MONTREAL – Bell has launched a new content delivery network that it says offers faster access to on-line videos and applications while boosting website performance.
The Bell Content Delivery Network (CDN) is the first such service in Canada run over a dedicated, network-based IP infrastructure, the company said. It has signed Astral Media’s television networks, including family.ca, themovienetwork.ca and superecran.com, as some of its first clients.
"Video streaming is a key feature of our websites and we see great benefit in a service that can efficiently deliver video content on-line without the need to increase server and network infrastructure overhead," said Barbara Bailie, Astral’s director of interactive, in a statement.
The new network, which uses software from Limelight Networks, offers a more efficient experience with all forms of content including high definition, regardless of the volume of Internet traffic, Bell detailed in a press release. The fully redundant architecture dynamically distributes content to strategically placed core, fallback and edge servers to ensure 100% availability, even in the event of large power, network or hardware outages.
"Combining our leading-edge infrastructure and IP network with Limelight’s global capacity, the Bell CDN service is more efficient and faster because of its scalability and reliability," said Stéphane Boisvert, president of Bell business markets, in the announcement. "Customers can reduce network latency, enhance website capacity, improve reliability and increase delivery speeds of the most bandwidth-intensive applications at lower cost, while reducing the load on their network."
The service includes global throughput of over 3 Tbps and edge connections using 10GigE technology for high capacity content delivery to end users, thus avoiding any public Internet congestion. It also provides advanced reporting logs and statistics to assess content popularity, active regions and exact viewing details.
It also offers device-detection, mobility and adaptive-streaming technology enabling customers to create a seamless experience for end users, regardless of which device they are using.
