Improving performance on the internet

Abstract

Even though we've seen dramatic advances in the ubiquity and usefulness of the Internet over the past decade, the real growth in bandwidth-intensive Web content, rich media, and Web- and IP-based applications is just beginning. The challenges presented by this growth are many: as businesses move more of their critical functions online, and as consumer entertainment (games, movies, sports) shifts to the Internet from other broadcast media, the stresses placed on the Internet's middle mile will become increasingly apparent and detrimental. As such, we believe that the issues raised in this article and the benefits of a highly distributed approach to content delivery will only grow in importance as we collectively work to enable the Internet to scale to the requirements of the next generation of users. © 2008 ACM.