with operations back home. 

To provide efficient Internet access to the thousands of attendees, network planners elected to make use of event proxy cache technology. During the Summit, event proxy cache technology alleviated bandwidth congestion by capturing downloaded content and storing it locally—keeping the conference and other content “cached” on the event network. Subsequent requests for all those video seminars and online programs were served to conference participants from the event proxy cache. The results were spectacular.

During the Summit, the maximum number of unique users was 4,752, with a peak of 2,289 concurrent users on the final day. The event proxy service provided bandwidth savings of 215GB, contributing to the exceptional Web browsing and online experience at the Summit.

A fast, reliable event network provides the opportunity to enhance attendees’ overall event experience—enhancing productivity for staff, attendees and guests. By utilizing event proxy cache technology to support the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit, network operations were significantly enhanced to the benefit of all conference participants. Attendees enjoyed an excellent online experience and the actual Internet connection never became the limiting factor for network performance. When did YOU last enjoy your online experience at a large trade show or corporate event?

*This graph shows the Internet content accessed by conference participants during a twelve-hour period. The yellow and green area together (above the axis) represents the local bandwidth consumed by actual user HTTP requests. The orange area (below the axis) represents the actual internet bandwidth used to fetch content from origin Web servers. The green area shows the Internet bandwidth that was saved—this traffic represents the HTTP traffic served to users directly from the event proxy cache. By utilizing the proxy service, the average bandwidth savings during the twelve-hour period was 40 percent, with the maximum bandwidth savings of 84 percent.

About SuperLumin

SuperLumin Networks is a subsidiary company of STRATACACHE. SuperLumin Networks provides caching, content acceleration, and application acceleration solutions to enterprises across the globe. SuperLumin products represent state-of-the-art, award-winning technology that is flexible, manageable and affordable.

For more information on SuperLumin Networks, visit www.superlumin.com or follow us on Twitter @SuperLumin.