In the previous episodes, we took you on an “internet road trip” to help explicate some of the issues concerning content delivery across the network. However, the network does not work with such efficiency and simplicity as we have previously alluded. In fact, our previous metaphors are still missing some important features that are used in this process. As an attempt to complete the full picture, let us return to our pizza hotline, but this time include the Extended DNS Client Sub-net (ECS). For the explanation of DNS indirection, we imagined that the pizza hotline had to guess where you were, based on the information they had: you are in a hotel. Well this time, let’s say you provided an address, or for the sake of the internet, we implement the ECS. With an address, the hotline operator could look up your location and pizza store proximity on a map in order to choose which store is closer and, theoretically, ensure the fastest delivery time. Continue reading

After a long and stressful day of driving (almost stranded in the middle of nowhere without gas), you finally arrive to your destination tired and hungry. While scouring through the local phone book located in your hotel room’s desk drawer, you stumble upon an advertisement for a pizza delivery chain with three locations nearby. You decided to call their call center and order the largest pizza available. After placing the order, the person asks, as expected, your location. You provide them with the address of your hotel. With this information, the call center is then able to forward your order to the pizza store closest to you, ensuring that you will receive your pizza in the shortest amount of time and still hot on arrival. How is the pizza hotline able to provide such seemingly effortless service to prevent you from collapsing of hunger? It’s easy. With your address, they are able to look up your exact location.

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Imagine that you are on a road trip almost exactly half way to your destination. You are at that part where it is simply you, the road, and the beautiful landscape that seems to go on for forever. This should be a relaxing and enjoyable drive, but instead you become frantic having just learned your car is about to run out of gas. With only a few minutes left until you are  stranded in the middle of nowhere, unfamiliar with your surroundings, you come to a fork in the road with three possible paths. Each path has a sign for a gas station, however, the distance and potential road obstacles are unclear considering each road leads directly into a luscious forest. Continue reading

In just a few years’ time, the Internet has changed significantly. Starting as a hierarchical Tier-1, Tier-2 and Tier-3 topology, it is evolving more and more towards a mashup of directly interconnected networks, thus increasing its complexity both physically and logically. Driven by higher quality demands and lower transit network cost, content providers have been working on increasing the content to user speed by shortening the path, which positions the content as close to the consumer as possible. Content delivery networks (CDNs) started to develop enhanced algorithms to choose the “best” – or at least a better path – to the user in order to make the connection faster. Continue reading

In times of rapidly increasing internet traffic, it is becoming important for internet service providers (ISP) to seek more visibility and control over how and where content is entering its network, and how this can affect the user’s quality of experience. Content delivery is still a blind flight, but how can you equip for the future when you do not know your demand as well as how it affects your network assets? Instead of facing rising infrastructure costs, let us help you get over the “best effort” principle and make content delivery and Quality of Experience (QoE) for your end users great.

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Since its beginning, the Internet as a system of systems has enjoyed unparalleled success as a powerful means of telecommunication. It is blazing fast, its infrastructure reaches even the most remote places on earth, and its design principles have shown to be quite robust. However, the opportunities that lie ahead of us will make greater demands on the Internet than being able to transfer emails or pictures. Already, well-connected societies have gotten used to video on-demand subscriptions, the streaming of major live events, and a ubiquitous IP capability of new devices. We may venture to project some trends:
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The moment we connected the BENOCS machine.