Case Study: Hitting a High Note

Speedy web response, uninterrupted content delivery and reliable

connectivity-these are the defining parameters of a robust service provider.

Rediff.com, India's premier online provider of news, entertainment and

shopping services had the same objectives in mind while building its network

infrastructure.

Redundant, scalable and efficient Internet access is a key

component for all companies today. These connections must be secured, flexible

and scalable. And the best way to achieve these business objectives is by using

content delivery solutions.

The Challenge



In exploring new business models and increasing value-added functionality to
a network, content management is crucial for Rediff to efficiently deliver

information to the end user and optimize bandwidth consumption. Venki Nishtala,

CTO, Rediff.com explains, "The problem faced as an ISP is the tendency of

not being well connected due to peering issues. This is an ongoing problem. So

one of the priorities while setting up our infrastructure was to adopt a content

delivery network to overcome peering issue as well as to cache content and

deliver it to the right place with speed." Web hosting, co-location,

caching and streaming are ways to improve the end-user's Internet experiences

and so increase customer retention for the content owner.

The three key parameters that Rediff wanted to address using a

CDN were: global delivery at lightening speed; high performance of website at

all times; and ability to handle event-driven traffic spikes without expanding

its Web infrastructure.

At the same time, Rediff needed to manage upstream bandwidth to

strike a delicate balance between customer satisfaction and cost. It had to

invest heavily in its own network infrastructure-load balancing for nonstop

delivery, caching for speedy Web response, distributed, replicated servers to

limit the impact of Internet congestion.

Rediff partnered with a Content Delivery Network provider,

Akamai, to address every aspect of their business requirements. The Akamai Media

Delivery (AMD) solution provides streaming, download delivery, http content

delivery, and secure content delivery.

Solution in Sight



Simply put, the CDN delivered by Akamai consists of a dedicated network of
servers, deployed throughout the Internet, that Rediff uses to distribute their

content on a subscription basis. The CDN essentially served as an overlay

network of customer content, distributed geographically to enable rapid,

reliable retrieval from any end-user location. Web hosting, co-location, caching

and streaming are ways to improve the end-user's Internet experiences and so

increase customer retention for the content owner.

The CDN uses infrastructure technologies like caching to push

replicated content close to the network edge. As a result, the stored content is

kept current and protected against unauthorized modification. It has the ability

to globally balance the load and ensure that users are transparently routed to

the "best" content source. In addition, the customer-accessible

traffic logs enable data mining for marketing and capacity planning.

"To serve the customer from the nearest point on the

Internet, Akamai was a natural choice with a globally deployed network of

20,000+ servers spanning over 1,000 networks," explains Venki. With a

registered user base of over 45 mn, Rediff serves 4 mn visitors everyday, most

of them coming from India and USA. According to the company, more than 97% of

Rediff content is served through Akamai servers and made available to global

visitors. "While Akamai takes care of Rediff's Web infrastructure

requirements, Rediff concentrates on development of core services,"

continues Venki.

Visible Advantages



"Akamai allows Rediff to provide a satisfying customer experience with
lightning fast download of Rediff's homepage while simultaneously offloading



the traffic from Rediff's core servers," says Venki. Akamai's services
have reduced Rediff's infrastructure overhead drastically leading to

substantial savings on infrastructure costs and reduced management and capital

overhead. It has also resulted in increasing the number of advertisers for

Rediff.com

"We are also using Akamai's global servers that has

dramatically reduced Rediff's infrastructure overhead, leading to substantial

savings on infrastructure costs and reduced management and capital

overhead," adds Venki.

Satisfied with the results, Rediff partnered with Akamai in 2005

to launch India's first online music portal. Rediff's e-Commerce Payment

Gateway seamlessly integrated with Akamai's secure delivery and download

service, making Rediff.com India's first online music retailer. The CDN

provides Rediff the tool to manage, secure, control and report media file usage

and ensure that only authorized users are accessing files. "This will let

music companies, video content owners and artists tap the potential of the Web

to bring content directly to consumers, and protect against piracy and revenue

losses." Adds Jasmeet Singh, VP Strategic Alliances.

In 2006, Rediff added Akamai's Content Targeting service to

its portfolio to provide a personalized experience to its visitors. Content

Targeting uses details of a user location to enable Rediff to deliver content

based on the geographical location of the end user.

The Akamai-Rediff relationship continues to grow with Akamai now

helping to offload application infrastructure using technologies such as Edge

Side Includes (ESI); a standard simple markup language used to define Web page

components for dynamic assembly and delivery of Web applications at the edge of

the Internet.

Malovika Rao





malovkar@cybermedia.co.in