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Best practices and Requirements for delivering Long Tail personalized content delivery over CDN Interconnections
draft-krishnan-cdni-long-tail-03

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft whose latest revision state is "Expired".
Authors Ramki Krishnan , Hongjun Zhai , Chen Ge
Last updated 2012-09-26
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draft-krishnan-cdni-long-tail-03
CDNI                                                        R. Krishnan
Internet Draft                                   Brocade Communications
Intended status: Informational                                    M. Li         Expires: January 30  2013                                 B. Khasnabish
                                                        ZTE Corporation
                                                                  C. Ge
                                                          China Telecom
                                                     September 26, 2012

   Best practices and Requirements for delivering Long Tail personalized
   content delivery over CDN Interconnections

                  draft-krishnan-cdni-long-tail-03.txt

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Abstract

   The content desire of users is evolving from most popular to long
   tail personalized content. This document discusses the best practices
   and requirements for delivering long tail personalized content in CDN
   Interconnection scenarios.

Table of Contents

   1. Introduction...................................................3
   2. Conventions used in this document..............................3

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   3. No Caching in CDNs.............................................4
   4. Benefits of HTTP Adaptive Streaming............................6
   5. Other techniques for delivering long tail personalized content.7
   6. Acknowledgements...............................................8
   7. References.....................................................8
      7.1. Normative References......................................8
      7.2. Informative References....................................8

                1. Introduction

   Typically, the CDNI interface between CDNs is a long-haul backbone
   network where bandwidth is premium. For user content requests from
   the downstream CDN (dCDN), a cache in the dCDN addresses the CDNI
   bandwidth challenge by being able to serve the content from the dCDN
   and avoiding accessing the content from the upstream CDN (uCDN). The
   cache has limited storage space/processing power and relies on the
   fact that the same piece of content is of interest to a lot of users.

   Most popular content is of interest to a lot of users; examples are
   latest movies, latest catch-up episodes etc. A single copy of the
   content is delivered across CDNI to the cache; the content is
   delivered to multiple users from the cache. Thus, most popular
   content is very amenable to caching.

   Long tail personalized content is of interest to only a few users;
   examples are documentaries, very old movies etc. Long tail
   personalized content is typically not shared by many users and
   caching of long tail personalized content could lead to cache
   thrashing issues. Thus, long tail personalized content is not
   amenable to caching.

   This document discusses the best practices and requirements for
   delivering long tail personalized content in CDN Interconnection
   scenarios.

                2. Conventions used in this document

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].

   This document reuses the terminology defined in:

      [I-D.ietf-cdni-problem-statement-06],

      [I-D.ietf-cdni-requirements-03],

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      [I-D.ietf-cdni-framework-00], and

      [I-D.ietf-cdni-use-cases-08].

                3. No Caching in CDNs

   Long tail personalized content is typically not shared by many users
   and not amenable to caching. Avoiding caching in the CDNs has the
   following benefits 1) Better cache utilization 2) Avoid unnecessary
   HTTP redirection.

   Each CDN has a local monitoring server which monitors the end user
   content usage in the CDN. By monitoring the content usage, each CDN
   determines whether or not the content should be cached locally in the
   CDN. Through the CDNI interface, each dCDN propagates this
   information to the uCDN(s). Thus, the uCDN(s) determine the dCDNs in
   which the content should be cached/not cached. This results in the
   following CDNI metadata interface requirement and request routing
   interface changes which are described in this draft.

   An example interconnected CDN topology is depicted in Figure 1; CDN-A
   and CDN-B are uCDNs which have a relationship with the Content
   Service Provider(CSP). CDN-C, where the end users are connected, is a
   dCDN and has a local monitoring server.

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                                +-------+
                                |  CSP  |
                                +-------+
                               /         \
                      ,--,--,--./           \,--,--,--.
                   ,-'          `-.       ,-'          `-.
                  ( CDN Provider A )     ( CDN Provider B )
                   `-.  (CDN-A) ,-'       `-. (CDN-B)  ,-'
                      `--'--'--'             `--'--'--'
                             \\            //
                              \\,--,--,--.//
                             ,-'          `-.
                            ( CDN Provider C )
                             `-. (CDN-C)  ,-'
                               `--'--'--'
                                   |
                              +------------+
                              | User Agent |
                              +------------+
                           === CDN Interconnect

                Figure 1: Interconnected CDNs with one dCDN

   Metadata interface requirement

     The CDNI Metadata Distribution interface shall provide indication
     by the dCDN to the uCDN whether the content should be cached or
     not cached in the dCDN. This information should be on a per URL
     basis. The default behavior would be to cache the content in the
     dCDN

   Referring to the example in Fig. 2, Section 3 [I-D.ietf-cdni-
   framework]; it shows Operator A as the uCDN and Operator B as the
   dCDN, where the former has a relationship with a content provider and
   the latter being the best CDN to deliver content to the end-user.
   Referring to the HTTP example in Fig. 3, Section 3.2 [I-D.ietf-cdni-
   framework];

   Request routing interface changes

     Step 2: A Request Router for Operator A (which is the uCDN)
     processes the HTTP request. The HTTP URL metadata is looked up in
     a metadata database. For long tail personalized content, the
     metadata database lookup result indicates that the content should
     not be cached by the dCDN. The Request Router for Operator A
     recognizes that the end-user is best served by the uCDN without

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     any caching the in dCDN and returns a 302 redirect message with
     the URL of Operator A delivery node. The end-user proceeds to
     retrieve the data from Operator A delivery node. This is
     illustrated in Figure 2 below.

         End-User                 Operator B(dCDN)           Operator A(uCDN)
             |DNS cdn.csp.com          |                         |
             |-------------------------------------------------->|
             |                         |                         |(1)
             |IPaddr of A's Request Router                       |
             |<--------------------------------------------------|
             |                         |                         |
             |HTTP cdn.csp.com         |                         |
             |-------------------------------------------------->|
             |                         |                         |(2)
             |302 URL of Operator A delivery node                |
             |<--------------------------------------------------|
             |                         |                         |
             |DNS Operator A delivery node                       |
             |-------------------------------------------------->|
             |                         |                         |(3)
             |IPaddr of Operator A's Delivery Node               |
             |<--------------------------------------------------|
             |                    |                         |
             |Data Request             |                         |
             |-------------------------------------------------->|
             |                         |                         |(4)
             |Data Response            |                         |
             |<--------------------------------------------------|
             |                    |                         |

   Figure 2: Request Routing interface for long tail personalized content

   Logging and Auditing requirements

      Work in progress

                4. Benefits of HTTP Adaptive Streaming

   As discussed before, long tail personalized content is not amenable
   to caching. Also, there is heavy asymmetric usage of the network
   between peak and quiet hours, where the peak hour load is much higher
   than the quiet hour load. These create unique bandwidth challenges
   across CDNI.  HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS), which can adapt to

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   network congestion, is ideally suited for delivering long tail
   personalized content across interconnected CDNs.

                5. Other techniques for delivering long tail
                   personalized content

   Approach 1

   If the uCDN has a charging agreement with the dCDN that the dCDN pays
   fixed monthly money to uCDN (no matter how much traffic they exchange
   each month) and the CDN has enough storage capacity, the cache
   control of the long tail content is not that necessary, but let each
   CDN decide whether to cache the content or not locally. If the user
   request is redirected to dCDN but the dCDN does not cache the
   content, the dCDN can acquire the content from its uCDN.

   Approach 2

   If static control is desired for long tail content, the CSP can
   assign a second-level domain name for such kind of content, e.g.
   nocache.example.com/contentID, so that when this content is injected
   into CDNI system, CDN would determine whether to cache it or not
   according to this domain name.

   Approach 3

   So far, what has been discussed is streaming delivery of long tail
   personalized content. Caching in the end user device is another
   technique which can be used to address the bandwidth challenges
   created by streaming delivery of long tail personalized content over
   CDNI. This introduces a new model for long tail personalized content
   delivery. The various components of this model can be defined as
   1)End user chooses the content to watch 2) The content is downloaded
   in the background and cached in the end user device 3)End user is
   notified of content availability. This model is typically applicable
   for long form content where the overhead in managing a background
   download is justifiable.

   Caching in the end user device can have potential DRM issues which
   can be addressed using the following techniques 1) The content can be
   accessed by the end user only for playback 2) The content has a time
   expiry after which it destructs itself 3) In the case of end user
   device loss, the content destructs itself.

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                6. Acknowledgements

   The authors would like to thank Francois Le Faucheur, Kevin Ma, Jin
   Weiyi and Ben Niven-Jenkins for their input.

                7. References

7.1. Normative References

   [1]   Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
         Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [2]   Crocker, D. and Overell, P.(Editors), "Augmented BNF for Syntax
         Specifications: ABNF", RFC 2234, Internet Mail Consortium and
         Demon Internet Ltd., November 1997.

   [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
             Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC2234] Crocker, D. and Overell, P.(Editors), "Augmented BNF for
             Syntax Specifications: ABNF", RFC 2234, Internet Mail
             Consortium and Demon Internet Ltd., November 1997.

7.2. Informative References

   [I-D.ietf-cdni-framework]L. Peterson et al., "Framework for CDN
   Interconnection", April 2012.

   [I-D.ietf-cdni-problem-statement]B. Niven-Jenkins et al., "Content
   Distribution Network Interconnection (CDNI) Problem
   Statement", May 2012.

   [I-D.ietf-cdni-requirements]K. Leung et al., "Content Distribution
   Network Interconnection (CDNI) Requirements", December 2011.

   [I-D.ietf-cdni-use-cases]Bertrand, G. et al., "Use Cases for Content
   Delivery Network Interconnection", June 2012.

Authors' Addresses

   Ram Krishnan

   Brocade Communications

   San Jose, 95134, USA

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   Phone: +001-408-406-7890

   Email: ramk@brocade.com

   Mian Li

   ZTE Corporation

   Nanjing,   210012

   China

   Phone:

   Email: li.mian@zte.com.cn

   Bhumip Khasnabish

   ZTE Corporation

   New Jersey, 07960, USA

   Phone: +001-781-752-8003

   Email: bhumip.khasnabish@zteusa.com

   Chen Ge

   China Telecom

   109 West Zhongshan Ave

   Guangzhou, Tianhe District, China

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   Phone:
   Email: cheng@gsta.com

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