Utilizing Content Delivery Network in Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing has the potential to trigger a major computing model transformation for the IT industry. This paper first briefly describes the business and technical benefits Cloud Computing will bring to us and explains technical challenges to adopt Cloud Computing including the network bottlenecks. One of the solutions to address network problems in Cloud Computing is Content Delivery Network (CDN). This paper digests the basics of Akamai CDN technology. Then, the authors conduct a CDN experiment in Microsoft public cloud, Windows Azure, to demonstrate the benefits of CDN integration with the cloud. The results show significant gain in large data download by utilizing CDN in Cloud Computing. Finally, a couple of academic research ideas are summarized for future cloud CDN improvements.

I. Cloud Computing Overview

Cloud computing has become a significant technology trend in recent years. Simply put, the goal of cloud computing in its early stage is to achieve utility computing, i.e. delivery of IT as a service. Cloud computing represents the 3rd major business computing model in IT history, with mainframe computing as the 1st major model and client/server computing as the 2nd major model. Cloud computing typically involves the provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources as a service delivered over the Internet.