Applications

E-Learning

Avantis ContentCache™ is designed specifically to meet the caching and content delivery requirements of the education sector. Internet usage and demand for online content is rapidly growing but a large proportion of schools still don’t have the broadband connections required to deliver ‘whole class’ online learning.

Over the next five years a bewildering array of new e-learning content will become available featuring high quality multimedia, audio and video. Whilst this has the potential to transform learning, it will send the requirement for bandwidth through the roof (video-rich content typically increases the per-user bandwidth requirement by as much as tenfold). In the UK, this process is being accelerated by the advent of Curriculum Online and by the forthcoming launch of the free BBC Digital Curriculum service.

The DfES objective is to have 2MBits/sec internet connection in every Primary School and 8 MBits/sec in every Secondary School by 2006. However these connection speeds would only support around 4 and 16 concurrent full screen VHS quality video connections respectively.

Web caching and Content Delivery Networks (CDN) offer a more cost effective way of improving internet performance and access speeds than simply buying a faster internet connection. Becta (British Educational Communications and Technology Agency) and the Department for Education and Skills are now recommending that a web caching appliance is installed in every school.
In a typical school up to 90% of internet traffic is generated by pupils requesting the same web content more than once – making caching particularly advantageous. However, ContentCache™ offers much more than just dynamic caching – allowing high bandwidth content and e-learning resources to be hosted and delivered from the local cache on the network. This provides a better learning experience for all schools, regardless of their internet connection speed, and frees up the connection for other bandwidth intensive activities such as video conferencing.

ContentCache™ Management Software is also available for local education authority or publisher use to centrally manage clusters of ContentCache™ appliances installed in a number of schools and carry out policy based content deployment.