"CACHEBOX is a reliable and high-performance product, that's why we've been using it for so long!"
Jeremy Roberts, IT manager, Saint Helena Government, Saint Helena
"We were impressed with ApplianSys’ dedicated support team. They are very professional and have helped us get the most out of CACHEBOX deployments for our clients."
Leerish Ramsurn, BBCWYSE Technology, Mauritius
"Your customer support really sets you apart from some of the others I have dealt with."
Weston George, Network Administrator, Monett School, USA
"CACHEBOX has worked excellently, allowing users to download large files in seconds"
Damian Roche Capita, English Heritage
"Everytime we upgrade the firmware we see the additional benefits and CACHEBOX just gets better"
Jeremy Roberts, IT section manager, Saint Helena Government, Saint Helena
Network Managers recognise that web caching can help them to manage the effects of an enormous increase in video traffic over the last decade. Because this traffic does not behave like simple HTTP web pages, some caching solutions struggle to deal with the complexity.
CACHEBOX has the intelligence to deal with this modern traffic:
Caching the same videos stored at different URLs
Almost all the major media sites use a content delivery network (CDN) that stores the same content at multiple URLs. This means that two users could be viewing the same video from different servers.
For example, you’re looking at a video from a server in London:
http://london-23.example.com/398jkl345nmsdf3/
But your friend in the same building views it via a server in Berlin:
http://berlin-45.example.com/398jkl345nmsdf3/
The video is the same, but the URL is completely different.
Many caching solutions would ‘think’ you were viewing different files because they store content based on the full URL. So you would use up your bandwidth to download the same material over and over again and your cache would be full of duplicate copies of the same video.
CACHEBOX solves the problem with custom video caching extensions especially for CDNs. It locates and serves video site content by identifying the underlying video object – regardless of which server it is requested from. This dramatically improves YouTube video caching as well as caching for other large files that are delivered over CDNs like software updates.
Changes in the way video websites deliver their content
Websites like YouTube often change the rules for presenting their content which can break caching mechanisms.
To address these changes, ApplianSys creates custom video caching extensions to work with the new delivery systems. These updates are supplied automatically to our customer’s CACHEBOXes via ‘sub-system updates’. So, you don’t have to worry about monitoring and responding to the changes yourself.
Use of video controls before a download is complete
Changing a video’s resolution or using the back/forward controls can be problematic for a simple web-cache, resulting in broken controls or complete inability to display video content. In addition, when controls are used mid-stream (while the browser has not yet downloaded the entire video), the browser requests a new file with the video starting at that particular point. As a result, the storage of an unintelligent cache gets filled up with multiple copies of the same video, starting from different frames. These copies will most likely never be requested again.
CACHEBOX storage doesn’t get filled up with video fragments that have little chance of ever being served again. So CACHEBOX needs smaller storage than competing solutions to achieve the same performance – saving you money.