Content delivery alliance to set up peering

Hoping to make today's content delivery networks compatible, Cisco and a slew of service providers last week formed The Content Alliance.

The group will develop open standards and protocols to support new content network services and technologies such as content peering, which lets the content delivery networks of multiple service providers work together.

For users, content peering means faster Web and e-commerce site performance because content can be delivered from devices closest to surfers. Peering also eases the work of network managers because they can work with a single service provider but gain the reach of combined peered networks.

The Content Alliance includes Cable & Wireless, Digital Island, Exodus, Genuity, Global Center, Mirror Image Internet, NaviSite, PSINet and ServInt, as well as Network Appliance. Content delivery pioneer Akamai Technologies is not currently a member.

Observers say content peering is an inevitable consequence of the demand for simpler and more reliable services - a job that requires service provider cooperation.

"What we are seeing is the migration back to a distributed architecture," says Gartner Group/ Dataquest analyst Eric Thompson. "You want to put content as close to end users as possible, and in order to do that you have to get content in the countries or regions where those users are," he says.

The Content Alliance is also developing standards to bill across multiple content delivery networks.

The alliance plans to test and endorse a content peering standard and submit the draft standard to the Internet Engineering Task Force later this year.

As part of its content delivery strategy, Cisco also announced products aimed at content delivery network providers. Those products, which will be available by October, include content distribution management appliances and routers.

Cisco: www.cisco.com