Content delivery market in state of flux

In the beginning was plain old web cacheing. But it is content delivery networks (CDNs) that are now being seen as an increasingly important means of improving the speed and reliability of the internet.

Although a great deal of industry attention has been focused on the promise of online applications and services, there has to date been no defined way for network-based data packets to communicate with the latest cacheing and content delivery systems.

But the iCAP Forum may now have resolved this issue. The aim of the vendor consortium is to enable network devices such as routers to communicate with network-based applications. And the Forum claims that if its members work together, they will be able to understand the problems that need to be addressed and assist in the development and delivery of open standards.

The organisation's first offering is the Internet Content Adaptation Protocol (iCAP), which it claims could form the basis of a new generation of value-added services by enabling site owners to provide users with faster access to web applications by preventing network congestion.

Vectored content
Nick Thurlow, manager for CDN business at Network Appliance, one of the Forum's members, explained: "[iCap] is a protocol that allows content to be vectored between caches and network-based applications servers. It's the kind of thing that will be very useful when third generation devices come out and put an additional strain on content access."

He added: "It's all about making sure that content is placed where it is most needed - in other words, close to the user. The internet, as everybody knows, is liable to congestion, so the more hops you can take out the better. This will become even more urgent with the growth of rich content like video. Trying to move a gigabyte around the web can cause problems."

Network Appliance already provides the component parts for deploying a CDN. Its Filer device manages data to ensure it does not impact server performance, while Netcache is a dedicated data storage offering that enables users to access data that is stored remotely.

The company has also just launched two new CDN products - Content Director and Content Reporter. Thurlow describes Content Director as the glue that links data storage products with cacheing devices, while Reporter informs the network manager of which content is being used the most.

Earlier this year, web cacheing technology was embroiled in controversy, with many in the internet engineering community claiming it was bad for the web.

Web-cacheing vendors were also criticised for developing a communications protocol to undertake load balancing and to redirect network traffic. The Network Element Control Protocol (NECP) enables secure, flexible communications between servers, switches and network devices.

And it is supported by some of the most important companies in the internet infrastructure industry, including Akamai Technologies, Foundry Networks, Inktomi, Alteon WebSystems, Novell, Radware and Network Appliance.

But after the protocol was submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for ratification, some of the organisation's leaders said that the potential use of NECP as an interception proxy violated the fabric of the internet.

Purists versus pragmatists
An interception proxy acts as a middleman between users and the server they are trying to reach. It pretends to be the destination server, delivering content or network services more quickly to customers. One benefit of the offering is that it does not need to be configured by the users themselves.

But some observers claim that interception proxies violate the IP standard by breaking up the end-to-end nature of communications technology and causing interoperability problems. They also interfere in the data delivery process without users or destination servers knowing about it.

Some 25 per cent of all internet service providers, including America Online, are believed to use the technology to manage traffic from dial-up customers as they access the internet.

IP purists argue that the IETF should not encourage the use of interception proxies, whereas pragmatists argue that standardisation of the technology will be useful.

Data flow in the right direction
Certainly, the need for consensus and a sense of future direction in the area of content delivery has never been more acute. Customers can now access the web using an increasingly wide variety of devices, ranging from mobile phones and personal digital assistants to PCs and pagers, many of which have displays that don't support all forms of content.

Not all content can be delivered over all types of connections either, including dial-up, DSL, or cable modems, and it is not capable of adjusting to user needs. The web largely operates on a general broadcast model, whereas most surfers want personalised information or services.

The content delivery community clearly has its work cut out to ensure that it both adheres to accepted standards and provides a practical approach to delivering data.

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