Why can't we bring up more CDN servers?

There are many CDN solutions out there, some of them are even open source. Why can't ISPs spin up an instance? Decentralizing CDN, or federating independently operated CDNs under a single network is not a novel idea. In 2012, Cisco piloted an initiative alongside major ISPs and mobile network operators, and technically it was marvelous according to their report. But why did it never attract content providers?

• Production Interconnection interfaces

  • The IETF CDN interconnection working group was started in 2011 by telcos and vendors, but without the participation of content providers and their real production needs. The long approval process for participation in standards development within the IETF didn’t help. It wasn’t until 2014, when Disney and Peacock banded together along with other new streaming services to create the Streaming Video Technology Alliance and the Open Caching project, that there was a way to work directly with vendors and rapidly iterate on their requirements.

• Trust dependencies for interop

  • Content providers must place large amounts of trust in public CDNs to interconnect and delegate their user traffic. A CDN node is the other “end” of HTTPS end-to-end encryption and contains sensitive credentials. Specialized tamper-proof hardware is commonly used to prevent node operators from spying on users.

  • Content providers trust CDNs to keep their services running. CDNs are forced to sign a service-level agreement (SLA) and must maintain an acceptable quality of service or face financial penalties.

• Scaling supply

  • While Open Caching within existing CDNs and ISP networks is growing, there is not nearly as much capacity to meet demand; Disney still relies on incumbents for capacity. Even though a regional CDN would be better quality, incumbents offer private wholesale rate cards to pull traffic back. Renegotiation with many vendors is currently laborious, so there needs to be a better way to discover capacity prices.

  • Additionally, vendors of OpenCaching have faced long sales cycles and deployment timelines. Few are experimenting with revshares to better align incentives, but tracking and settlement are done with spreadsheets, which isn’t exactly scalable.