Rhm2ktmi's List: CDN

• As regulatory battles and mega-mergers roil the media business, Comcast is preparing to offer a new service for Web content companies that will enable them to bypass network middlemen and deliver their services directly to Comcast Internet customers.
• The new service allows companies publish their content inside of Comcast’s network so that it is closer to Internet subscribers, something they haven’t been able to do in the past. John Schanz, Comcast’s chief network officer, said in an interview that the offering is currently being tested with some customers and is expected to roll out broadly if all goes well.
• It also will put pressure on the multi-billion-dollar content-delivery-network industry, which helps Web content companies deliver their videos or software to Internet service providers.

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• Barely four months after Verizon's announcement that it would buy EdgeCast Networks, the company is making its presence known at the National Association of Broadcaster's trade show in Las Vegas, with all its new acquisitions in tow. The services are now part of the Verizon Digital Media Systems (VDMS) group, and executives say they are getting good reception from broadcasters that want a simpler, less expensive method for getting their assets delivered over the Internet to consumers.
• At first blush, Verizon appears to be taking the right approach to its acquisitions in the digital-media space, with a focus on integration on the technology level, while allowing a fair degree of autonomy. That's especially critical for success for the CDN services, because the utility of CDNs are related to their ability to abstract the complexity of content delivery across multiple networks (not just the ones a telco owns) and multiple device types.
• When 451 Research analyzed what EdgeCast Networks could contribute to Verizon, one of the capabilities was for Verizon to use the platform internally to provide TV-everywhere-type services for its Fios customers.
• So where is Verizon, (just) four months down the road? Let's look at one of the primary areas of focus: video. Verizon executives told 451 Research that traffic has already risen organically by 25% since December, and that they expect network traffic to double in 2014. Capital investment decisions are being made independently, and the company says it continues to augment capacity for interconnection and delivery capacity at major interconnection points.
• Akamai, Limelight Networks and Level 3 Communications are the main competition in video delivery.
• EdgeCast's competition is largely the same as it's always been
• Level 3 is the closest analog in terms of the combination of broadcast uplink and video transport with CDN delivery with its Vyvx services.

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• One solution to this challenge is transparent caching, where operators buy software that allows them to manage and cache content inside their networks without the operator having to intervene in determining the cached content.
• Getting television on demand requires a one-to-one stream, as opposed to broadcast or old cable TV platforms where the transmission was one-to-many. The old way was far more efficient, but it also meant that people had to watch what was on when it was on.
• For more than a decade content delivery networks have offered caching services, where they store popular web content on servers in the ISP network or near the end users, but even this is breaking down.
• But vendors from Cisco to startups like PeerApp and Qwilt are experimenting with an alternative called transparent caching.
• Unlike traditional caches where the content lives outside the operator network and is managed by a more manual process of purging and refreshing caches at different intervals, transparent caching is deployed inside the ISP’s network and uses software to understand what content needs to be cached without human intervention.

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• Limelight Networks closed out 2013 by cleaning out some assets it decided were no longer needed. The company announced on December 23 that it was divesting its Web content management (WCM) business to Upland Software, which has reinstated the Clickability brand that Limelight acquired in May 2011.

• In my first blog Act 1 – The What and Why I talked about the benefits and some risks around using a Content Delivery Network (CDN). Today I will cover some details around some common misunderstandings regarding how to monitor CDNs and explain the right monitoring strategy.
• All the enterprise CDN solutions offer some level of insight on the performance they deliver. It is basically based on high level aggregation of relevant log file data and tells you for example how many requests have been received, how much data has been sent out, what status codes were returned, how fast the servers responded, etc.
• However this data has 2 major problems
• • It is not detailed enough
   
  • It’s provided by the vendor you want to monitor
• So instead of only relying on this information you need to add your own monitoring strategy
• Synthetic Monitoring of CDNs
• Real User Monitoring of CDNs
• How Not to Monitor CDNs

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• Yottaa built technology that can optimize, monitor and protect websites and has built a business with 70 employees and roughly 140 customers. Still, selling different services for each purpose has its challenges, with one of them being that the company sells against a wider range of competitors depending on the product category, and another being that customers might find it hard to understand what it offers.
• Yottaa said that it's taken its experiences with customers to realize that its services all relate to Web application lifecycle management.
• Yottaa's Engagement Cloud crosses several technology categories
• It can be compared to Web performance management services, where it competes against companies including Catchpoint Systems, Compuware's Gomez and Keynote Systems.
• Testing and content targeting by marketing departments could be another target audience.
• Akamai's addition of real user measurement (RUM) to its Aqua Ion service for dynamic content delivery earlier this year means Akamai is working to keep its grip on the top e-commerce players
• Limelight Networks is hoping that recent upgrades to its CDN will help it regain competitive footing in the market, and CDNetworks and Level 3 Communications are also focusing more on selling dynamic content acceleration services to enterprises
• Instart Logic raised a $26m round of funding for its optimization and delivery service, which is heavily focused on mobile devices – an area where Yottaa is also focusing.

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• Netflix really wants more ISPs to use its Open Connect caching appliances, and the video service just found a new way to make that case: Netflix’s monthly ISP speed rankings are now based on prime time peak performance as opposed to the previously used 24-hour averages
• Open Connect is Netflix’s own take on content delivery: The company is building its own customized caching servers and puts them within an ISPs network infrastructure.

• EdgeCast Networks says customers of its licensed CDN platform are exchanging traffic between their networks and have established, ongoing commercial relationships. In other words, a federated CDN is up and running outside of a test lab
• CDN federation is the idea that companies pool resources to offer CDN services across network boundaries
• EdgeCast's strategy is to license its technology to as many carriers as possible to create a 'network effect' that brings more carriers to the platform.
• The OpenCDN exchange is the glue that enables the customers to deliver traffic in regions where they haven't built CDN POPs.

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• Now that cloud computing is virtually ubiquitous among hosting companies, CDN is becoming one of the next services that these companies are busy building – and launching, thanks to a growing number of CDN platform providers like OnApp and 3Crowd Technologies.
• some with the ability to link up to other CDNs for expanded reach.
• Among the new clients for its CDN software are CDN77.com, a service linked with Cloudee.eu, a small cloud service provider using OnApp's platform.
• In the US, eApps Hosting is a managed hosting and cloud service provider that has launched the CDN service
• Meanwhile, ServerOrigin Communications is offering CloudCDN, a CDN service based on 3Crowd's CrowdDirector and CrowdCache software.
• OnApp has 60 points of presence (POPs) in more than 20 countries in its CDN network now.
• These providers have access to a 'marketplace' portal, which allows them to buy or sell excess capacity
• Hosters that don't have POPs can still join the marketplace to buy capacity for a CDN service they wish to offer to customers
• One interesting aspect to the market is that OnApp is aiming to have variable pricing based on the infrastructure characteristics.
• Reselling CDN service is still a tried-and-true method for generating some additional revenues, though at slimmer margins
• CloudFlare has made inroads in the hosting market with lots of reseller deals for its object caching service, with companies like Media Temple helping to make up 25% of its revenue.
• EdgeCast networks, Internap and Akamai,
• GoGrid, SoftLayer and Rackspace resell CDN services from

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• The company is continuing an onslaught of new service launches this year with a new hosted DNS service called EdgeCast Route that will also potentially form the basis for security services yet to come.

• Founded June 2011 by a group of Telecommunication Service Providers (TSPs), the Operator Carrier Exchange (OCX) connects their networks in an effort to compete directly against traditional CDN’s which boasts an extensive number of points of presence (POPs) globally.
• By connecting the networks, Telco CDN’s are creating a Federate CDN which is much more interesting for a provider willing to deliver content to the entire audience of the federation.

• A content delivery network or content distribution network (CDN) is a large distributed system of servers deployed in multiple data centers across the Internet. The goal of a CDN is to serve content to end-users with high availability and high performance. CDNs serve a large fraction of the Internet content today, including web objects (text, graphics and scripts), downloadable objects (media files, software, documents), applications (e-commerce, portals), live streaming media, on-demand streaming media, and social networks.

• XDN provides a single entry point for the migration and on-going management of your apps and content to the cloud. You can input business and network rules that speak to your marketing staff, IT execs, and even the most technically savvy engineering and operations staff

• While there’s been a lot of talk on the topic of CDN federation over the years, we’ve still waiting to see the vast majority of carriers work with each other in any kind of federated model.

• Their video presentation below details which carriers are in the pilot program, the business drivers, economic model and plenty of technical implementation details. You can also download the slides from their presentation here.

   

• There has been a lot of discussion about Federated CDNs as of late, especially since StreamingMedia.com broke the news of the Operator Carrier Exchange (OCX).
• Bringing the federation concept to life will be a complex undertaking. Consider the complexity of managing a network across multiple infrastructure operators, technology platforms, sales organizations, geographies, market segments, and business models.

• As we noted in our Data Center Investor roundup earlier today, shares of content delivery networks Akamai Technologies and Limelight Networks have lost ground this year amid investor concern about growing competition from telco companies developing their own offerings.

   

  Last week Dan Rayburn from StreamingMedia.com had several important stories about the evolution of the content delivery market and the relationship between telecom companies and network operators.

• First, Dan reported that telcos and carriers are in discussions to combine their CDN operations to create a federated content delivery network called the Open Carrier Exchange (OCX).

   

• Dan also takes a look at Akamai’s response to competition from the telco sector: a licensed CDN offering that will allow telcos and ISPs to license Akamai’s software to build their delivery networks. The move is largely seen as a defensive strategy for Akamai as  more carriers turn to a build-your-own approach.

   

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• Software AG sees a big opportunity brewing in the Industrial Internet, and on Monday it introduced Terracotta Universal Messaging as a data transport designed to power a broad range of high-speed, big data applications. 

   Messaging systems have traditionally solved the problem of fanning out data from a small number of systems that generate information and delivering it to the many applications that draw on that data. Big data and promising developments such as the Industrial Internet promise to turn that model on its head.

• Fastly, a content delivery network, that has built a competitive advantage out of using software and commodity SSDs, as opposed to specialty hardware, has raised $10 million in Series B funding from August Capital.
• This follows a previous $1M Series A from Battery Ventures and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures.

• The two main days of the event were preceded by a Special Focus Day, which explored the challenges and opportunities in delivering content to mobile devices, and the unfolding relationship between CDNs and cloud services. The growing importance of these Focus Day themes did not escape the delegates, with some people suggesting they will occupy an even more prominent position at future CDN Summits
• Caching moves closer to end users
• Several presentations and discussions over the three days addressed the evolution of transparent caching, which allows operators to cache (or copy) traffic which frequently transverses their networks and store it closer to end users
• Other new initiatives for caching content were explored by Broadpeak President and CEO Jacques Le Mancq, who unveiled Broadpeak’s new “NanoCDN”, a product which leverages broadband gateways and set-top-boxes to make them an extension of cable and telecoms operators’ CDNs within their subscribers’ home networks.
• Mobile CDNs in focus
• One of the highlights of the Focus Day was a series of presentations by Matt Stagg from Everything Everywhere (since rebranded EE), Dominique Delise from Orange-France Telecom and Lior Netzer from Akamai, which explored the ongoing challenges of delivering content to mobile users
• Stagg also discussed the potential to cache content within end user devices
• Although 3G architectures currently deter the deployment of CDN servers deep within the network, LTE will help to facilitate this

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• Darach Ennis investigates data distribution biased for occasionally connected near-real-time data streaming in low fidelity environments with traditional messaging and discusses the nuances, tradeoffs and considerations that require a very different approach from traditional practices.