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Accelerating Interactive Entertainment Media
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Visualization
- Networks & Connectivity - Network Management & Analysis Software
Applicable Industries
- E-Commerce
- Software
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
- Quality Assurance
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
Jinjiang, a subsidiary of Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited, faced a significant challenge in managing its rapidly growing user base and the associated increase in web traffic and eCommerce transactions. The site, which is the largest female creative writing website in China, experienced over 50 million page views daily from 500,000 independent viewers. This volume was increasing rapidly, with traffic having grown by over 300% since the end of 2007. The existing infrastructure, which included a 100% BSD/Linux server setup running eCommerce web applications with MySQL databases, was struggling to handle the load. The open-source load balancing product, HAProxy, was insufficient to meet the performance requirements. Shanda needed a high-performance platform for its web servers to manage the load effectively and ensure the reliability and availability of its services.
About The Customer
Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited is a leading interactive media entertainment company in China, known for its diverse portfolio of entertainment content, including massively multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs), casual online games, and various forms of digital media such as cartoons, literature, and music. One of its subsidiaries, Jinjiang (jjwxc.net), is the largest and most popular female creative writing website in China. Jinjiang attracts a substantial user base, generating over 50 million page views daily from 500,000 independent viewers. These users typically spend up to 49 minutes per session on the site, indicating high engagement levels. The site has seen a rapid increase in traffic, growing by over 300% since the end of 2007, necessitating robust infrastructure to handle the load and ensure seamless user experience.
The Solution
To address the challenges of managing the rapidly growing web traffic and eCommerce transactions, Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited decided to implement A10 Networks® Application Delivery Controllers (ADC). After considering solutions from F5 and Citrix NetScaler, Shanda chose A10 ADCs due to their superior performance in rigorous technical testing. The A10 ADCs provided a high availability pair of appliances to establish a Virtual IP (VIP) address and configure multiple 'real' servers, eliminating single points of failure and increasing overall reliability for online application delivery. The URL-hashing feature of A10 ADCs reduced the MySQL database load by 70% by keeping the same URL persistent to the same server, resulting in more efficient database operations. Additionally, the compression feature of A10 ADCs dramatically reduced network traffic by 66% on average, lowering service provider bandwidth costs and accelerating traffic. The A10 ADCs also streamlined network traffic with features like filtering invalid data packets from DDoS attacks and connection reuse/multiplexing, allowing backend servers to work more effectively and reducing TCP setup and teardown overhead. The aFleX® deep packet inspection techniques provided ultimate flexibility to protect against malicious attacks and abnormal traffic, ensuring complete control of the packet header or payload.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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