For universities with a large international student base, the ability to distribute timely class content is critical. As one of the nation’s top research universities, Georgia Tech ensures that students around the world receive the same top-quality education as those on campus. A Content Delivery Network (CDN) provides a seamless content distribution process without placing additional burden on the University’s finances or infrastructure.
The Georgia Tech Professional Education (GTPE) unit meets the demand for timely, high quality content with Internap’s CDN. The technology has delivered results across multiple areas, including decreased cost, streamlined processes and increased scalability.
The CDN solution
CDNs are purpose-built to distribute content, and offer multiple ways to create a high-quality online user experience through media distribution, large file download and website caching. Internap’s CDN includes multiple Points of Presence (POPs) across the globe, which means content can be cached in edge POPs that are located in closer proximity to the end users. This provides a high-quality, low-latency online experience for students regardless of their location, because they are accessing the content from a nearby edge POP. The global reach of Internap’s CDN allows students to participate in broadcasts via live streaming or download large files on demand.
Thanks to Internap’s CDN, students are able to quickly and reliably access live and on-demand content. Even with increasingly high demand for online learning, the CDN provides high performance, smooth streaming and an overall high quality experience for users.
Decreased cost – Prior to using a CDN, Georgia Tech was shipping CDs and DVDs of class content to students around the globe, costing approximately $250,000 per year. Additional expenses included reproduction of CDs and DVDs, along with the cost of blank media, packaging and labels. Without the need to ship course content to students, Georgia Tech is able to cut costs significantly.
Streamlined processes – Managing and distributing content in a timely manner becomes more difficult as the number of remote students increases. The ability to store media files on the CDN significantly reduces the administrative processes required to create, package and send CDs and DVDs to locations around the world.
Reduced infrastructure burden – The capacity of Georgia Tech’s campus-based servers quickly filled up with the large amount of content, creating a need for scalable storage options that are not dependent upon the limitations of University resources. The CDN provides scalable storage capacity that takes the burden off the University’s physical servers and infrastructure.
Using a CDN, Georgia Tech Professional Education has successfully reduced the cost of delivering content to students, decreased the administrative burden on internal processes and removed the load and bandwidth concerns from its own architecture. Most importantly, students around the world have timely access to course content and can tune-in live or download past broadcasts via the Internet, regardless of their geographic location.
For more information on how CDN can benefit your organization, download the CDN Buyer’s Guide.
