Introducing CDN Support

On September 14, 2016, we began utilizing a Content Distribution Network (CDN), Amazon CloudFront, for SCORM Cloud. This offers drastic performance improvements for learners launching course content, especially for learners not located in North America.

Performance Improvements

Previously, when a learner launched a course, all course assets were transferred from the SCORM Cloud servers in Northern Virginia, USA, to the learner. With the CDN, course assets are stored locally in servers world-wide, and requests for course assets are served directly from the closest available server.

Because requests are served locally, learners outside of North America no longer have course asset requests crossing oceans. This greatly improves both latency and transfer speed for course asset accesses. The greater transfer speed is especially noticeable for courses containing large video assets.

Course Overwrites

Because CDN servers span the globe, the course overwrite feature now has a delay before overwritten content becomes visible to learners. Course overwrites may not appear for learners for up to 30 minutes after the overwrite occurs. New course versions are unaffected and will appear immediately.

When launched from the sandbox (the Course Information page on the SCORM Cloud website), overwritten content will appear immediately, so that content testers still enjoy immediate feedback when overwriting courses in the development process. However, sandbox launches bypass the CDN, so they are not affected by the performance improvements described here.

Server Locations

At the time of writing, CDN servers are in the following locations:

• North America
  • United States
  • Ashburn, VA
  • Atlanta, GA
  • Chicago, IL
  • Dallas/Fort Worth, TX
  • Hayward, CA
  • Jacksonville, FL
  • Los Angeles, CA
  • Miami, FL
  • New York, NY
  • Newark, NJ
  • Palo Alto, CA
  • San Jose, CA
  • Seattle, WA
  • South Bend, IN
  • St. Louis, MO
  • Canada
  • Montreal, QC
  • Toronto, ON
• Europe
  • Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  • Dublin, Ireland
  • Frankfurt, Germany
  • London, England
  • Madrid, Spain
  • Marseille, France
  • Milan, Italy
  • Paris, France
  • Stockholm, Sweden
  • Warsaw, Poland
• Asia
  • Chennai, India
  • Hong Kong
  • Mumbai, India
  • Manila, the Philippines
  • New Delhi, India
  • Osaka, Japan
  • Seoul, Korea
  • Singapore
  • Taipei, Taiwan
  • Tokyo, Japan
• Australia
  • Melbourne, Australia
  • Sydney, Australia
• South America
  • São Paulo, Brazil
  • Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

A current list of content server locations may be found in the Amazon CloudFront documentation.