RE: Distribution CPG Protocol - Some Thoughts

[Stephen Thomas <stephen.thomas@transnexus.com>]

I may have been misinterpreting Oliver's original note (especially now that 
I re-read it). I was considering that the point was not deciding which CDN 
is "better" for a particular client (at least in the sense of user agent). 
It's deciding what CDN is "better" for a particular content provider.

Now that I re-read the original context, though, perhaps Oliver did mean 
client. If that is the case, I agree. This is a request-routing issue 
rather a distribution issue.

Stephen


At 08:30 PM 2001-01-09 +0000, Alex French wrote:
>Exactly, but deciding which CDN is "better" for a particular client is in 
>the realm of the request router, not the content distribution system.
>
>Alex.
>
>At 07:02 PM 09/01/2001, Stephen Thomas wrote:
>
>>Actually, we're talking about content distribution (I think ;^). The 
>>question is not how to route a request but how a content provider makes a 
>>decision to (or not to) use a CDN service.
>>
>>At 02:38 PM 2001-01-09 +0000, Alex French wrote:
>>>I think we may be straying into a discussion of the content routing 
>>>system rather than the content distribution peering; valid discussion, 
>>>but we need to be clear which problem we're dealing with.
>>>
>>>Alex.
>>>
>>>At 03:12 PM 05/01/2001, Oliver Spatscheck wrote:
>>>>Exactly! The problem is how to decide which CDN is 'better'. For example is
>>>>Digital Island or Akamai better for my desktop computer (now or in 1 
>>>>hour) You
>>>>need some more details about the internals of the CDN to make this
>>>>decision. The question is which information is required, which part of the
>>>>system manages that information and how should it be transmitted. I 
>>>>guess we
>>>>should agree on those high level aspects first ... .
>>>>
>>>>Oliver