Prefilling streaming media caches

Consider prefilling caches

Typically, a streaming media cache is populated only as a result of user requests. You should consider whether prefilling your streaming media caches with content you expect your users will request will benefit your organization.

Benefits of prefilling caches with streaming media

The benefits of prefilling the cache with streaming media include the following:

Saves bandwidth (Streaming media files are very large.)
Improves delivery time
Reduces the quality problems that network congestion causes for streaming media
As the distance the streaming media data needs to travel lessens, the possibilities of network problems that would affect the streaming media quality are likely to be fewer.

See Appendix D, Considerations When Pushing Content, for more details about the benefits of prefilling streaming media caches.

Examples

A few examples of the type of content some organizations push to caches are as follows:

Employee training videos
Corporate meetings that were recorded
Static Web pages
Advertising videos
Graphic-rich documents
Movies and movie trailers

Tools for prefilling caches

The following tools are available for prefilling the caches of NetCache appliances:

A NetCache CLI command (confill)
The streaming media chapter in the Guide to Caching Protocols and Services contains information about the confill command.
ContentDirector (a Network Appliance software product purchased separately)
The ContentDirector application automates the process of distributing new Web content, streaming content, and file-based media. Using ContentDirector, you can manage the distribution of the content by enforcing policies and rules that you define. For example, you could push the content to streaming media caches as batch jobs at times when the WAN is not busy, for example, at 2:00 a.m.

See Appendix D, Considerations When Pushing Content, for more details about ContentDirector. The ContentDirector documentation is available with the purchase of the product.