ad-dist.com is a Content Delivery Network (CDN) for advertisers – a network of servers containing copies of data placed at various points in a network in order to maximize bandwidth for access to the data from users throughout the network.

In other words, we use several servers strategically placed around the world to deliver relevant and localised advertising media onto other web sites.

A cluster of 7 DNS servers spanning 4 continents manage the distribution and load-balancing, ensuring that media is always served from the most available (and usually local) media server. For the technically minded, we use a mix of geocast and anycast when selecting which of our PoPs (Points of Presence) to handle the request. In the event that one of our media-servers is off-line it is simply switched out of the matrix and others take up the load until it returns to service.

When a request comes in to one of our servers the originating IP address (of your site visitor) is checked against an IP-to-location database and the IP(s) of our nearest server(s) returned. Depending on the density of our servers in your client’s area our system will generally try to return between 2 and 4 IPs and your client’s web-browser will “choose” which one to use. All this happens in a matter of milliseconds and, in the rare event that our software cannot determine your client’s location, it will still return a selection of IPs to ensure a balanced load on our download servers.

Alternatively, if you wished to deliver a certain file based on the geographical locations of your site visitors, our software can manage that for you too. For example, your advertising banners in different languages can be loaded into our matrix, and the most relevant or language-specific banner displayed to your site visitors and delivered from our server nearest to them.

We’re now in the final stages of beta-testing (using live data for some of our own domains) and are completing the build of the matrix, mainly in Europe.

Once live, we will be able to offer customers a number of options:

1) Customers store their media on our servers and use their own software to call it up and deliver it to their web site(s).

2) For customers not wishing to get involved in using their own software or scripts we can provide a simple piece of code to be added to web sites to call and deliver their media from our matrix. This includes an option to include geo-targetting – Delivering more local content driven by the geographical location of the visitor to your web site. For example, your web site visitors from the USA, UK, Australia and New Zealand would see your advertising in English, but visitors from France would see advertising in French, German visitors would see it in German, etc., etc.

3) We are also able to offer 3 options when using our network – North American servers only, European servers only, or the full matrix, meaning that customers will be able to choose how much of our service they wish to use.

4) Custom matrix – Choose your own mix of 2 or more of our servers for your own CDN and we’ll install it to your requirements. Maybe your own server is struggling with the ever-increasing use of graphics files, movies, flash, etc. Offload those onto a couple of our servers near to yours, or maybe use one of ours in Europe and one in the USA (you can add more as your demand increases).

Full details and pricing will be released once final beta-testing is completed.