While waiting to receive our AWS credits this week, I spent most of my time researching alternatives to Django as the web framework we would use for our web application since while the simplicity of Django allows for easier and rapid development, it is not as suitable for supporting long-lived connections such as a video stream since it is not asynchronous. Some alternatives to Django that I found include Nginx, Node.js, and Tornado. In particular, Tornado, while not having nearly as many powerful and robust abstractions as Django, can support many open connections that make it ideal for applications that require long-lived connections such as the video application we plan on implementing.
Since we received our requested AWS credits on Friday. This coming week I will start setting up test connections on AWS while also hashing out the details for the design review due on Wednesday. Then, over spring break, I will be setting up the backend of the web application in order to begin testing on our load balancer.