We often get asked how Mydeo differs from Amazon S3 – so here’s a quick summary.
Amazon S3 is a storage system, whereas Mydeo provides Content Delivery via a Content Delivery Network (CDN). The CDN Mydeo use exclusively is Limelight Networks, one of the leading global CDNs optimised for rich media delivery.
The focus of S3 is not to get the content to the client as fast as possible, it is to have it available to them when they need it. A CDN incorporates both of these things, the content is always available and the network is designed to get it to the customer as fast as possible. There is also no chance of any down time on a CDN because of the numerous server clusters around the world. With a CDN, if a data centre were to go down, the content would just be delivered from a different location. Amazon’s S3 has been known to go down in the past for hours at a time, on one occasion it was down for over 24 hours – and no explanation was ever given as to why from Amazon.
Amazon’s pricing can be complicated. While it will be cheaper than a CDN it is not a cheap as it may first appear – you must pay for connections as well as throughput.
Amazon’s S3 is a great system for what it is designed to do but that is not streaming video delivery. A CDN is designed for video delivery primarily and the files are delivered from appropriate servers – flash files from an FMS etc.
I would therefore always recommend using a CDN for any streaming media delivery where viewers would, rightly, expect excellent delivery performance and 100% availability.
Hi Cary,
Wonder whether you know about Cloudfront from AWS. Its their CDN! AWS is constantly adding new functionality. We are currently exploring adding CDN to http://www.edocr.com as our service has slowed down with growth of the app.
All the best
Manoj