Content Delivery Networks Interconnect (CDNI) BOF

This BoF (Birds Of a Feather) proposes the creation of a group which will standardize how separated Content Delivery Networks (CDN) can interconnect to each other CDNs to enable the delivery of content between the participating CDNs. The interconnection of CDNs means the exchange of content information (meta-data) between CDNs, such as which CDN offers what content and at what conditions (e.g., price, allowed regional distribution); operational information, such as log files; the exchange of content amongst CDNs and the request routing amongst CDNs. The goal is to specify the required protocol elements mainly based on existing protocols and to finalize the work within the next 18 to 24 months.

Initially, in the first 12 months the CDNI to-be WG will work on a problem  statement, use cases, framework and requirements. The actual protocol specification is planned for the 2nd year of the WG.

The BoF session was chaired by Francois Le Faucheur (Cisco) and Richard Woundy (Comcast).

• Nabil Bitar (Verizon) presented "CDN Interconnect (CDNI) Problem Space: Drivers and Enablers" (no draft, presentation only, http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/80/slides/cdni-6.pptx). This presentation laid the fundamentals of the 2 basic use cases of CDN interconnect, i.e., intra-CDN and inter-CDN. Intra-CDN refers to the interconnection of multiple CDNs under the same administrative control, such as, after the merger of prior independent companies, each owning their CDN. Inter-CDN refers to the interconnection of multiple CDNs which are not under the same administrative control, such as two operator owned CDNs. The presentation listed some key features to be developed for the CDN interconnect protocol(s).
• Gilles Bertrand (FT) presented the draft "Use Cases for Content Distribution Network Interconnection" (http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-bertrand-cdni-use-cases). This draft discusses various CDN deployment scenarios where CDN interconnecting can make sense. The authors want to merge this draft with draft-ma-cdni-publisher-use-cases.
• Kevin Ma (azukisystems) presented his view on "CDNI Video Publisher Use cases" (http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ma-cdni-publisher-use-cases). The draft discusses requirements posed from the content publisher side to a CDN interconnect solution. This includes, content license enforcement, e.g., geo-location licensing or temporal licensing, high quality video delivery support, and policy distribution mechanisms.
• Bruce Thompson (Cisco) presented "ATIS IIF Use Cases and Relevance to CDNI" (no draft, presentation only http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/80/slides/cdni-2.pptx). This presentation discussed the mapping of ATIS Content on Demand service to the CDNI architecture, as well as, how different ATIS use case could be supported by CDNI. There is interest from ATIS, as well as, from the CDNI to cooperate in the interconnection world.
• Larry Peterson (Verivue/Princeton University) presented the draft "Content Distribution Network Interconnection (CDNI) Experiments" (http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-bertrand-cdni-experiments). This draft showed how the request routing between interconnected CDNs could work by using HTTP and HTTP's 302 redirection mechanism.
• Ben Niven-Jenkins (Alcatel-Lucent/Velocix) presented the draft "Content Distribution Network Interconnection (CDNI) Problem Statement" (http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-jenkins-cdni-problem-statement). The presentation briefly discusses the reference model for CDNI and the interfaces CDNI is expected to standardize and highlights the need for having a CDNI WG in the IETF, as other standards organization are not covering the issues.
• Yiu Lee (Comcast) presented the draft "Content Distribution Network Interconnection (CDNI) Requirements" (http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-lefaucheur-cdni-requirements). The presentation listed many of the requirements out of the draft.
• Francois Le Faucheur (Cisco) presented "CDNI Work Scope Recap" (no draft, presentation only, http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/80/slides/cdni-8.pptx). This presentation just recapped what the proposed CDNI working group is intended to work on and proposed some protocols that could be used for implementing some CDNI protocols.

The session ended with a discussion of the proposed charter which is in large accepted by the attendees. Some clarifications, e.g., on privacy, were included. The final step of asking the community if there is support for such an action was positive, i.e., most of the CDNI BOF attendees were in favor of this becoming a WG.