What is CDN? Learn All About Content Delivery Network

Virtual CDN concepts have been becoming increasingly more enticing as internet traffic surges on the back of increased demand from online video delivery. With services such as Netflix, Vimeo and YouTube delivering record amounts of data to their users, Akamai, the leading content delivery network (CDN) provider and Juniper Networks, a leader in network innovation, have teamed up to demonstrate an Elastic Content Delivery Network.

This virtual CDN network is designed to allow network operators to address the scalability challenges experienced during peak demand such as when new videos are released or during live streaming events. By using Akamai’s virtualised Aura Licensed CDN software and Juniper’s contrail controller for software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualisation to dynamically scale up network capacity during spikes, the technology can accommodate live broadcast events and video traffic with ease.

Virtual CDN Benefits

Instead of relying on dedicated CDN hardware, the virtual CDN runs on virtualisation platforms to virtual configure network resources allowing for easy caching capacity to be added in minutes instead of weeks, reducing the need for long lead in times and planning. Furthermore, the virtual CDN is highly distributed, enabling the efficient use of resources. The virtual CDN is operated out of an OpenStack environment, which means that it can reduce the time and costs associated with adding new caching capacity to the network with ease.

Jennifer Lin, senior director product management at Juniper Networks, said of the virtual CDN demonstration that “content delivery networks are evolving to meet the needs of increasingly real-time, distributed applications and users. Overlay networks have proven to simplify and automate the delivery of application and user-centric services without the administrative overhead of traditional infrastructure approaches. By combining Akamai’s virtualised caching components with Contrail’s scale-out network service automation, the companies have created a truly elastic CDN solution to meet the emerging needs of telco clouds.”

To add to this, Anand Parikh, senior director of Business Development at Akamai commented “as a pioneer and innovator in the CDN space, Akamai has always embraced new approaches to content delivery which can help our customers provide a seamless end user experience to their subscribers. By working together with Juniper, and combining our expertise in media delivery with their expertise in NFV and SDN, we’re demonstrating how the concept of an Elastic CDN solution can meet the ever-increasing demands of multiscreen content delivery.”

As this new virtual CDN technology develops, it could prove to revolutionise the CDN space, helping customers to provide extra capacity and bandwidth for their website more quickly, easily and cheaply than ever before.