CDN cloud: A novel scheme for combining CDN and cloud computing

Along with the development of the network, video business has become the mainstream of the network traffic gradually. In order to improve the quality of service, many websites use the Content Delivery Network (CDN) technology to accelerate the video browsing. At the same time, cloud computing is becoming more and more popular because it can process massive data and has high scalability. In recent years, cloud computing has been applied in various fields. Both of the techniques are very promising, but they have their own drawbacks respectively: CDN is faced with lack of the IT infrastructure and insufficient storage space due to the growth of users; cloud computing's resources is highly concentrated in the cloud datacenter, so network congestion at cloud egress and latency to user become a neglected problem. This paper analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of these two technologies, and then puts forward a scheme combining CDN and cloud computing - CDN cloud. Further problems need to be concerned for CDN cloud are discussed in detail. The new system can be better applied in the video business and other applications which have high traffic. Its high scalability and load balancing mechanism make it more suitable for the development of the network. CDN cloud has a wider application prospect, and this kind of fusion is the necessary direction of future network.

I. Introduction

Along with the development of the Internet, video streaming traffic is exploding. Video traffic has been estimated to account for more than 50% of Internet traffic in United States, and it is likely to be the No.1 Internet traffic type globally [1]. In order to meet the needs of users and improve the viewing experience of users, many big video websites use content delivery network (CDN) technology to provide better quality of service. CDN is an acceleration technology by guiding the users to the nearest server. Center servers and edge servers placed in different geographic locations constitute the CDN network. There are special nodes among them implementing the load balancing mechanism. Using CDN technology can solve the network bandwidth bottleneck and response time problem of video business. CDN technology is also used in large popular websites such as baidu, sina, alibaba, etc.