Content networking with e-learning

[steve-duke]

We need to connect several sites over relatively low speed WAN links. The customer wants to use fairly large video and audio files for e-learning. Can we somehow download these files over some time period and then serve them locally? Is this transparent to the end-user who hits a URL or do they need to do something unusual? Thanks.

[thomas.chen]

From what I can gather from your post I’d put cache engines at all the remote sites and serve the video from a web server at the headquarters. Then the files can be cached locally and it will be transparent to the user. Look at www.cisco.com/go/cache and www.cisco.com/go/cdn for more details.

[sachon]

This is more an application for the Cisco CDM/CE-507 product sets. You can place files (video or anything else) into the CDM which will distribute the content to remote 507s for local storage (the distribution uses a process known as SODA - Self-Organizaing Distribution Architecture. You can then maintain a central e-Learning portal. But when a remote users clicks a video link to a file that exists locally, that user will automatically be redirected to the local content engine to play the video. The CE-507 currently supports a RealNetworks server to play those files and can support any other video file via http-download so it is media agnostic.

[dakemp]

Cisco's CDN solution fits your needs exactly. Please see http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/cc/so/neso/ienesv/cxne/cdnen_wp.pdf and http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/cc/so/neso/ienesv/cxne/wyomg_an.pdf

Hope this helps!