Content Delivery Networks

The vast majority of today’s Internet traffic is media files (often video or audio) being sent from a single source (the Content Provider) to many thousands or even millions of destinations (the Content Consumers). Content Delivery Networks are the technology that make that one-to-many distribution possible in an economical way. A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a distributed system of servers for delivering content over HTTP. These servers are deployed in multiple locations with the goal of optimizing the delivery of content to the end users, while minimizing the traffic on the network. A CDN typically consists of the following:

  • Caching Proxies
    The proxy (cache or caching proxy) is a server that both proxies the requests and caches the results for reusing.
  • Content Router
    The Content Router ensures that the end user is connected to the optimal cache for the location of the end user and content availability.
  • Health Protocol
    The Health Protocol monitors the usage of the caches and tenants in the CDN.
  • Configuration Management System
    In many cases a CDN encompasses hundreds of servers across a large geographic area. The Configuration Management System allows an operator to manage these servers.
  • Log File Analysis System
    Every transaction in the CDN gets logged. The Log File Analysis System aggregates all of the log entries from all of the servers to a central location for analysis and troubleshooting.