Ryder Cup host steps up web traffic management

Dawinderpal Sahota, Computing, Thursday 23 September 2010 at 17:36:00

Celtic Manor Resort uses Hostway?s Content Delivery Network to keep web site
running smoothly

The TV and news content generated by the Ryder Cup, golf's premier team
tournament, is arguably as important as the tournament itself and as such this
year's host, the
Celtic
Manor Resort in south Wales, has taken on a new content delivery network
(CDN).

The resort has chosen Hostway?s CDN ? the network will be tasked with
distributing text descriptions, high-quality images and videos. Online traffic
is expected to increase significantly as the tournament approaches and the
resort is expecting 50 per cent of its web traffic to come from overseas.

This meant that Celtic Manor Resort has had to to ensure that this streamed
content didn't suffer from stuttering or other performance issues.

?After some research, hosting our web site in multiple locations on multiple
continents looked like a fairly expensive option,? explained James Lewis,
marketing manager at Celtic Manor.

?We needed a means of providing quality video that didn?t require a large
amount of configuration, wasn?t cost-prohibitive, and ideally, would be separate
from our own web site so that there were no performance degradations at peak
times.?

The resort opted to use Hostway?s CDN, which works by caching media-heavy
components of the web site, including images, videos or podcasts, on seven
locations around the world, making it suitable for Celtic Manor?s requirements.

Celtic Manor said that each Hostway server requires very little
configuration, and its current package can handle 50Gb of traffic each month,
which can accommodate 2,000 downloads or streaming users.

The resort?s IT and marketing teams also have access to analytics about CDN
usage, so if viewings of the video increase, they can upgrade their package to
provide more bandwidth.

The solution also allows the Celtic Manor team to take the video down at very
short notice if necessary.

Full story at http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/news/2270314/ryder-cup-host-steps-web