Challenges

“Content is King” - The availability of rich content services is creating new business opportunities for the providers of content retrieval and distribution platforms that are commonly known as Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). While in the past proprietary CDN solutions have dominated the scene, today the variety of underlying network infrastructures and end-user devices together with user demand for personalized content retrieval and delivery services is leading to the significant challenges that the mCDN project will meet. The introduction of open interfaces between the providers of services, content, networks, and CDNs along with the definition of corresponding metadata will be used in order to enable the stakeholders involved to co-operate successfully.

Project Goals
The overall objective in the mCDN project is to design seamless content delivery by focusing on interlayer interactions in order to:

• Define vendor-independent solutions for CDN components by means of open APIs with respect to mutual interlayer interaction  considering the network infrastructure, content distribution and content service layers and appropriate security aspects;
• Achieve dynamic retrieval, adaptation, and provision of services and content with respect to the current requests of a user considering his/her former behaviour, personal preferences, and his/her technical environment including end user devices, the overall CDN environment, and the network infrastructure;
• Complement such technical development with an appropriate innovation of business models for the providers of services, content, CDNs, and networks.