Re: Content [Distribution Network] Peering (was Re: Candidate re-charter/new WG)

[Mark Nottingham <mnot@akamai.com>]

Stepping back a little bit, it might be useful to explore the relationship
between "content" (a term that has recently been used a lot, but is poorly
defined) to "resource", as used by the W3C (e.g., URI, etc.).

"Content" might be defined as the bits that are shoved around on the wire;
"Resource" is the service, and describes a higher-level concept. Anything
with a URI is a resource.

See http://www.w3.org/Architecture/Terms.html

Also, Jeff Mogul's discussion of resource/entity/variant/instance in section
three of
  http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-mogul-http-delta-07.txt
might be relevant as well.

I haven't thought deeply about this, and I'm not suggesting that we call
them "Resource Distribution Networks" (yet!), but the bandying about of
'content' without a solid definition has disturbed me for a while.



On Thu, Nov 09, 2000 at 03:08:26PM -0500, Fred Douglis wrote:
> Phil,
> 
> You make a good point: "CDN Peering" may be too specific to cover the scenario 
> you've described, unless one is generous with the definition of a CDN.
> 
> However, I think "Content Peering" is a poor term, because we're not peering 
> "content", we're peering entities that deliver content.  (This is similar to 
> the forwarding-versus-routing debate that has hit the cdn mailing list today). 
> 
> I'm not sure I have a third suggestion that I like more than these two, just 
> that I think "Content Peering" is the wrong direction to take this.  For now I 
> would be inclined to include your scenario under the CDN framework.
> 
> Fred
> 

-- 
Mark Nottingham, Research Scientist
Akamai Technologies (San Mateo, CA)