With Amazon recently stating they plan to start offering a
content delivery network service as part of their S3 offering and
Microsoft reportedly creating their own CDN in
partnership with Limelight
there seems to be a renewed interest in CDN's. Whether for public usage
like Amazons or Private like Microsoft's, the market for pay per use
content delivery services is heating up.
According to a recent post on the data center knowledge blog, the
Microsoft CDN,
which it calls an Edge Content Network (ECN), is designed to beef up
the company's infrastructure to handle "Internet audiences and content
offerings that are orders of magnitude larger than today," according
Debra Chrapaty, Corporate Vice President of Global Foundation Services
for Microsoft. Chrapaty has said that the ECN will include at least 99
nodes around the world. (For now it looks like that the MS ECN will
only be used as part of MS's global infrastructure)
So what else
is going on in the CDN world? The answer is simple. Peer 2 Peer (P2P).
One of the most disruptive technologies to appear in the world of
globalized computing by far is the emergence of P2P technology for
NON-consumer usages such as business continuity. Leading this charge
are companies like Pando and their unique P4P approach.
I recently met with the Pando team in New York and needless to say I was extremely impressed.
Pando Networks
describe themselves as a small company on a big mission; to establish a
new Internet infrastructure standard for efficient, secure and
commercially viable rich media delivery. At the heart of Pando's
platform is its "P4P" technology.
For those are unfamiliar with
P4P, or Proactive network Provider Participation is a method for
software to optimize global peer-to-peer connections. P4P proponents
say that it can save an it users significant costs, and that using
local connections also speeds up download times for P2P downloaders by
45%.
Pando describes their system as a Hybrid P2P platform that
leverages both P2P and HTTP protocols (Peers and Servers) to optimize
content delivery for performance and cost efficiency. The general ideas
is as your content becomes more popular, bandwidth is transparently
offloaded from your CDN Servers to your consumers ("Peer Cloud"). As
your content moves up and down its consumer demand curve Pando
intelligently shifts between sources and protocols in real-time. What's
great about P4P is it would seem to be a logic fit in existing cloud
storage deployments which could include Mosso's CloudFS or Amazon S3. (Seed
your CDN from the cloud, let your users do the rest.)
The big
question is why hasn't Akamai done more in the emerging cloud CDN
space? I think the simple answer is because they don't have to. Akamai
seems to think that it's easier to let others battle it out for their
left overs. I would guess they are waiting for the right time when they will
most likely just a acquire a few strategic startups, entering the space
when they're good and ready. From my point of view, this is a rather
dangerous way to handle technical innovation and R&D. Rather then
lead, they seem happy to be a kind of "fast follower". The problem with
this approach is they may end up completely left out, a relic.
As
we continue our long march from the desktop to the cloud, management of
digital assets on a global basis will be a key component. CDN's are
well on their way to becoming one of the more important aspects of this
big shift toward the cloud.
Original Post >
http://www.elasticvapor.com/2008/10/cloud-content-delivery-cd.html --
--
Reuven Cohen
Founder & Chief Technologist, Enomaly Inc.
blog >
www.elasticvapor.com -
Open Source Cloud Computing >
www.enomaly.com