What is content network, functional components of content network

What is content Networking?

There are different terminology used for Content Networking such as content delivery and content distribution. The term content network is defined as a communication network that setup infrastructure components operating at Protocol Layers 4-7 .The components possess special ability to inter connect each other to create a virtual network layered above the existing packet network infrastructure.

Content Network in Detail

Word content refers to the content of a document or an object, in general what the content is about and how it communicates to the user using images, video, animations or sound. The term content means any information available to other users. Content is not limited to a particular media type, it can be in any form like it can be a text, a graphic, or video.

Content networks give the basic infrastructure to gain good support delivery of related content over the Internet through web pages, animation, graphics, sounds and video. Content Network overlay the other packet networks forming a new level at the Protocol Layer.

Content networks deploy communication components operating on protocol layers, the data that has been transported are in the form of images, text, graphics, sound and video. These data are composed into small sized data packets, which represent the basic transport unit of the underlying packet networks.

Components of Content Networks

Content networks are built up of many functional components helps to achieve the ultimate goal of providing a improved content delivery.

These components Include

Content Distribution: Moving the content from the source to end users, the services, which consist of Cache (Web) and other devices storing content in-between on behalf of the origin web server. This component has all the protocols used for transmitting the data over the network.

Request Routing component: This component service is for navigating user requests to a location best suited for retrieving the requested content. For example Web servers and Caches.

Content Processing:This component is created to suit user preferences and device capabilities. Mainly used for conversion and Modification of content requests.

Authorization, authentication and accounting (AAA) – This component helps in monitoring logging, accounting and billing of content usage. Various mechanisms are used to ensure both identity and the privileges of all parties, which are included in a transaction as well as digital rights management.

Its not necessary that a content network should contain al the above components. Web cache for improved content distribution, web switches for request routing. This is for information purpose only.

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