F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV) played a significant role in helping the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) deliver superior performance on its official website, www.demconvention.com, which featured live streaming coverage of convention events and speeches Sept. 4-6. In addition to a live Twitter feed, the site provided pre-recorded video, along with news stories, articles, photos, and other content of interest to convention enthusiasts.

The website launched in May 2012 and was hosted by a Tier 1 U.S. service provider in a public cloud environment. Built on an open source blogging platform, the site was not inherently optimized for high traffic volume. And although it was stable when traffic volume was moderate, the DNCC was concerned that the site might be overwhelmed by a traffic surge the week of the convention.

“The stakes were huge for us,” said Nikki Sutton, Deputy Director of Communications for Digital Media at DNCC. “The convention is a high-profile event that receives significant media coverage. Our goal was to make it the most open and accessible convention in history, so it was imperative that the website be absolutely available, reliable, and responsive.”

With only weeks to go before the convention opened, the DNCC decided to move its website servers into a private cloud environment, but it needed a flexible, highly reliable traffic management solution that could be deployed quickly. In just two weeks, F5 built, tested, and deployed a high-performance solution that integrated easily with security and content delivery network components in the private cloud. The BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager^® (LTM^®) solution easily managed all traffic to the DNC’s servers without any problem.

“F5 delivered as expected in an extremely tight timeframe. We were impressed with the rock-solid stability and responsiveness of our website—even at peak traffic volume,” said Andrew Binns, CIO of the DNCC. “The F5 solution met all of our expectations for delivering great, timely, online content.”

The website, which got approximately 3 million unique visitors in just three days, had a page load time of about half a second, according to Alexa—faster than 91 percent of other websites.

“We knew how critical this engagement was for the DNCC and we were pleased to provide what they needed in such a quick timeframe,” said Sean Duggan, Director of Product Management at F5 Networks. “This is a great example of how customers benefit directly from the strong relationships we develop with our technology partners such as the Tier 1 service provider the DNCC used to host its website.”

Additional Resources

• DNCC − Case Study
• BIG-IP LTM – Data Sheet

About F5 Networks

F5 Networks, Inc., the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), helps the world’s largest enterprises and service providers realize the full value of virtualization, cloud computing, and on-demand IT. F5^® solutions help integrate disparate technologies to provide greater control of the infrastructure, improve application delivery and data management, and give users seamless, secure, and accelerated access to applications from their corporate desktops and smart devices. An open architectural framework enables F5 customers to apply business policies at “strategic points of control” across the IT infrastructure and into the public cloud. F5 products give customers the agility they need to align IT with changing business conditions, deploy scalable solutions on demand, and manage mobile access to data and services. Enterprises, service and cloud providers, and leading online companies worldwide rely on F5 to optimize their IT investments and drive business forward. For more information, go to www.f5.com.

You can also follow @f5networks on Twitter or visit us on Facebook for more information about F5, its partners, and technology. For a complete listing of F5 community sites, please visit www.f5.com/news-press-events/web-media/community.html.

F5, BIG-IP, Local Traffic Manager, and LTM are trademarks of F5 Networks, Inc., in the U.S. and other countries. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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