Performance and Availability Benefits of Global Overlay Routing

There have been several inflection points in human history where an innovation changed every aspect of human life in a fundamental and irreversible manner. There is no doubt that we are now in the midst of a new inflection point: the Internet revolution. However, if the Internet is to realize its promise of being the next revolutionary global communication medium, we need to achieve the five grand challenges that this technology offers: perfect availability , high performance, “infinite” scalability , complete security , and, last but not the least, affordable cost . As the Internet was never designed to be a mission-critical communication medium, it is perhaps not surprising that it does not provide much of what we require from it today. Therefore, significant scientific and technological innovation is required to bring the Internet’s potential to fruition. Content Delivery Networks (CDNs, for short) that overlay the traditional Internet show great promise and is projected as the technology of the future for achieving these objectives.