W&M IT implements content delivery network to enhance web speeds
Amazon CloudFront improves user experience on wm.edu
It is safe to say that the speed at which a webpage loads directly impacts the user’s experience while browsing that website. Add the intensity of an emergency and time sensitive safety information and it is not only frustrating, but critical.
Jenn Wheeler, Unix systems engineer, and Phil Fenstermacher, manager of systems design and architecture, recently implemented Amazon CloudFront on the W&M website, a content delivery network (CDN) operated by Amazon Web Services that allows W&M to securely deliver data, videos, applications and APIs to website visitors across the globe with low latency and high transfer speeds.
“The new CDN lets Amazon cache all of our webpages, so they keep a copy and then distribute it to servers that are in different regions and in Europe, which makes it faster for people in those areas to access wm.edu,” said Wheeler.
“We used to host the W&M website here on campus, so if there was a power outage or anything happened to that datacenter, the website would go down with it,” said Fenstermacher. “Moving the website to the AWS cloud prevents that issue, but there was still the potential of a major event or emergency occurring and there being an enormous surge of traffic to the W&M website. That could also bring the website down.”
Fenstermacher explains that IT runs at least four servers to host the W&M website in the AWS cloud, so that it can handle a lot of traffic and remain available during maintenance. The CDN distributes the content all over the world from the four servers and makes the W&M website more resilient even under heavy load.
Initiatives like this one are important in a time when the unexpected can happen and the first source people will go to for information is the university’s website. The initiative to bring the CDN to W&M was started by Wheeler and Fenstermacher, who both felt strongly that this change was needed and would enhance the user experience for visitors to the W&M website. “The results are a 100x reduction in server load alone with significantly faster load times for our users,” said Fenstermacher. “It also gives the university the peace of mind knowing that the website could handle a sudden surge of visitors if needed.”
While the project didn’t rise to the top of Wheeler or Fenstermacher’s priority list for some time, when they finally carved out the time to dedicate to it Wheeler said the actual implementation was the simple part. Planning and communicating the project was the more
“The project was less technical and more about understanding that this was going to be a different way of doing things, so we had to communicate that to all of our colleagues who work on wm.edu,” says Fenstermacher. “They needed to understand that the website will no longer be served by a W&M server anymore, but rather Amazon. Once we had everyone on board we could move forward.”
"I'm excited that Jenn, Phil and the rest of the technology team proactively helps the university prepare to serve our community, making us ready to respond when most needed,” said Chief Technology Officer Corinne Picataggi. “William & Mary is very fortunate to have technical leaders like Phil who can help us realize goals in a modern, scalable way. He really demonstrates our values, particularly curiosity, excellence, and service, in his work every day."
In addition to building the CDN for wm.edu Wheeler has also built the configurations for the graduate school websites so they could have access to the CDN too, should they decide to.
