Is there such a thing as a reverse CDN? (content 'retrieval' network)

Question

Hi All

Our clients upload a serious amount of data from all over the world and we'd like to do our best to make that as painless as possible. Our clients upload 2GB worth of files over their sometimes very 'retail' broadband packages (with capped upload speeds) that draw out upload times to 24-48 hours. At any given time we have 10 or more concurrent uploads and peek periods we can have 100 concurrent uploads. So we decided to consider ways to reduce latency and keep our clients traffic local... so just as a CDN has download servers in various locations, we'd like upload servers.

Any experience or thoughts?

We're not a huge company but this is a problem worth solving so we'll consider all options.

Answer 1

2GB per what time period? Hour? Day?

If your operation is huge, I wouldn't be too surprised if Akamai or one of the other usual CDN suspects can provide this service to you for the right price. You might get your bizdev folks (or purchasing) in touch with them.

Answer 2

What about putting some servers physically closer to your clients ? Same ISP, or at the very least in the same countries. Then you just collect it on schedule. I don't imagine that they're getting top speeds when there's 100 of them uploading to you either, so the sooner you can get them completed the better.

Also, do they need to upload this stuff immediately ?? Can some of them post DVD for whatever isn't time sensitive ? I know it sux dealing with media in the post.... so it's hardly ideal.

A reverse CDN sort of situation would only really happen if you had multiple clients using torrents and seeding their uploads (somehow) to one of your servers.

You haven't really said if this is a problem for you, or your clients. So, some more info is going to get you a better answer here.