Delivery Services
Velocix offers one of the broadest and most innovative ranges of digital content delivery services available, delivering content to any broadband-enabled device, including personal computers, home media centres, set top boxes, handhelds and video game consoles.
Velocix services provide delivery mechanisms that support all digital media business models, including download-to-own or rent, video- on-demand, free-to-view and advertising-supported.
Single-source Download
The Velocix single source HTTP download service provides accelerated delivery performance for any type of content. Download speed is optimised as content is delivered from a high performance Velocix server that is located closer to the consumer than the origin server.
Multi-source Download
Velocix has developed a unique multi-source delivery service that enables simultaneous download from multiple Velocix Network delivery servers in parallel. This offers several important benefits over traditional delivery methods. Traditionally, CDN architectures have been designed to provide optimized short-lived connections, i.e. the near instantaneous delivery of websites (images and web pages). However, for large digital media assets, a long-duration connection is required. With video, for example, a consistent bandwidth feed is required for anything from a few minutes to a couple of hours. Achieving this from a single delivery server is challenging as changing network traffic conditions or a failure will result in a poor consumer viewing experience.
With the Velocix multi-source delivery service, multiple delivery servers are selected and bandwidth from these sources is blended dynamically to ensure the required delivery bit-rate. Using multiple delivery servers increases the total bandwidth available and significantly improves resilience of the connection.
P2P Assisted Delivery
Velocix P2P Assisted delivery allows for bandwidth from file sharing clients to be blended with the bandwidth available from Velocix Network delivery servers. This can significantly reduce the cost of delivery whilst also providing an effective mechanism for maintaining the quality of delivery during ‘flood’ events.
Pure P2P delivery networks are unable to guarantee the quality of service required for commercial video offerings. This is due to a number of factors, including availability of upstream capacity in client Internet connections and the transitory nature of peers sharing content. Velocix combines the economic benefits of P2P with the quality of service advantages of a high performance CDN to ensure a seamless consumer experience with significantly reduced delivery costs.
P2P Assisted delivery is an optional service that can be switched on or off by the customer and is available for both file download and progressive video streamiing.
Streaming
Velocix provides both live and on-demand video streaming services and also supports both industry leading online video formats, Flash, Microsoft Silverlight and Windows Media. Velocix has deployed Adobe Flash Media Servers and Microsoft Servers globally throughout its network.
Adobe Flash Streaming
Velocix has a strategic relationship with Adobe and was the first European CDN to become a member of their Flash Video Streaming Service (FVSS) partner program.
Silverlight / Windows Media Streaming
Silverlight and Windows Media are extremely popular formats for online video. Velocix maintains a Service Provider Partnership with Microsoft Windows Media and Microsoft’s Silverlight initiative and actively participates in their partner programs. Velocix provides full support for video streams protected using Microsoft DRM.
Progressive Streaming
Progressive video download provides a viewing experience identical to video streaming. It is different insofar as the video file is downloaded, buffered and viewed simultaneously. Progressive download offers a flexible alternative to true streaming services and supports many video formats including: Flash, Windows Media, Silverlight, DivX, QuickTime, Real and 3GP.
Website Acceleration
Velocix provides a website acceleration service that reduces web page loading latency, thus improving the responsiveness and usability of the site. This is achieved by replicating and caching website content across the globally deployed Velocix CDN so that pages are served from a location in close proximity to the user.