TechTalks Event
Content Delivery Networks (CDNs): How They Work and How They're Used?
with guest expert Micah Beck
September 20, 2001
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CDNs take copies of content from a provider's server and "cache" it in servers spread throughout a network. Requests for data are (hopefully transparently) directed to the closest cache server, reducing network congestion and improving response times.
What is a content delivery network? What problems are CDNs intended to solve? Why is this important to you? Are there going to be practical implications for your professional life on campus anytime soon? Are CDNs used on campuses? What are their benefits? For end users? For network administrators? For ISPs? For organizations that serve up lots and lots of data? How might this all relate to the Internet2 Distributed Storage Infrastructure (DSI) project?
Guest Expert
Micah
Beck, is Research Associate Professor of Computer Science at
the University of Tennnessee-Knoxville and lead investigator in
the Internet
Distributed Infrastructure (I2-DSI) project. Micah received
his BA in Math and Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin,
Madison (1979) and his MS in Computer Science from Stanford University
(1980). He worked for as a Member of Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories,
Murray Hill, doing research in distributed operating systems and
at Quantum Science Corporation as a Consultant to major participants
in the emerging Unix industry. Then he worked for Isis Distributed
Systems for a year as a Software Engineer and for Syracuse University
for a year as Visiting Assistant Professor while completing his
Ph.D. at Cornell University (1992) in the area of parallelizing
compilers. Micah then joined the faculty of the Computer Science
Department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is co-chair
of the Grid Forum Data Access Working Group. He also serves as chair
of the Internet2 Network Storage working group and as leader of
the Internet2 Distributed Storage Infrastructure project.
The I2-DSI is a research and development project that originated within the Internet2 Network Storage Working Group, obtained early support from Internet2 and its corporate members, and is now funded by a grant from the Advanced Networking Infrastructure and Research Division of the National Science Foundation's Computing and Information Science and Engineering Directorate. The I2-DSI project activities span research contributions, involvement in industry standards bodies, promulgating open source software, experimental and pre-production deployment of server infrastructure, and its industry collaborations have given rise to a startup company based on technology developed within the project. More information on the project can be found here.
Co-Hosts
Howard Strauss (above, left), Manager of Academic Applications
at Princeton University, is TechTalk's Technology Anchor.
Judith Boettcher is the Executive Director of CREN.
Together, Howard and Judith will ask the really tough questions—and relay the questions you email to them at expert@cren.net.
Background & Resources
To get you started, here's Brian D. Davison's Web Caching and Content Delivery Resources website, "dedicated to providing a comprehensive guide to the resources about and in support of caching on the World Wide Web."
You may want to browse among the wealth of resources online from the Sixth International Workshop on Web Caching and Content Distribution, which was held last June at Boston University.
Content Delivery Networks: Build or Buy by Mont Francisco at webtechniques is interesting.
At some point, Micah may refer to the pioneering efforts of the Harvest Project at the University of Colorado. And he definitely will refer to the Internet2 Distributed Storage Infrastructure (I2-DSI). He says that a good archived overview of the Harvest project is here.
In addition to services and products from our sponsor, Lokomo Systems, others in the field include Akamai and Digital Island.
