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Qwilt

I told my boss yesterday morning of this CRAZY COOL thing I learned all about on Friday night at the networking event I attended.  He was impressed...  Very impressed...

Then he looked at me from his chair after watching the short video link that I bought up on our big computer networking monitoring screens and said... "How much?"

I told him I'd find out.

That's one of the things about pretty much anything.  It doesn't matter HOW amazing your product is... If it's expensive, it's hard to keep potential customers interested.

We definitely want it.  We want it for sure.  We actually, I would argue, NEED it for the college network.  It would DEFINITELY improve the experience for the students in the residence halls and as well would be beneficial for the staff and faculty in their offices around campus.

The question though, like my boss said is that it comes down to... "How much?".

I would argue that, even if the price weren't on the super affordable side of things... We should spring for it anyways.  Although, there are financial limits to everything and if it doesn't fit in the budget, it doesn't fit.

SO, just what is this amazing product?

It's called Qwilt.  And... It's the future.  It's disruptive.  It's groundbreaking.  It's a technology that's here to stay.

Here... Watch this video...

And this video...

And there are two more located at http://qwilt.com/resources/#videos

And there's one more video here... http://qwilt.com/solutions/universities/

I haven't been this excited by a new type of technology in a while.  Okay to be fair, caching isn't new.  Your computer caches all the time.  Your phone does it.  Your brain does it!  It's when you store something locally and when it's needed again, it retrieves it locally.  This already happens on networks.  DNS names are cached for websites.  There's a whole lot of caching going on.  But videos?  Videos are never cached.

Every time you click that YouTube or Vimeo link... Every time you open up Netflix.  It's a live connection out through the network and ALL the way to the datacenter that is hosting that video.

So, if say, 50 of the same people on the network are all streaming the same exact episode of the same show on Netflix... Those are 50 concurrent connections.

This device also does download caching.  SO in addition to video... It locally caches software updates.  Let's say a new iOS update comes out... or, a new Android update.  If there are 100 kids in the residence halls that want to download that the night it comes out... Or even staff and faculty, or even commuter students on campus... Or ANYONE on campus...

The moment that comes out there could be hundreds of people downloading it right then and there.  This device caches the first copy, and then locally delivers the rest instead of having it go ALL the way out to the internet to hit the download servers.

Since the outgoing and incoming pipe only has so much bandwidth capacity... and on top of that, it's EXPENSIVE to buy more capacity...

This solution is a VERY smart one indeed.  It's not just a great one for universities.  It would work well at any company that has users downloading or streaming the same exact large bandwidth hungry files over and over again.  Let's say you have even just 50 employees at your business and everyone has a PC in their office.  And let's say that everyone is using a content management system that is hosted outside in the cloud...

Now let's say that someone posted an instructional video on Youtube for ALL the employees to watch.  It's a 10 minute video.  All the employees click that link that was just posted in that portal that is hosted out in Amazon Web Services...

The first few employees watch it fine.  Maybe the first 10, or 15... And if not every employee watches it at the same time... You're okay.  BUT... What if MOST of them click and watch from their desks at pretty much the same time?

What if some others are trying to do work and upload and download files?  What if another employee is streaming Spotify or Pandora.  What if another employee has Netflix in the background while they are working on an Excel Spreadsheet.  They have their iPad next to their desk using the workplace wifi to stream the latest episode of their favorite show while they work on their computer.

It's ALL going over your network.

This Qwilt device frees up that bandwidth so things can get done.  So, the next time you watch a funny cat video on YouTube and then you click copy and paste and send that link to EVERY SINGLE COWORKER at your office... The first copy is cached locally on site... Every other person who clicks the link and watches the video gets a local copy and doesn't hog down that precious workplace bandwidth!

Seriously... I'm geeking out over here.  Especially in the residence halls where the students all now have wireless and video streaming service capable devices up the wazoooo... Friday and Saturday nights are spent watching movies on Netflix and other services like that.  They are spent downloading updates for their iOS devices.  Clicking YouTube links... Online gaming, downloading new games from a service called Steam... and basically doing all sorts of things that are bandwidth intensive activities.

This... Is... the holy grail for data redundancy and conserving precious bandwidth.  How much?  I say... It's almost priceless!

Qwilt is AWESOME.  I want one of these for our network SOOO bad!  You have no idea.

http://qwilt.com