Re: CDNP naming

["Abbie Barbir" <abbieb@nortelnetworks.com>]

good post, please see my remarks below.

Phil Rzewski wrote:

> Now, doing a meticulous reading of [draft-day-cdnp-model-02], I get
> the impression that perhaps there's an attempt to categorize Access
> Provider cache deployments as being a degenerate form of CDN, but I
> think this might be a mistake because it would create a disconnect
> between industry terminology (which was established first) and
> standards terminology.
> -----

I do agree with you here.  I think we should be setting the terms right
from the start. This should be done even if we spend some time on it in
the BOF.
In a previous post, I did raise the point of having QOS of peered
networks. This stems from the fact that not all CDNs are created
equally.

> I'll try to pick apart each term:
>
> "CDN":
> As I had stated previously, I am nervous by the fact that industry has
> already defined the term CDN quite strongly. I'll name names to make
> this perfectly clear: Networks operated by Akamai and Digital Island
> have most surely come to be known as CDNs... I hope nobody from
> Akamai, Digital Island, industry analysts, or anyone else would
> dispute that. Meanwhile, networks operated by AOL and Prodigy most
> certainly are not currently known as CDNs... and I have a sense that
> people from those companies, industry analysts, and others would like
> to avoid creating any confusion around that. I'm particularly
> sensitive to this one because, as the day comes when a formal name
> might  be assigned to an IETF WG, I fear that a WG with "CDN" in the
> title would imply either: 1) The group only would work on topics
> relevant to networks that are today known as CDNs, or, 2) The group
> would work on topics relevant to multiple types of peered content
> networks, and would therefore be on a crusade to redefine the term
> "CDN". I would personally like to avoid seeing either of these.
>
> Mark Day mentioned to me that this group originally titled their work
> as being in "Content Peering", but switched to "CDN Peering" for
> reasons like the ones that Fred Douglis stated. However, as he pointed
> out jokingly, nobody's ever 100% sure if the "D" in CDN stands for
> "Delivery" or "Distribution". Indeed, to take this a step further, the
> CDNP drafts talk about peering of entities that, say, only do
> Accounting. So they're not doing any "D" of either kind... but I do
> think those accounting entities certainly belong in the drafts.
>

Here I may add  (in a joking manner) that the "D" might also stand for
Delay.  This is because the current proposed senarios for direction are
not content aware. The peered networks are basically directing requests
to some surrogates hoping that it best suits the client and crossing
their fingures that the surrogate has the requested data.

The point here, is removing the "D" in the name would not be such a bad
idea.


> - Rather than just say "Content", say "Content Layer". That is,
> "Content Layer Peering" or "Content Layer Internetworking". Granted,
> there's no such thing as the "Content Layer" in OSI, but I think we
> may agree that we're seeing the emergence of "overlay" technologies
> that all assume they begin life at the upper layers of the OSI stack.
> Therefore, if we consider the Content Layer as an abstract place where
> all the protocols reside that are potentially used for distribution,
> delivery, accounting, & injection of content, then Content Layer
> Peering would be the cross-network functionality of systems that
> operate in that layer.
>
> - I see a few alternatives for "CDN". My preference would be to come
> up with a more general name for the purpose of the higher-level
> drafts. Once again, dropping the "D" makes room for things like
> networks that only do Accounting. One way to do this would be to just
> use the term "Content Networks": A network that somehow "does stuff"
> with content. That way, things like ISPs' farms of forward proxies are
> also "Content Networks", and if they peer with a CDN to get content
> signals (e.g. invalidations), they're participating under the model.
> If you want to be able to cover accounting, distribution, delivery, &
> more all in one term, where's the shame in being general? OR, if you
> want to talk specifically about Content Networks that wanna do stuff
> across administrative boundaries, then you could augment the ones from
> the last bullet to make terms like "Content Layer Internetworking
> Entities", or "Content Layer Peering Entities". These seem too wordy
> to me though. I'd vote for "Content Networks".
>

Here I agree with you again.

One possibility would be the use of Conetnt Aware Internetworking.

I think by setting up the right names/criteria,  then it would be
feasible to have an umberalla working group that oversee the work of
sub-groups.
Each sub-group has very clear mission and focus.
Here, I would suggest that the discussion in BOF include the creation of
working group that handels what is called "Vertical Peering" .

regards
abbie
_____

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