Ryder Cup host steps up web traffic management

Celtic Manor Resort uses Hostway's Content Delivery Network to keep web site running smoothly

The Ryder Cup will be taking place from 1 October at Celtic Manor resort

The TV and news content generated by the Ryder Cup, golf's premier team tournament, is arguably as important as the tournament itself and as such this year's host, the Celtic Manor Resort in south Wales, has taken on a new content delivery network (CDN).

The resort has chosen Hostway’s CDN – the network will be tasked with distributing text descriptions, high-quality images and videos. Online traffic is expected to increase significantly as the tournament approaches and the resort is expecting 50 per cent of its web traffic to come from overseas.

This meant that Celtic Manor Resort has had to to ensure that this streamed content didn't suffer from stuttering or other performance issues.

“After some research, hosting our web site in multiple locations on multiple continents looked like a fairly expensive option,” explained James Lewis, marketing manager at Celtic Manor.

“We needed a means of providing quality video that didn’t require a large amount of configuration, wasn’t cost-prohibitive, and ideally, would be separate from our own web site so that there were no performance degradations at peak times.”

The resort opted to use Hostway’s CDN, which works by caching media-heavy components of the web site, including images, videos or podcasts, on seven locations around the world, making it suitable for Celtic Manor’s requirements.

Celtic Manor said that each Hostway server requires very little configuration, and its current package can handle 50Gb of traffic each month, which can accommodate 2,000 downloads or streaming users.

The resort’s IT and marketing teams also have access to analytics about CDN usage, so if viewings of the video increase, they can upgrade their package to provide more bandwidth.

The solution also allows the Celtic Manor team to take the video down at very short notice if necessary.