Content Delivery Networks: Build or Buy
By Mont Francisco
Content delivery is being heralded as the "killer network application." By saving a second here, two seconds there, content acceleration technologies and services enable Web pages to load faster and therefore increase the chances that a user will stay at a Web site.
The marketing firm Frost & Sullivan defines content delivery as "a complete solution for distributing and delivering Web-based content closer to end users." Content delivery solutions improve Internet site performance—allowing objects to be positioned closer to the end user while minimizing load and latency to the origin servers. Well-implemented content delivery solutions can bypass Internet traffic jams, optimize bandwidth use, and reduce operating costs.
Your company or client may want to take advantage of this acceleration. But to implement it, should you subscribe to a content delivery service, build your own content delivery network (CDN), or take a third alternative that melds the two approaches?
Content delivery architecture consists of two primary technologies: intelligent wide area traffic management and caching. The combined effect of these technologies ensures that content is delivered to the user from the most appropriate location (see
Figure 1).
Intelligent Wide Area Traffic Management
To understand content delivery, you first have to understand intelligent wide area traffic management, which adds intelligence to standard DNS.
