Content Networking : Architecture, Protocols, and Practice

As the Internet has grown, so have the challenges associated with delivering static, streaming, and dynamic content to end-users. This book is unique in that it addresses the topic of content networking exclusively and comprehensively, tracing the evolution from traditional web caching to today's open and vastly more flexible architecture. With this evolutionary approach, the authors emphasize the field's most persistent concepts, principles, and mechanisms--the core information that will help you understand why and how content delivery works today, and apply that knowledge in the future.

• Focuses on the principles that will give you a deep and timely understanding of content networking.
• Offers dozens of protocol-specific examples showing how real-life Content Networks are currently designed and implemented.
• Provides extensive consideration of Content Services, including both the Internet Content Adaptation Protocol (ICAP) and Open Pluggable Edge Services (OPES).
• Examines methods for supporting time-constrained media such as streaming audio and video and real-time media such as instant messages.
• Combines the vision and rigor of a prominent researcher with the practical experience of a seasoned development engineer to provide a unique combination of theoretical depth and practical application.

Markus Hofmann is Director of Services Infrastructure Research at Bell Labs/Lucent Technologies. He received his PhD in Computer Engineering from University of Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1998 and joined Bell Labs Research the same year. Markus is known for his pioneering work on reliable multicasting over the Internet and for defining and shaping fundamental principles of content networking. He is Chair of the Open Pluggable Edge Services (OPES) Working Group in the IETF since it was chartered in 2002. More recently, Markus' work has extended into the areas of VoIP and converged communications. Markus is also on the Editorial Board of the Computer Communications Journal and has published numerous papers in the multicasting and content delivery area. His PhD thesis won the 1998 GI/KuVS Award for best PhD thesis in Germany in the area of Telecommunications, and also the 1998 FZI Doctoral Dissertation prize awarded by the German Research Center for Computer Science.

Leland Beaumont consults on quality management and product development. Prior to that, he was responsible for specification and verification of content delivery products at Lucent, including web caching and content network navigation. After graduating with highest honors from Lehigh University, he received his Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University. He has worked in the data communications product development industry for more than 30 years.