OPINION
Data transit
There is another significant cost here however – that of data
transit, as these content streams traverse different networks
to get from the content source to the content consumer. The
data can make dozens of hops between someone clicking
‘play’ on Netflix and actually getting House of Cards up on
their Smart TV. These data transit costs, especially for large
content producers, aggregators or content delivery networks,
can represent a significant proportion of the cost of doing
business.
Imagine, for a moment, that you could – in real time,
see and analyse the route traffic is taking as it’s requested
from your network, on its journey to the content consumer.
Imagine then, that you can use this information to tweak
and optimise the route the data takes – to minimise costs
and/or optimise performance. It would be like having
an expert navigator selecting the best route for a roundthe-world voyage, saving you days of travel and a large
proportion of your costs.
Traffic analysis
Of course, traffic analysis from both the DNS and Routing
perspective is part art and part science. Understanding
how packets route to their destination in an optimised way
requires constant traffic analysis – especially when dealing
with content delivery, or other real-time applications.
Getting visibility and building intelligent systems that
can analyse the huge amounts of traffic passing through
systems like the DNS, and deliver an effective routing
system, requires tools and resources that understand how
these protocols and systems work. With these in place, even
organisations that don’t have the same degree of training
or skills will be able to keep pace.
DNS technology is the key to doing things: you can
analyse different types of requests received over the
network, assess the routes by which traffic flows and
in real-time, with the right technology, tweak the path
the stream takes. This will drive significant savings for
companies broadcasting their content over the web. Once
Silicon Valley’s Pied Piper team finish with their deployment
of the compression algorithm, perhaps they will get to
work helping to tackle some of the associated data transit
challenges their target customers face. Service providers,
large enterprises and content delivery networks today are
spending a lot more time looking at the potential DNS
insights could have for reducing their data transit costs, and
improving the ultimate experience of their customers. n
2 Years of Spam
Quiet Day
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