CDN-P2P Hybrids - It’s Not What They Call it; It’s What They Do
There is a ton of confusion out there about what constitutes a P2P offering, especially in relation to commercial Content Delivery Network architecture. Dan Rayburn in his blog has been talking a lot about P2P lately - and the responses to his comments by CDN executives don’t do a lot to clear the confusion up.
So let me add my voice to the conversation in hopes it will clarify or at least raise new questions that can then be answered.
Just because a CDN uses a client-side application in addition to the traditional edge-server caching solution and is hesitant to call it a P2P offering doesn’t mean that it isn’t. Or that it is. It’s both. All B2B CDNs own edge servers. Enterprise-level clients demand this so there are backups in place to ensure constant delivery of their online presence in cases of network stress.
If they offer a client side application (something that runs on an end-user’s computer and allows for sharing of content or a portion of content to other nearby users) or something else closer to the end user for improving quality, speed and lowering cost it is a hybrid model of content delivery. It’s both traditional edge caching content delivery and P2P delivery and this is what these CDNs are moving toward.
The reason they don’t want to call it P2P is because there is a stigma attached to that title. P2P historically has been labeled as something that lets pirates illegally redistribute content. P2P companies are who the RIAA and MPAA sue. Not who they work with.
But that has changed because P2P is a valuable technology that lowers costs and improves quality. So whether you call the solution a “the next generation of content distribution” as Bitgravity does; Or you call it “aggregation and video marketing” as Move Networks does; Or you offer “multi-source streaming services” as Swarmcast does; what these companies are really offering, is a hybrid solution as Skinkers and Abacast and Akamai readily admit.
June 5th, 2007 at 8:39 pm
The other important element to a true hybrid network is how efficient the back-end network works. How is content being replicated and distributed to its edge servers globally? Is content being replicated via traditional delivery or is P2P being used to move large files around the network?
Smart hybrid CDNs will use P2P for their global replication to reduce the time it takes for content to be made available once content has been initially uploaded. A CDN with a P2P back-end does not require that content be pre-cached to edge servers, i.e., content is available globally almost immediately after it is published.
A flexible hybrid CDN will give the customer the option to deliver content via regular HTTP AND/OR P2P protocols directly from one or more caches with having to publish the content only once.
Marco Parente
CacheLogic CDN | New York
June 26th, 2007 at 1:04 am
[...] It?s Not What They Call it - It?s What They Do If they offer a client side application (something that runs on an end-users computer and allows for sharing of content or a portion of content to other nearby users) or something else closer to the end user for improving quality, … [...]
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:29 pm
[...] P2P remains a immature sector in terms of mainstream use and monetization there are a growing number of companies using distributed technologies to increase efficiency and lower the cost of distributing [...]
February 24th, 2008 at 5:20 am
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