According to the latest research from Informa Telecoms & Media, revenue generated from the sale of CDN services will grow threefold in the five years to 2017 to reach $4.63 billion. This is on the back of a fivefold rise in global CDN traffic.
Already a variety of companies, including “pure play” CDNs (like Akamai), telecoms operators (such as BT, AT&T and Telefonica), and relative newcomers like Amazon and Google are providing commercial CDN services.
Google, for instance, already uses its own international CDN to distribute its YouTube video service and has recently ventured into the market for commercial CDN services, in providing support for NBC’s online coverage of the London 2012 Olympics.
“CDN services are purchased by a plethora of businesses and other organizations that require an online presence, including broadcasters and social networking sites, software and gaming companies, e-commerce firms, financial services institutions and government, educational and public sector bodies,” Chris Drake, senior analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, said.
In order to serve the online delivery needs of their customers, Drake added, CDNs use a range of techniques, including content caching, intelligent routing and traffic prioritization, help to mitigate problems such as network congestion, packet loss, traffic delay and jitter.
Although CDNs play an essential role in ensuring that the internet works, the deployment of network-based CDNs by telecoms operators has fueled fears that these companies could use their position to distort the so-called neutrality of the internet by prioritizing the delivery of their content and that of any other organizations willing to pay.