Content delivery network EdgeCast Networks has launched its OpenCDN federation platform, allowing network operators to cache customer content in markets and regions where they have no infrastructure.
The platform is an alternative to the traditional geoexpansion/network investment tradeoffs operators have struggled with.
EdgeCast also announced it has recently been granted several patents on techniques relating to CDN interconnection, broadening its intellectual property portfolio to include CDN federation.
Current participants in the EdgeCast federation include a large, tier-one North American operator as well as Pacnet, one of Asia's largest carriers.
Federation allows operators to scale better, offering the CDN capabilities of their network beyond their own regional customer base. Federation also enables content delivery from the edge server that will provide the best end-user experience, regardless of which operator owns that server.
That, in turn, allows content providers to form seamless relationships with multiple network operators and drive content deeper into more networks, said Lydia Leong, research vice president at Gartner.
"Successful federation of services will require not just technical federation capabilities, but also the facilitation of the business relationships between operators," Leong said.
EdgeCast CEO James Segil said federation is core to the company's strategy.
"We have been building and evangelizing this for years, so it's rewarding to see it working in the real world, with real production traffic and real money changing hands between operators," he said, adding that federation was "another step toward our goal of improving the performance, capacity, and flexibility of the global Internet."
For more:
- see this release
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