Friday, November 30, 2012

Basic Facts Regarding The CDN Service

By Ethel Harris


CDN is the abbreviated form for content delivery network. This is a large server system with components located in several data centers. The purpose of setting up a CDN service is to improve on the process of information access over the internet. The content accessible using these servers includes applications, web objects such as texts, URLs, scripts and graphics, live streaming media and social networks among others.

The network provider is paid by the vendor of the content. The provider in turn pays ISPs, network operators and carriers for hosting the servers in the data centers. The other role of this network is to offload traffic originating from the content provider. This helps in saving on operation costs. Other functions include protection of data from Dos attacks by using the distributed server infrastructure to absorb attack traffic.

A common finding is that many network providers own and run most of the servers in use. Peer-to-peer or P2P technology is a new trend in the industry. Under this arrangement, the provider uses servers belonging to their peers in the industry in addition to their own. Application service providers (ASP) or on-demand software is the most commonly used software. There are several large content vendors that have their own CDNs.

Nodes are distributed in multiple sites over several backbones. This arrangement leads to a number of benefits. Some of them include reduced bandwidth costs, improved page load times and increased availability of content. The number of required nodes may run in the thousands depending on the architectural design. These nodes are put in locations known as points of presence or PoPs.

When a request is received, it is redirected algorithmically to the optimal available node. To choose the optimal node, the number of network seconds between the requesting client and the available servers is typically used. The server with the fewest seconds is chosen. Cost is another important determining factor. The least expensive node is usually chosen. Fortunately in an optimally maintained system, the closest node is also the least expensive.

With increased requests for video streaming, there is a high level of traffic on most networks. Huge amounts of investment are required by broadband providers to maintain the service at high quality. A cheaper option is for the providers to start their own content delivery networks. Many companies are increasingly adopting this and have reported numerous benefits.

There are two main ways of ensuring that the load received on the servers is balanced. These are the hardware and service-based techniques. The hardware based type is also referred to as content switch. By allocating a unique virtual IP address to the switch, the traffic reaching the server is shared among the web searches and servers available.

The CDN service has been a great development as regards internet use and is bound to play an even bigger role as more improvements continue to be made. Newer forms of CDN have a number of advantages over the traditional ones. One of such advantages is the fact that providers are now able to deliver their content closer to the clients since they are cached deeper in their network. Deep caching also helps in the reduction of the distance travelled by video data.




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