Content Distribution Networks (CDNs) are a rapidly
growing service on the Internet. CDNs distribute and
co-locate content to be geographically close to the
users (of the content). This content mirroring 1)
reduces the load on the origin server, 2) reduces
traffic on the Internet, and 3) improves response
time to the users. For CDNs to be feasible, methods
of routing of HTTP requests originating from users
are needed. URL routers need routing tables similar
to IP routing tables in IP routers. However, the
methods used for IP routing cannot scale to URL
routing. In URL routing the number of destination
addresses (URLs) greatly exceeds the number of IP
addresses. In addition, URLs are not stable - new
ones are constantly created and old ones disappear.
The large size of URLs, their very large number, and
their dynamic nature makes URL routing a difficult
problem. This is the problem that is addressed in
this book.
growing service on the Internet. CDNs distribute and
co-locate content to be geographically close to the
users (of the content). This content mirroring 1)
reduces the load on the origin server, 2) reduces
traffic on the Internet, and 3) improves response
time to the users. For CDNs to be feasible, methods
of routing of HTTP requests originating from users
are needed. URL routers need routing tables similar
to IP routing tables in IP routers. However, the
methods used for IP routing cannot scale to URL
routing. In URL routing the number of destination
addresses (URLs) greatly exceeds the number of IP
addresses. In addition, URLs are not stable - new
ones are constantly created and old ones disappear.
The large size of URLs, their very large number, and
their dynamic nature makes URL routing a difficult
problem. This is the problem that is addressed in
this book.