Reasons for pushing content to NetCache appliances

Centralized Internet data delivery is becoming less viable

In the traditional model of content delivery with caching services, a user requests content, then the NetCache appliance obtains it from the origin server and delivers the content to the requesting users while caching it (if it is cacheable). The content is then available for the next client that requests it. The cache, therefore, is populated only as a result of user requests. This is the pull model of content delivery.

As the Internet is maturing, however, requirements by organizations that provide content to users are changing. Providers of content (for example, enterprises, content delivery networks (CDNs), service providers, and e-commerce vendors) want to be able to provide high-quality data reliably and quickly. With the growing use of multimedia and interactive content in particular, the centralized model of providing data from the center is no longer working well. The reason is that file sizes for multimedia are extremely large (unlike HTTP) and require large amounts of network bandwidth. Additionally, network congestion greatly affects the quality of the content that is delivered.

Providers of content are becoming increasingly interested in controlling content so that they can provide the best possible experience for their end users. They want to push content from the center of the network to remote offices, closer to end users, and they want to track the use of that content.

Benefits of pushing content close to users

Some advantages of pushing content to NetCache appliances rather than relying on the traditional caching services model for populating a cache are as follows:

You can target specific content for particular locations and make the content available before peak demand. For example, you might want a training film for human resources personnel at the main corporate site and a training film for sales personnel at a remote site. ContentReporter reports can help you plan content to push based on comprehensive usage reporting.
You can proactively distribute content at off-peak hours, which enables you to optimize bandwidth use and ensure that users enjoy fast response times.
For enterprises, bandwidth limitations, a variety of links, a variety of clients, and single points of failure are among the problems that affect an enterprise's ability to deliver data efficiently. Pushing content close to users helps reduce the effects of these problems on enterprise content delivery.
You can reduce the impact on quality that network congestion causes for streaming media. As the distance the streaming media data travels lessens, the possibilities of network problems that would affect the streaming media quality are likely to be fewer. Additionally, you are copying streaming media files to the NetCache appliance rather than caching a stream that could have been affected by network conditions (for example, thinned).
Streaming media is transferred at wire speed rather than at playback speed; that is, the time it takes for a two-hour video to be transferred to a NetCache appliance is the time it takes to complete the file transfer rather than the two hours it would take to play the video.