RE: Distribution CPG Protocol - Some Thoughts

[Oliver Spatscheck <spatsch@research.att.com>]

Your current interpretation is the intended one. I think the problem is (as we
discussed today) that those two systems are connected. In the simple case a
CDN is "better" for a content provider if it servers the clients of the
content provider "better". So before I distribute content all over the place I
should know if it is worth while doing so.  Otherwise, I distribute content to
a CDN but my request routing mechanism does not use it since the CDN I
distributed the content to is not better for the content providers clients.

Oliver



Stephen Thomas writes:
 > 
 > 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
 > 
 >