Lecture 12

Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Introduction
§ A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a collaborative
collection of network elements spanning the Internet,
where content is replicated over several mirrored Web
servers in order to perform transparent and effective
delivery of content to the end users
§ CDNs have evolved to overcome the inherent
limitations of the Internet in terms of user perceived
Quality of Service (QoS) when accessing Web content
Introduction
§ Content refers to any digital data resources and it
consists of two main parts:
1. The encoded media
• static, dynamic, and continuous media data (e.g. audio,
video, documents, images and Web pages)
2. Metadata
• the content description that allows identification, discovery,
and management of multimedia data, and facilitates its
interpretation
Introduction
§ The three main entities in a CDN system are the
following:
1. Content provider
2. CDN provider
3. End users
CDN functionalities
§ Content outsourcing and distribution services
• to replicate and/or cache content from the origin server to
distributed Web servers
§ Request redirection and content delivery services
• to direct a request to the closest suitable CDN cache server
using mechanisms to bypass congestion, thus overcoming flash
crowds
§ Management services
• to manage the network components, to handle accounting, and
to monitor and report on content usage
Architectural components of a CDN
CDN Server Selection
§ Which server?
• Lowest load, to balance load on servers
• Best performance, to improve client performance
• Based on Geography? RTT? Throughput? Load?
• Any alive node, to provide fault tolerance
§ How to direct clients to a particular server?
• As part of routing, anycast
• As part of naming, DNS
Server Selection - Anycast Based
§ Anycast is a network addressing and routing method in which
incoming requests can be routed to a variety of different
locations or “nodes.”

§ In the context of a CDN, Anycast typically routes incoming traffic

to the nearest data center with the capacity to process the
request efficiently.

§ The selection process behind choosing a particular data center

will typically be optimized to reduce latency

§ Selective routing allows an Anycast network to be resilient in the

face of high traffic volume, network congestion, and DDoS
attacks.
Server Selection - DNS Based
§ Client sends request to its local DNS server
§ Local DNS server queries the authoritative DNS server
§ CDNs use modified authoritative DNS servers for CDN
server selection
• Typically, the CDN's authoritative DNS server maps the client's
local DNS server address to a geographic region within a
particular network and combines that with network and server load
information to perform CDN server selection
• To enable fast reaction to dynamic resource changes, the answer
returned by the CDN's DNS server has a small TTL
 CDN content access: a closer look
Bob (client) requests video http://netcinema.com/6Y7B23V
§ video stored in CDN at http://KingCDN.com/NetC6y&B23V

1. Bob gets URL for video

http://netcinema.com/6Y7B23V
from netcinema.com web page 2. resolve http://netcinema.com/6Y7B23V
2 via Bob’s local DNS
1
6. request video from 5 Bob’s
KINGCDN server, local DNS
streamed via HTTP server
3. netcinema’s DNS returns URL 4&5. Resolve
netcinema.com 4 http://KingCDN.com/NetC6y&B23
http://KingCDN.com/NetC6y&B23V
via KingCDN’s authoritative DNS,
3 which returns IP address of KingCDN
server with video
netcinema’s
authoratative DNS KingCDN.com KingCDN
authoritative DNS
Video Streaming and CDNs
§ video traffic: major consumer of Internet bandwidth
• Netflix, YouTube: 37%, 16% of downstream
residential ISP traffic
• ~2B YouTube users, ~214M Netflix users
§ challenge: scale - how to reach ~2B
users?
• single mega-video server won’t work (why?)
§ challenge: heterogeneity
§ different users have different capabilities (e.g.,
wired versus mobile; bandwidth rich versus
bandwidth poor)
§ solution: distributed, application-level
infrastructure
Streaming multimedia: DASH
§ DASH: Dynamic, Adaptive Streaming over HTTP
§ server:
• divides video file into multiple chunks
• each chunk stored, encoded at different rates
• manifest file: provides URLs for different chunks
§ client:
• periodically measures server-to-client bandwidth
• consulting manifest, requests one chunk at a time
• chooses maximum coding rate sustainable given
current bandwidth
• can choose different coding rates at different points
in time (depending on available bandwidth at time)
Streaming multimedia: DASH
§ DASH: Dynamic, Adaptive Streaming over HTTP
§ “intelligence” at client: client determines
• when to request chunk (so that buffer starvation, or
overflow does not occur)
• what encoding rate to request (higher quality when
more bandwidth available)
• where to request chunk (can request from URL server
that is “close” to client or has high available
bandwidth)
Content distribution networks
§ challenge: how to stream content (selected from
millions of videos) to hundreds of thousands of
simultaneous users?

§ option 1: single, large “mega-server”

• single point of failure
• point of network congestion
• long path to distant clients
• multiple copies of video sent over outgoing link

….quite simply: this solution doesn’t scale

Content distribution networks
§ challenge: how to stream content (selected from
millions of videos) to hundreds of thousands of
simultaneous users?

§ option 2: store/serve multiple copies of videos at

multiple geographically distributed sites (CDN)
• enter deep: push CDN servers deep into many access
networks
• close to users
• used by Akamai, 1700 locations
• bring home: smaller number (10’s) of larger clusters in
POPs near (but not within) access networks
• used by Limelight
 Content Distribution Networks (CDNs)
§ CDN: stores copies of content at CDN nodes
• e.g. Netflix stores copies of MadMen
§ subscriber requests content from CDN
• directed to nearby copy, retrieves content
• may choose different copy if network path congested

… …

…
…

manifest file
where’s Madmen?

… …
 Content Distribution Networks (CDNs)

Challenges: coping with a congested Internet

§ from which CDN node to retrieve content?
§ viewer behavior in presence of congestion?
§ what content to place in which CDN node?
 Case study: Netflix
upload copies of
Amazon cloud multiple versions of
video to CDN servers
CDN
server
Netflix registration,
accounting servers
3. Manifest file
2. Bob browses returned for CDN
Netflix video 2 requested video server
3
1

1. Bob manages
Netflix account CDN
server

4. DASH
streaming
Thank you