Workfront DAM Performance Evaluation workfront.com +1.866.441.0001 +44 (0)845 5083771 1 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION) 3! DATA)RATE)VALUE)DESCRIPTIONS) 3! CONNECTION)SPEEDS)&)DATA)TRANSFER)RATES) 3! FILE)SIZE)&)DOWNLOAD)SPEEDS) 4! REAL)WORLD)VARIATIONS) 5! WRAP7UP) 6! workfront.com +1.866.441.0001 +44 (0)845 5083771 2 Introduction One of the most important features of any digital asset management system is the ability to easily share your content with your end users and eventually the world. This is why web based DAM systems are so important and popular. While distributing content over the web extends your reach globally, it does introduce some logistical factors that need to be considered. This document will describe definitions of terminology and explain factors that should be considered when evaluating web based DAM solutions. Data Rate Value Descriptions Understanding data rates comes down to understanding the different measurement terms and how they relate to each other. To assist in that, here is a list of different rate measurements and their correlation: 8 bits = 1 byte 1024 bits = 1 kilobit 1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte 1024 kilobits = 1 megabit 1024 kilobytes = 1 megabyte 1024 megabits = 1 gigabit 1024 megabytes = 1 gigabyte This table can be used to perform conversion between connection speeds and download rates and will be used in the rest of this document to describe what types of download rates can be expected for your specific type of connection. Connection Speeds & Data Transfer Rates When evaluating any web based storage solution, your local connection speed is the biggest determining factor in the data transfer rate that you will receive. If you work from a corporate office location, this will be something evaluated and put in place by your IT organization based on factors such as costs, organization needs, connection accessibility, etc. If you are working from home, your internet connection provided by your internet service provider (ISP) will dictate your connection speed. Internet connection speeds have two factors: Download rate and upload rate. The download rate is the speed at which content can be delivered from a web based server to your local computer. The upload rate is just the opposite, in that it is the speed at which you can send content from your local computer to a web based server. The speeds are typically presented in a megabit per second (Mb/s) format. For example, a common residential connection from Comcast has an advertised download rate of 100 Mb/s and upload rate of 10 Mb/s. There is a difference between your advertised connection speed and your real world connection speed. In order to determine the actual speed that you are receiving from your connection, we recommend that you visit the website http://www.speedtest.net. This is an industry standard site for measuring your connection speed. On that site you will be able to perform a test that will perform a download and upload speed test and show the real world results of your connection speed. Using the example image shown here, you can see that the connection speed is 338.96 Mb/s download and 461.41 Mb/s upload. This is what we will use to take a look at how long it should take us to download certain file sizes. workfront.com +1.866.441.0001 +44 (0)845 5083771 3 File Size & Download Speeds While connection speeds are measured in bits per second, files sizes and download speeds are measured in bytes per second. Using the table above as a conversion chart, we can convert our connection speed to bytes per second to help understand how fast files should download. With the above speedtest example, we can convert those speeds to 42.37 megabytes per second (MB/s) download and 57.67 megabytes per second (MB/s) upload. As we download files in a web browser, bytes per second (KB/s, MB/s, etc.) is the measurement that will be displayed. This means that the user with this example connection would receive a theoretical maximum download speed of 42.37 MB/s. Using the previously mentioned example of a Comcast connection of 100 Mb/s download and 10 Mb/s upload, the theoretical maximum download speed would be 12.5 MB/s and the maximum upload speed would be 1.25 MB/s. Using these numbers, we can put together a chart showing the potential timing for downloading and uploading files of various sizes. Here is a chart showing the times for downloading and uploading a 1 gigabyte file with the corresponding connection speed: Connection Speed (Download/Upload) Download Time Upload Time 100 Mb/s / 10 Mb/s 1 minute 22 seconds 13 minutes 39 seconds 200 Mb/s / 20 Mb/s 41 seconds 6 minutes 49 seconds 400 Mb/s / 300 Mb/s 21 seconds 27 seconds workfront.com +1.866.441.0001 +44 (0)845 5083771 4 Real World Variations Now that we’ve examined the potential speeds of different connections, it’s important to understand factors that can affect your realized speeds. The internet is a worldwide network of connected devices. Each device introduces it’s own effects on the connection between two devices. Because of this, there are often differences between potential speed and what is called “real world” speeds. Each device encountered by your data as it travels from your origination point, through your ISP and eventually along the route to the target location can change the transfer rate. Workfront DAM is stored and hosted in Amazon Web Services. This is a highly available, enterprise hosting solution that is recognized as a top tier provider in the industry. That said, Amazon has provided a website for testing your real time connectivity to their different services so that you can test your performance against their servers directly. That site can be found at https://cloudharmony.com/speedtest. Our services are specifically located in the “us-west” regions in the Amazon infrastructure. On that site you can select different types of tests to perform. Here is a direct link to the suggested test to see upload and download rates to and from Amazon from your local connection: http://cloudharmony.com/speedtest- downlink-uplink-latency-dns-for-aws:s3-and-aws:ec2 As you can see in this example screenshot, there are tests showing the upload and download speeds to and from Amazon services in each region using the megabit per second (Mb/s) measurement. Using the information contained in this guide, you can then properly understand the expected transfer rates that you should be looking for as you upload a download files to and from Workfront DAM. For example, according to the connection shown here, a download from the S3 us-west-1 region has a maximum rate of 158.76 Mb/s or 19.83 MB/s. The numbers from each region and transfer direction can be used to determine the speed that can be expected. workfront.com +1.866.441.0001 +44 (0)845 5083771 5 Wrap-Up Hopefully this document has helped you understand how data is transferred across the internet and specifically how you can determine the performance that you can expect as you look to send your digital assets across the globe. A final note to keep in mind as you’re evaluating the solution is to keep in mind that outside of raw data rates, is the extra functionality that Workfront DAM is introducing to your end users. Items such as file type conversion, compression, permission control, etc. all introduce their own aspects that can affect download and upload speeds. While you will see different performance measurements depending on the factors discussed in this document, we are confident that you will see incredible gains in efficiency and regained productivity to your creative team from the use of Workfront DAM. Please don’t hesitate to work with us at Workfront to help you put together the best solution for your Marketing Work Management efforts. workfront.com +1.866.441.0001 +44 (0)845 5083771 6 .