![NCDN - CDN](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/NCDN_-_CDN.svg)
A content delivery network, or content distribution network (CDN), is a geographically distributed network of
proxy server
In computer networking, a proxy server is a server application that acts as an intermediary between a client requesting a resource and the server providing that resource.
Instead of connecting directly to a server that can fulfill a request ...
s and their
data center
A data center (American English) or data centre (British English)See spelling differences. is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunic ...
s. The goal is to provide high availability and performance by distributing the service spatially relative to
end user
In product development, an end user (sometimes end-user) is a person who ultimately uses or is intended to ultimately use a product. The end user stands in contrast to users who support or maintain the product, such as sysops, system administrat ...
s. CDNs came into existence in the late 1990s as a means for alleviating the performance bottlenecks of the Internet
as the Internet was starting to become a mission-critical medium for people and enterprises. Since then, CDNs have grown to serve a large portion of the Internet content today, including web objects (text, graphics and scripts), downloadable objects (media files, software, documents), applications (
e-commerce
E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain manageme ...
,
portals),
live streaming
Livestreaming is streaming media simultaneously recorded and broadcast in real-time over the internet. It is often referred to simply as streaming. Non-live media such as video-on-demand, vlogs, and YouTube videos are technically streamed, but no ...
media, on-demand streaming media, and
social media
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...
sites.
CDNs are a
layer
Layer or layered may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* ''Layers'' (Kungs album)
* ''Layers'' (Les McCann album)
* ''Layers'' (Royce da 5'9" album)
*"Layers", the title track of Royce da 5'9"'s sixth studio album
* Layer, a female Maveri ...
in the internet ecosystem. Content owners such as media companies and e-commerce vendors pay CDN operators to deliver their content to their end users. In turn, a CDN pays
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...
s (ISPs), carriers, and network operators for hosting its servers in their data centers.
CDN is an umbrella term spanning different types of content delivery services:
video streaming
Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...
, software downloads, web and mobile content acceleration, licensed/managed CDN, transparent caching, and services to measure CDN performance,
load balancing, Multi CDN switching and analytics and cloud intelligence. CDN vendors may cross over into other industries like security,
DDoS
In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host
A ...
protection and
web application firewall
A web application firewall (WAF) is a specific form of application firewall that filters, monitors, and blocks HTTP traffic to and from a web service. By inspecting HTTP traffic, it can prevent attacks exploiting a web application's known vul ...
s (WAF), and WAN optimization.
Technology
CDN nodes are usually deployed in multiple locations, often over multiple
Internet backbone
The Internet backbone may be defined by the principal data routes between large, strategically interconnected computer networks and core routers of the Internet. These data routes are hosted by commercial, government, academic and other high-ca ...
s. Benefits include reducing bandwidth costs, improving page load times, and increasing the global availability of content. The number of nodes and servers making up a CDN varies, depending on the architecture, some reaching thousands of nodes with tens of thousands of servers on many remote
points of presence
A point of presence (PoP) is an artificial demarcation point or network interface point between communicating entities. A common example is an ISP point of presence, the local access point that allows users to connect to the Internet with their ...
(PoPs). Others build a global network and have a small number of geographical PoPs.
Requests for content are typically algorithmically directed to nodes that are optimal in some way. When optimizing for performance, locations that are best for serving content to the user may be chosen. This may be measured by choosing locations that are the fewest
hops
Hops are the flowers (also called seed cones or strobiles) of the hop plant ''Humulus lupulus'', a member of the Cannabaceae family of flowering plants. They are used primarily as a bittering, flavouring, and stability agent in beer, to whi ...
, the lowest number of network seconds away from the requesting client, or the highest availability in terms of server performance (both current and historical), to optimize delivery across local networks. When optimizing for cost, locations that are least expensive may be chosen instead. In an optimal scenario, these two goals tend to align, as edge servers that are close to the end user at the edge of the network may have an advantage in performance or cost.
Most CDN providers will provide their services over a varying, defined, set of PoPs, depending on the coverage desired, such as United States, International or Global, Asia-Pacific, etc. These sets of PoPs can be called "edges", "edge nodes", "edge servers", or "edge networks" as they would be the closest edge of CDN assets to the end user.
Security and privacy
CDN providers profit either from direct fees paid by
content provider
A value-added service (VAS) is a popular telecommunications industry{{cite web, url=http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/11/prweb11284640.htm, title=Global Mobile Value Added Services (VAS) Market: Worldwide Industry Share, Investment Trends, Growth, ...
s using their network, or profit from the user analytics and tracking data collected as their scripts are being loaded onto customers' websites inside their
browser origin. As such these services are being pointed out as potential privacy intrusions for the purpose of
behavioral targeting
Targeted advertising is a form of advertising, including online advertising, that is directed towards an audience with certain traits, based on the product or person the advertiser is promoting. These traits can either be demographic with a focus ...
and solutions are being created to restore single-origin serving and caching of resources.
CDNs serving JavaScript have also been targeted as a way to inject malicious content into pages using them.
Subresource Integrity mechanism was created in response to ensure that the page loads a script whose content is known and constrained to a hash referenced by the website author.
Content networking techniques
The Internet was designed according to the
end-to-end principle
The end-to-end principle is a design framework in computer networking. In networks designed according to this principle, guaranteeing certain application-specific features, such as reliability and security, requires that they reside in the commu ...
.
This principle keeps the core network relatively simple and moves the intelligence as much as possible to the network end-points: the hosts and clients. As a result, the core network is specialized, simplified, and optimized to only forward data packets.
Content Delivery Networks augment the end-to-end transport network by distributing on it a variety of intelligent applications employing techniques designed to optimize content delivery. The resulting tightly integrated overlay uses web caching, server-load balancing, request routing, and content services.
Web cache
A Web cache (or HTTP cache) is a system for optimizing the World Wide Web. It is implemented both client-side and server-side. The caching of multimedias and other files can result in less overall delay when browsing the Web.
Parts of the syste ...
s store popular content on servers that have the greatest demand for the content requested. These shared network appliances reduce bandwidth requirements, reduce server load, and improve the client response times for content stored in the cache. Web caches are populated based on requests from users (pull caching) or based on preloaded content disseminated from content servers (push caching).
Server-load balancing uses one or more techniques including service-based (global load balancing) or hardware-based (i.e.
layer 4–7 switches, also known as a web switch, content switch, or multilayer switch) to share traffic among a number of servers or web caches. Here the switch is assigned a single virtual
IP address
An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...
. Traffic arriving at the switch is then directed to one of the real
web servers
A web server is computer software and underlying hardware that accepts requests via HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, commonly a web browser or web crawler, initiates ...
attached to the switch. This has the advantage of balancing load, increasing total capacity, improving scalability, and providing increased reliability by redistributing the load of a failed web server and providing server health checks.
A content cluster or service node can be formed using a layer 4–7 switch to balance load across a number of servers or a number of web caches within the network.
Request routing directs client requests to the content source best able to serve the request. This may involve directing a client request to the service node that is closest to the client, or to the one with the most capacity. A variety of algorithms are used to route the request. These include Global Server Load Balancing, DNS-based request routing, Dynamic metafile generation, HTML rewriting, and
anycast
Anycast is a network addressing and routing methodology in which a single destination IP address is shared by devices (generally servers) in multiple locations. Routers direct packets addressed to this destination to the location nearest the se ...
ing. Proximity—choosing the closest service node—is estimated using a variety of techniques including reactive probing, proactive probing, and connection monitoring.
CDNs use a variety of methods of content delivery including, but not limited to, manual asset copying, active web caches, and global hardware load balancers.
Content service protocols
Several protocol suites are designed to provide access to a wide variety of content services distributed throughout a content network. The
Internet Content Adaptation Protocol
The Internet Content Adaptation Protocol (ICAP) is a lightweight HTTP-like protocol specified in which is used to extend transparent proxy servers, thereby freeing up resources and standardizing the way in which new features are implemented. ICAP ...
(ICAP) was developed in the late 1990s to provide an open standard for connecting application servers. A more recently defined and robust solution is provided by the
Open Pluggable Edge Services
Open or OPEN may refer to:
Music
* Open (band), Australian pop/rock band
* The Open (band), English indie rock band
* ''Open'' (Blues Image album), 1969
* ''Open'' (Gotthard album), 1999
* ''Open'' (Cowboy Junkies album), 2001
* ''Open'' (YF ...
(OPES) protocol. This architecture defines OPES service applications that can reside on the OPES processor itself or be executed remotely on a Callout Server.
Edge Side Includes
Edge Side Includes (ESI) is a small markup language for edge level dynamic web content assembly. The purpose of ESI is to tackle the problem of web infrastructure scaling. It is an application of edge computing.
It is fairly common for websites t ...
or ESI is a small markup language for edge-level dynamic web content assembly. It is fairly common for websites to have generated content. It could be because of changing content like catalogs or forums, or because of the personalization. This creates a problem for caching systems. To overcome this problem, a group of companies created ESI.
Peer-to-peer CDNs
In ''
peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer n ...
(P2P)'' content-delivery networks, clients provide resources as well as use them. This means that, unlike
client–server systems, the content-centric networks can actually perform better as more users begin to access the content (especially with protocols such as
Bittorrent that require users to share). This property is one of the major advantages of using P2P networks because it makes the setup and running costs very small for the original content distributor.
Private CDNs
If content owners are not satisfied with the options or costs of a commercial CDN service, they can create their own CDN. This is called a private CDN. A private CDN consists of PoPs (points of presence) that are only serving content for their owner. These PoPs can be caching servers,
reverse proxies or application delivery controllers. It can be as simple as two caching servers,
or large enough to serve petabytes of content.
Large content distribution networks may even build and set up their own private network to distribute copies of content across cache locations. Such private networks are usually used in conjunction with public networks as a backup option in case the capacity of the private network is not enough or there is a failure which leads to capacity reduction. Since the same content has to be distributed across many locations, a variety of
multicast
In computer networking, multicast is group communication where data transmission is addressed to a group of destination computers simultaneously. Multicast can be one-to-many or many-to-many distribution. Multicast should not be confused with ...
ing techniques may be used to reduce bandwidth consumption. Over private networks, it has also been proposed to select multicast trees according to network load conditions to more efficiently utilize available network capacity.
CDN trends
Emergence of telco CDNs
The rapid growth of
streaming video
Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...
traffic uses large
capital expenditures
Capital expenditure or capital expense (capex or CAPEX) is the money an organization or corporate entity spends to buy, maintain, or improve its fixed assets, such as buildings, vehicles, equipment, or land. It is considered a capital expenditure ...
by broadband providers in order to meet this demand and retain subscribers by delivering a sufficiently good
quality of experience Quality of experience (QoE) is a measure of the delight or annoyance of a customer's experiences with a service (e.g., web browsing, phone call, TV broadcast).Qualinet White Paper on Definitions of Quality of Experience (2012). European Network on Q ...
.
To address this,
telecommunications service provider
Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that f ...
s (TSPs) have begun to launch their own content delivery networks as a means to lessen the demands on the
network backbone
A backbone or core network is a part of a computer network which interconnects networks, providing a path for the exchange of information between different LANs or subnetworks. A backbone can tie together diverse networks in the same building, ...
and reduce infrastructure investments.
Telco CDN advantages
Because they own the networks over which video content is transmitted,
telco CDNs have advantages over traditional CDNs. They own the
last mile and can deliver content closer to the end-user because it can be cached deep in their networks. This deep caching minimizes the
distance
Distance is a numerical or occasionally qualitative measurement of how far apart objects or points are. In physics or everyday usage, distance may refer to a physical length or an estimation based on other criteria (e.g. "two counties over"). ...
that video data travels over the general Internet and delivers it more quickly and reliably.
Telco CDNs also have a built-in cost advantage since traditional CDNs must lease bandwidth from them and build the operator's margin into their own cost model. In addition, by operating their own content delivery infrastructure, telco operators have better control over the utilization of their resources. Content management operations performed by CDNs are usually applied without (or with very limited) information about the network (e.g., topology, utilization etc.) of the telco-operators with which they interact or have business relationships. These pose a number of challenges for the telco-operators who have a limited sphere of action in face of the impact of these operations on the utilization of their resources.
In contrast, the deployment of telco-CDNs allows operators to implement their own content management operations,
[D. Tuncer, M. Charalambides, R. Landa, G. Pavlou, “More Control Over Network Resources: an ISP Caching Perspective,” proceedings of IEEE/IFIP Conference on Network and Service Management (CNSM), Zurich, Switzerland, October 2013.][M. Claeys, D. Tuncer, J. Famaey, M. Charalambides, S. Latre, F. De Turck, G. Pavlou, “Proactive Multi-tenant Cache Management for Virtualized ISP Networks,” proceedings of IEEE/IFIP Conference on Network and Service Management (CNSM), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, November 2014.] which enables them to have a better control over the utilization of their resources and, as such, provide better quality of service and experience to their end users.
Federated CDNs and Open Caching
In June 2011, StreamingMedia.com reported that a group of TSPs had founded an Operator Carrier Exchange (OCX) to interconnect their networks and compete more directly against large traditional CDNs like
Akamai and
Limelight Networks
Edgio, Inc., formerly Limelight Networks, Inc., is an American company that provides a content delivery network (CDN) service, used for delivery of digital media content and software. As of January 2023, the company's network has more than 300 ...
, which have extensive PoPs worldwide. This way, telcos are building a Federated CDN offering, which is more interesting for a
content provider
A value-added service (VAS) is a popular telecommunications industry{{cite web, url=http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/11/prweb11284640.htm, title=Global Mobile Value Added Services (VAS) Market: Worldwide Industry Share, Investment Trends, Growth, ...
willing to deliver its content to the aggregated audience of this federation.
It is likely that in a near future, other telco CDN federations will be created. They will grow by enrollment of new telcos joining the federation and bringing network presence and their Internet subscriber bases to the existing ones.
The Open Caching specification by
Streaming Media Alliance defines a set of
APIs that allows a Content Provider to deliver its content using several CDNs in a consistent way, seeing each CDN provider the same way through these APIs.
Improving CDN performance using Extension Mechanisms for DNS
Traditionally, CDNs have used the IP of the client's recursive DNS resolver to geo-locate the client. While this is a sound approach in many situations, this leads to poor client performance if the client uses a non-local recursive DNS resolver that is far away. For instance, a CDN may route requests from a client in India to its edge server in Singapore, if that client uses a public DNS resolver in Singapore, causing poor performance for that client. Indeed, a recent study
showed that in many countries where public DNS resolvers are in popular use, the median distance between the clients and their recursive DNS resolvers can be as high as a thousand miles. In August 2011, a global consortium of leading Internet service providers led by Google announced their official implementation of the edns-client-subnet
IETF Internet Draft, which is intended to accurately localize DNS resolution responses. The initiative involves a limited number of leading DNS service providers, such as
Google Public DNS
Google Public DNS is a Domain Name System (DNS) service offered to Internet users worldwide by Google. It functions as a recursive name server.
Google Public DNS was announced on December 3, 2009, in an effort described as "making the web faster ...
, and CDN service providers as well. With the edns-client-subnet
EDNS0 option, CDNs can now utilize the IP address of the requesting client's subnet when resolving DNS requests. This approach, called end-user mapping,
has been adopted by CDNs and it has been shown to drastically reduce the round-trip latencies and improve performance for clients who use public DNS or other non-local resolvers. However, the use of EDNS0 also has drawbacks as it decreases the effectiveness of caching resolutions at the recursive resolvers,
increases the total DNS resolution traffic,
and raises a privacy concern of exposing the client's subnet.
Virtual CDN (vCDN)
Virtualization technologies are being used to deploy virtual CDNs (vCDNs) with the goal to reduce
content provider
A value-added service (VAS) is a popular telecommunications industry{{cite web, url=http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/11/prweb11284640.htm, title=Global Mobile Value Added Services (VAS) Market: Worldwide Industry Share, Investment Trends, Growth, ...
costs, and at the same time, increase elasticity and decrease service delay. With vCDNs, it is possible to avoid traditional CDN limitations, such as performance, reliability and availability since virtual caches are deployed dynamically (as virtual machines or containers) in physical servers distributed across the provider's geographical coverage. As the virtual cache placement is based on both the content type and server or end-user geographic location, the vCDNs have a significant impact on service delivery and network congestion.
Image Optimization and Delivery (Image CDNs)
In 2017, Addy Osmany of
Google
Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
started referring to software solutions that could integrate naturally with the
Responsive Web Design paradigm (with particular reference to the
element) as Image CDNs. The expression referred to the ability of a web architecture to serve multiple versions of the same image through HTTP, depending on the properties of the browser requesting it, as determined by either the browser or the server-side logic. The purpose of Image CDNs was, in Google's vision, to serve high-quality images (or, better, images perceived as high-quality by the human eye) while preserving download speed, thus contributing to a great User experience (UX).
Arguably, the ''Image CDN'' term was originally a misnomer, as neither Cloudinary nor Imgix (the examples quoted by Google in the 2017 guide by Addy Osmany) were, at the time, a CDN in the classical sense of the term. Shortly afterwards, though, several companies offered solutions that allowed developers to serve different versions of their graphical assets according to several strategies. Many of these solutions were built on top of traditional CDNs, such as Akamai, CloudFront, Fastly
Fastly is an American cloud computing services provider. It describes its network as an edge cloud platform, which is designed to help developers extend their core cloud infrastructure to the edge of the network, closer to users. The Fastly edge ...
, Edgecast
Edgecast Networks, Inc. (formerly Verizon Digital Media Services) was a subsidiary of Yahoo! Inc. and provider of content delivery network (CDN) and video streaming services. Founded in 2006, it was notable for being a self-provisioning CDN tec ...
and Cloudflare
Cloudflare, Inc. is an American content delivery network and DDoS mitigation company, founded in 2009. It primarily acts as a reverse proxy between a website's visitor and the Cloudflare customer's hosting provider. Its headquarters are in San ...
. At the same time, other solutions that already provided an image multi-serving service joined the Image CDN definition by either offering CDN functionality natively (ImageEngine) or integrating with one of the existing CDNs (Cloudinary/Akamai, Imgix/Fastly).
While providing a universally agreed-on definition of what an Image CDN is may not be possible, generally speaking, an Image CDN supports the following three components:
* A Content Delivery Network (CDN) for the fast serving of images.
* Image manipulation and optimization, either on-the-fly through URL directives, in batch mode (through manual upload of images) or fully automatic (or a combination of these).
* Device Detection (also known as Device Intelligence), i.e. the ability to determine the properties of the requesting browser and/or device through analysis of the User-Agent
In computing, a user agent is any software, acting on behalf of a user, which "retrieves, renders and facilitates end-user interaction with Web content". A user agent is therefore a special kind of software agent.
Some prominent examples of us ...
string, HTTP
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, ...
Accept headers, Client-Hints or JavaScript
JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...
.
The following table summarizes the current situation with the main software CDNs in this space:
Notable content delivery service providers
Free CDNs
* cdnjs
cdnjs is a free and open-source software (FOSS) content delivery network (CDN) hosted by Cloudflare. As of May 2021, it serves 4,013 JavaScript and CSS libraries, which are stored publicly on GitHub. It is included in millions of websites, or 12. ...
* BootstrapCDN
BootstrapCDN is a public content delivery network. It enables users to load CSS, JavaScript and images remotely from its servers. Used by more than 7.9 million websites worldwide (including 30% of the top-10k websites), BootstrapCDN serves more t ...
* Cloudflare
Cloudflare, Inc. is an American content delivery network and DDoS mitigation company, founded in 2009. It primarily acts as a reverse proxy between a website's visitor and the Cloudflare customer's hosting provider. Its headquarters are in San ...
* JSDelivr
JSDelivr (stylized as jsDelivr) is a public content delivery network (CDN) for open-source software projects, including packages hosted on GitHub, npm, and WordPress.org. JSDelivr was created by developer Dmitriy Akulov.
As of September 2022, j ...
Traditional commercial CDNs
* Akamai Technologies
Akamai Technologies, Inc. is an American content delivery networkJ. Dilley, B. Maggs, J. Parikh, H. Prokop, R. Sitaraman, and B. Weihl. (CDN), cybersecurity, and cloud service company, providing web and Internet security services. Akamai's Inte ...
* Amazon CloudFront
Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) operated by Amazon Web Services. Content delivery networks provide a globally-distributed network of proxy servers that cache content, such as web videos or other bulky media, more locally t ...
* Aryaka
* Azure CDN
* CacheFly
CacheFly is a content delivery network (CDN) provider based in Chicago, Illinois with a 100% remote team. In 1999 CacheFly started as Downloadhosting.com for file distribution for small software developers, by CTO, Matt Levine.
The CacheFly se ...
* CDN77
* CDNetworks
Founded in 2000, CDNetworks is a full-service content delivery network (CDN) which provides technology, network infrastructure, and customer services for the delivery of Internet content and applications. The company is positioning itself as a mu ...
* CenterServ
* ChinaCache
ChinaCache ( zh, 藍汛) is a Chinese company that provides Internet content and application delivery services. It was founded in 1998 by Song Wang.
ChinaCache's network is interconnected with the dominant telecom carrier's networks (China Mobi ...
* Cloudflare
Cloudflare, Inc. is an American content delivery network and DDoS mitigation company, founded in 2009. It primarily acts as a reverse proxy between a website's visitor and the Cloudflare customer's hosting provider. Its headquarters are in San ...
* Cotendo
* EdgeCast Networks
Edgecast Networks, Inc. (formerly Verizon Digital Media Services) was a subsidiary of Yahoo! Inc. (2017–present), Yahoo! Inc. and provider of content delivery network (CDN) and video streaming services. Founded in 2006, it was notable for bein ...
* Fastly
Fastly is an American cloud computing services provider. It describes its network as an edge cloud platform, which is designed to help developers extend their core cloud infrastructure to the edge of the network, closer to users. The Fastly edge ...
* Google Cloud CDN
* HP Cloud Services
HP Cloud was a set of cloud computing services available from Hewlett-Packard that offered public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, managed private cloud and other cloud services. It was the combination of the previous HP Converged Cloud bus ...
* Incapsula
Imperva Incapsula is an American cloud-based application delivery platform. It uses a global content delivery network to provide web application security, DDoS mitigation, content caching, application delivery, load balancing and failover ser ...
* Instart
* Internap
Internap Corporation ( Nasdaq ticker symbol: INAP) is a company that sells data center and cloud computing services. The company is headquartered in Reston, Virginia, United States, and has data centers located in North America, EMEA and the ...
* LeaseWeb
* Lumen Technologies
Lumen Technologies, Inc. (formerly CenturyLink) is an American
telecommunications company headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana, that offers communications, network services, security, cloud solutions, voice, and managed services. The company is a ...
, formerly Level 3 Communications
Level 3 Communications was an American multinational telecommunications and Internet service provider company headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado. It ultimately became a part of CenturyLink (now Lumen Technologies), where Level 3 President ...
* Limelight Networks
Edgio, Inc., formerly Limelight Networks, Inc., is an American company that provides a content delivery network (CDN) service, used for delivery of digital media content and software. As of January 2023, the company's network has more than 300 ...
* MetaCDN
* NACEVI
* OnApp
* GoDaddy
GoDaddy Inc. is an American publicly traded Internet domain registrar and web hosting company headquartered in Tempe, Arizona, and incorporated in Delaware.
, GoDaddy has more than 21 million customers and over 6,600 employees worldwide. The co ...
* OVHcloud
OVH, legally OVH Groupe SAS, is a French cloud computing company which offers VPS, dedicated servers and other web services. As of 2016 OVH owned the world's largest data center in surface area. As of 2019, it was the largest hosting provide ...
* Rackspace Cloud Files
* Speedera Networks
Speedera Networks, founded in 1999, was a content delivery network (CDN) company that emerged in the late 1990s to advance technology applications for Internet communications and collaboration and became the first CDN to turn a profit. On June, 2 ...
* StackPath
StackPath is an American edge computing platform provider headquartered in Dallas, Texas. Its founding team was led by Lance Crosby, who also co-founded SoftLayer Technologies, acquired by IBM in 2013.
Acquisitions
* MaxCDN (CDN), 2016
* Stami ...
* StreamZilla
* Wangsu Science & Technology
Wangsu Science & Technology Co., Ltd. (Chinese: 网宿科技股份有限公司) is a China-based company that provides content delivery network (CDN) and Internet data center (IDC) services. It was founded in 2000 and listed on the Shenzhen Stoc ...
* Yottaa
Yottaa is a web and mobile optimization services company based in Waltham, Massachusetts. Its main product is a platform that helps with website conversions, as well as performance and security.
History
Yottaa was founded in 2009 in Boston by ...
Telco CDNs
* AT&T Inc.
* Bharti Airtel
Bharti Airtel Limited, commonly known as (d/b/a) Airtel, is an Indian multinational telecommunications services company based in New Delhi. It operates in 18 countries across South Asia and Africa, as well as the Channel Islands. Currently, ...
* Bell Canada
Bell Canada (commonly referred to as Bell) is a Canadian telecommunications company headquartered at 1 Carrefour Alexander-Graham-Bell in the borough of Verdun in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is an ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrier) in t ...
* BT Group
BT Group plc (trading as BT and formerly British Telecom) is a British multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-line, broa ...
* China Telecom
China Telecom Corp., Ltd. is a Chinese telecommunications company. It is one of the red chip listed companies of state-owned China Telecommunications Corporation. Its H shares have been traded on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong since 15 Novembe ...
* Chunghwa Telecom
Chunghwa Telecom Company, Ltd. () (, ) is the largest integrated telecom service provider in Taiwan, and the incumbent local exchange carrier of PSTN, Mobile, and broadband services in the country.
History
Chunghwa Telecom was founded as ...
* Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom AG (; short form often just Telekom, DTAG or DT; stylised as ·T·) is a German telecommunications company that is headquartered in Bonn and is the largest telecommunications provider in Europe by revenue. Deutsche Telekom was ...
* KT
* KPN
KPN (in full Koninklijke KPN N.V., also Royal KPN N.V.) is a Dutch landline and mobile telecommunications company. KPN originated from a government-run postal, telegraph and telephone service and is based in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
History Un ...
* Lumen Technologies
Lumen Technologies, Inc. (formerly CenturyLink) is an American
telecommunications company headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana, that offers communications, network services, security, cloud solutions, voice, and managed services. The company is a ...
, formerly CenturyLink
* Megafon
MegaFon (russian: МегаФон), previously known as North-West GSM, is the second largest mobile phone operator
* NTT
* Pacnet
Pacnet was a global telecommunications service provider between 2008 and 2015. It was formed from the operational merger of Asia Netcom and Pacific Internet on 8 January 2008. It was owned by a private investor group comprising Ashmore Investm ...
* PCCW
PCCW Limited (formerly known as Pacific Century CyberWorks Limited) is a Hong Kong-based information and communications technology (ICT) company.
The company is the majority owner of telecommunications company HKT Limited, and also holds a maj ...
* Qualitynet
* Singtel
Singapore Telecommunications Limited, commonly known as Singtel, is a Singaporean telecommunications conglomerate and one of the four major telcos operating in the country. The company is the largest mobile network operator in Singapore with ...
* SK Broadband
SK Broadband, Inc. , formerly known as Hanaro Telecom, is a Seoul-based telecommunications company and a wholly owned subsidiary of SK Telecom. It is one of the largest broadband Internet access providers in South Korea. Until its takeover in 200 ...
* Spark New Zealand
Spark New Zealand Limited is a New Zealand telecommunications company providing fixed-line telephone services, a mobile phone network, internet access services, and (through its Spark Digital division) ICT services to businesses. It was know ...
* Tata Communications
Tata Communications Limited (previously known as Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited) is an Indian telecommunications company. It was previously a government- owned-telecommunications service provider and under the ownership of Department of Telec ...
* Telecom Argentina
Telecom Argentina S.A. is the major local telephone company for the northern part of Argentina, including the whole of the city of Buenos Aires. Briefly known as ''Sociedad Licenciataria Norte S.A.'', it quickly changed its name, and is usually kn ...
* Telefonica
* Telenor
Telenor ASA ( or ) is a Norwegian majority state-owned multinational telecommunications company headquartered at Fornebu in Bærum, close to Oslo. It is one of the world's largest mobile telecommunications companies with operations worldwide, ...
* TeliaSonera
Telia Company AB is a Swedish multinational telecommunications company and mobile network operator present in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Telia also owns TV4 Media which includes TV4 in Sweden, MTV Oy in Fi ...
* Telin
PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia International or Telkom International, and commonly abbreviated as Telin, is an Indonesian carrier services and investment company and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Telkom Indonesia. It is an international telecom ...
* Telstra
Telstra Group Limited is an Australian telecommunications company that builds and operates telecommunications networks and markets voice, mobile, internet access, pay television and other products and services. It is a member of the S&P/ASX 20 ...
* Telus
Telus Communications Inc. (TCI) is the wholly owned principal subsidiary of Telus Corporation, a Canadian national telecommunications company that provides a wide range of telecommunications products and services including internet access, voi ...
* TIM
* Türk Telekom
Türk Telekom is a state-owned Turkish telecommunications company. Türk Telekom was separated from Turkish Post (PTT) in 1995.
Türk Telekom Group provides integrated telecommunication services for PSTN, GSM, and wide-band Internet. The Türk ...
* Verizon
Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in ...
Commercial CDNs using P2P for delivery
* BitTorrent, Inc.
Rainberry, Inc., formerly known as BitTorrent, Inc., is an American company that is responsible for the ongoing development of the BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol, as well as the ongoing development of μTorrent and BitTorrent Mainline, two c ...
* Internap
Internap Corporation ( Nasdaq ticker symbol: INAP) is a company that sells data center and cloud computing services. The company is headquartered in Reston, Virginia, United States, and has data centers located in North America, EMEA and the ...
* Pando Networks
* Rawflow {{short description, Streaming technology company
RawFlow was a provider of live p2p streaming technology that enables internet broadcasting of audio and video. The company's technology is similar to Abacast and Octoshape.
Rawflow was incorpora ...
Multi CDN
* MetaCDN
* Warpcache
In-house CDN
* Netflix
Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...
How Netflix works: the (hugely simplified) complex stuff that happens every time you hit Play
/ref>
See also
* Application software
Application may refer to:
Mathematics and computing
* Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks
** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a c ...
* Bel Air Circuit The Bel Air Circuit, more recently known as the Bel Air Digital Circuit, is an exclusive movie distribution service provided by the main Hollywood studios, offered to a group of movie executives, actors, as well as other wealthy individuals, in and ...
* Comparison of streaming media systems
This is a comparison of streaming media systems. A more complete list of streaming media systems is also available.
General
The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of streaming media systems both audio and vi ...
* Comparison of video services
The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of current, notable video hosting services. Please see the individual products' articles for further information.
General information
Basic general information about t ...
* Content delivery network interconnection
* Content delivery platform
A content delivery platform (CDP) is a software as a service (SaaS) content service, similar to a content management system (CMS), that utilizes embedded software code to deliver web content. Instead of the installation of software on client ser ...
* Data center
A data center (American English) or data centre (British English)See spelling differences. is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunic ...
* Digital television
Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an innovative advanc ...
* Dynamic site acceleration
Dynamic Site Acceleration (DSA) is a group of technologies which make the delivery of dynamic websites more efficient. Manufacturers of application delivery controllers and content delivery networks (CDNs) use a host of techniques to accelerate d ...
* Edge computing
* Internet radio
Online radio (also web radio, net radio, streaming radio, e-radio, IP radio, Internet radio) is a digital audio service transmitted via the Internet. Broadcasting on the Internet is usually referred to as webcasting since it is not transmitted ...
* Internet television
Streaming television is the digital distribution of television content, such as TV shows, as streaming media delivered over the Internet. Streaming television stands in contrast to dedicated terrestrial television delivered by over-the-air a ...
* InterPlanetary File System
The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a protocol, hypermedia and file sharing peer-to-peer network for storing and sharing data in a distributed file system. IPFS uses content-addressing to uniquely identify each file in a global namespace ...
* IPTV
Internet Protocol television (IPTV) is the delivery of television content over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. This is in contrast to delivery through traditional terrestrial, satellite, and cable television formats. Unlike downloaded media, ...
* List of music streaming services
The following is a list of on-demand music streaming services. These services offer streaming of full-length content via the Internet as a part of their service, without the listener necessarily having to purchase a file for download. This type o ...
* List of streaming media systems
A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to:
People
* List (surname)
Organizations
* List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
* SC Germania List, German rugby union ...
* Multicast
In computer networking, multicast is group communication where data transmission is addressed to a group of destination computers simultaneously. Multicast can be one-to-many or many-to-many distribution. Multicast should not be confused with ...
* NetMind NetMind Technologies was an Internet software company founded in February 1996 by Matt Freivald, Mark Richards and Alan Noble.
The company pioneered Internet change detection and notification (CDN) at a time when most companies were still focused ...
* Open Music Model
* Over-the-top content
An over-the-top (OTT) media service is a media service offered directly to viewers via the Internet. OTT bypasses cable, broadcast, and satellite television platforms: the types of companies that traditionally act as controllers or distributors ...
* P2PTV
P2PTV refers to peer-to-peer (P2P) software applications designed to redistribute video streams in real time on a P2P network; the distributed video streams are typically TV channels from all over the world but may also come from other sources. T ...
* Protection of Broadcasts and Broadcasting Organizations Treaty
The World Intellectual Property Organization's Protection of Broadcasts and Broadcasting Organizations Treaty or the Broadcast Treaty is a proposed treaty designed to afford broadcasters some control and copyright-like control over the content of ...
* Push technology
Push technology or server push is a style of Internet-based communication where the request for a given transaction is initiated by the publisher or central server. It is contrasted with pull/get, where the request for the transmission of informat ...
* Software as a service
Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software.
SaaS is con ...
* Streaming media
Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content it ...
* Webcast
A webcast is a media presentation distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers. A webcast may either be distributed live or on demand. Essentially, web ...
* Web syndication
Web syndication is a form of syndication in which content is made available from one website to other sites. Most commonly, websites are made available to provide either summaries or full renditions of a website's recently added content. The term m ...
* Web television
Streaming television is the digital distribution of television content, such as TV shows, as streaming media delivered over the Internet. Streaming television stands in contrast to dedicated terrestrial television delivered by over-the-air aer ...
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*
{{Video digital distribution platforms
Applications of distributed computing
Cloud storage
Computer networking
Digital television
Distributed algorithms
Distributed data storage
Distributed data storage systems
File sharing
File sharing networks
Film and video technology
Internet broadcasting
Internet radio
Streaming television
Multimedia
Online content distribution
Peer-to-peer computing
Peercasting
Streaming
Streaming media systems
Video hosting
Video on demand