Third Party Cache White Paper Jan 2013

White Paper

The Transparent Cache:

Protection from Third-Party Cache

Network Impacts January 2013

Copyright 2013 PeerApp Ltd. All rights reserved

The Transparent Cache: Protection from Third-Party Cache Network Impacts

© PeerApp Ltd. 2013 Page 2 of 6

Introduction

Global content delivery networks and some content owners are continually trying

to decrease their cost of content delivery by deploying “free” nodes directly in

operator data centers. The basic value proposition is one of mutual benefit. The

operator reduces the amount of Internet transit required to access content from

popular sources like Google, Akamai and Netflix. The content owner reduces

their cost of delivery to the operator network. Historically, this concept was

accepted because the price of bandwidth was a significant part of the operator’s

OPEX budget, but as transit prices have stabilized, operational challenges and

conflicting business models have caused many operators to rethink the

deployment of these “black box” caches in their network. This white paper will

examine the global trends in third-party cache deployment and explore current

operator strategies to minimize risk in their network and protect their business

models.

The Network Impact Operators are being pressured to grow their networks at a frenetic pace by

competitive forces and by subscribers’ insatiable desire for bandwidth. Caching

has become an effective weapon in managing subscriber growth and planning for

the future by reducing Internet transit bandwidth and increasing the quality of

content delivery for subscribers. Caches are typically placed near the Internet

connections in an operator network. Operators manage and control the

transparent caches in the network and have full visibility. Transparent caches in

the operator network are an operator-owned network element with typical SLA’s

and equipment replacement guarantees in the event of a problem.

“Third-party cache” refers to any cache that is controlled by the content owner,

for example Google Cache or Netflix Open Connect; or controlled by a global

CDN such as Akamai on behalf of the content owner. Third-party caches are

managed by the content owners and CDN’s – they are a black box to the

operator. The operator must act like the “hands and eyes” onsite for the content

distributor, but no SLA is provided on system availability and no time to repair

contracts are maintained. If there is an outage or hardware failure on the cache,

the operator is left at the discretion of the content owner for replacement time

and fixes.

Challenges

Outages and Network Management

The Internet is meant to be a fully redundant delivery mechanism for content and

operators plan on 100% uptime of their infrastructure to provide Internet access.

Networks are built with redundant router and switch infrastructure and redundant

capacity to avoid single points of failure in the network. Free third-party caches

are deployed as a node in a larger CDN that rely on CDN level redundancy.

Free third-party caches are not deployed as a redundant node typical of network

operator requirements and thus represent a single point of failure for delivery of

the content that they carry. When third-party cache outages occur, caches are

overloaded or software upgrades are required, the operator sees a spike in

Internet traffic and has no insight into the time to repair or time to restoration but

still receives the first line of support calls from customers when content is not

“Third-party cache” refers to any cache that is not controlled by the network operator, for example Google Cache, Netflix Open Connect or Akamai caches.



available or delivery quality decreases. The SLAs that operators have on every

other aspect of their network do not exist for third-party caches. The CDN still

gets content delivered through their global CDN redundancy techniques, but the

operator is left with a spike in traffic that has no commitment to repair.

Network Expansion and Growth Planning

Operators typically develop multi-year plans for network growth and investment.

They must consider the addition of new subscribers, the growth of bandwidth

allocated per subscriber and the infrastructure investments that require steps in

the network from 1 to 10 to 40 to 100Gbps and beyond. Network planning is a

complex process performed by teams of network engineers at large operators

who focus on network growth and subscriber quality. The third-party cache

brings an interesting challenge to network planning. There are no guarantees of

cache growth to meet subscriber or network demand and there are no

commitments that the operator timing for upgrade is met by the CDN operator.

This introduces a complex decision making process for transit expansion with

variables out of the operator’s control.

Conflicting business models

The most difficult challenge with third-party CDNs involves the changing value

chain in content delivery. More operators are building content delivery networks

and offering premium cloud services to their customers. Informa reports that 120

operators had some type of CDN deployed in their network in 2012, and nearly

all major network operators now offer cloud-based applications for business

customers. Operator CDNs deliver video, games, live content, e-commerce and

enterprise services – competitive to the global third-party CDN’s. Therefore, a

number of operators globally now view the free third-party cache as a competitive

product to their own CDN and cloud services, and are actively reviewing the

“free” nature of the deployment. As bandwidth prices drop, the bandwidth

savings provided by the third-party cache are outweighed by the competitive

advantage the operator is losing by allowing the cache into the network for free.

The landscape is shifting and operators are now considering the placement of

third-party caches as a corporate level decision and not a bandwidth savings

action.

Transparent Caching Solutions for Third-Party Cache Network

Impacts

Have a backup plan

Operators size their network for spikes in traffic and have agreements in place with Internet transit providers to account for those circumstances. Operators must also account for third-party cache outages in their planning. A failure of the third-party cache will result in a traffic increase for the duration of the outage and since there is no SLA in place for a time to repair, the operator can incur significant charges.

Operators deploy PeerApp’s UltraBand transparent cache to improve quality of experience for subscribers and to reduce network costs. However, UltraBand can also serve as a built-in backup solution for third-party cache outages. When a third-party cache fails, the traffic is routed directly to the Internet. The

When third-party caches fail, outages occur or software upgrades are required, the operator sees a spike in Internet traffic and has no insight into the time to repair or time to restoration but still receives the first line of support calls from customers when content is not available or delivery quality decreases.



UltraBand sees all the traffic routed to the Internet and automatically detects, caches and serves popular content.

Figure 1: Transparent Cache as Backup for Third-Party Cache Failure

Content is cached and served from the transparent cache without any changes to network configuration and routing or impact to customers.

Case Study #1: Transparent Cache as Backup for Third-Party Cache Failure

The timing could not have been worse for a cache outage for an EMEA operator. It was a peak holiday season with traffic loads at their highest point in a year. The operator counted on the third-party cache in their network to deliver multiple Gbps of bandwidth to their subscribers. The third-party cache failed and failure routing initiated across the network as configurations were updated across the infrastructure. The operator was immediately forced to try to troubleshoot a problem over which they had no control. They did not own the hardware, they did not own the service and they had no escalation SLA.

Fortunately, the operator was able to manage the impact of the outage with a solution that they did own and control – their PeerApp UltraBand transparent cache. The re-routing of the network traffic allowed subscriber requests to pass through the transparent cache that was sized to effectively handle any subscriber traffic in the network. The cache automatically detected the popular content being requested by the users and served almost half of the subscriber requests from cache. Subscribers did not notice a decrease in quality and the operator was able to avoid significant capacity overage charges on their international transit. The operator remarked that the situation took over one week to resolve and without the transparent cache in the network, the subscriber impact would have been significant.

Case Study #2: Transparent Cache Handling Peak Traffic Load

An operator in Latin America with over one million broadband subscribers leverages multiple caches in their network. They have seen tremendous subscriber and traffic growth over the past three years and invested millions in their infrastructure to offer a high quality of experience to their subscribers. The initial deployment of the third-party cache gave the operator immediate benefit. However, the subsequent growth of the subscriber base has left the operator’s network growth outpacing the third-party cache’s expansion. This has caused the capacity of the third-party cache to be reached on a daily basis. Overflow traffic must be served across the general Internet.

“When the third-party cache begins to redirect traffic across the Internet transit to manage excess requests, the transparent cache seamlessly identifies the popular traffic and serves it to subscribers.”

Latin American Operator



The operator relies on their transparent caching infrastructure to offload the network from the overflow traffic network-wide. When the third-party cache begins to redirect traffic across the Internet transit to manage excess requests, the transparent cache seamlessly identifies the popular traffic and serves it to subscribers. There are no daily changes to the network, routes to update or maintenance windows to schedule. Subscribers receive the highest quality of experience for all popular content from the transparent cache.

Move to the edge

A number of operators are deploying third-party caches in their data centers close to Internet transit access. This maximizes the OPEX savings they can achieve from the third-party cache. As operators gain operational experience with the third-party caches and begin to expand their network, they are more frequently moving their transparent caching solution from the same facility as these third-party caches toward subscribers in their network. Typical transparent cache deployments today are located at the BRAS/CMTS/metro level in an operator network.

Figure 2: Transparent Caching at the Network Edge

The transparent cache at the network edge provides a major savings in CAPEX

for the operator as they increase the capacity of their network, number of

subscribers, and migrate their equipment from 1Gbps to 10Gbps to 40Gbps and

up. The edge cache can also provide increased visibility to the traffic on the

network, even if it is being served from a third-party cache. A 40% saving from

the transparent cache can translate into at least an 18-month deferral in

infrastructure upgrades and it offers the highest level of quality with the most

popular traffic being served from the closest location to subscribers possible.

Transparent Caching Value

UltraBand has the broadest content support in the industry including many video

formats, HTTP and peer-to-peer file sharing, software update services and more.

UltraBand is fully transparent, and because it self-adapts to the traffic mix in real

time, it requires little or no ongoing configuration.

UltraBand provides carrier grade availability and implements redundancy across

the entire solution. Telecommunications grade hardware, redundant features

and a fault tolerant architecture are cornerstone features of the UltraBand that is

built and designed from the ground up as an operator solution. UltraBand is the

most widely deployed transparent caching technology, with installations at over

280 network operators around the world.



Conclusions

Bandwidth is growing at an alarming rate and operators are carefully planning for

subscriber growth as the demand increases. Operators have seen third-party

caches as one tool with which to mitigate the growth in Internet bandwidth

requirements while improving the delivery of the third-party cache owner’s

content. However, because third-party caches ultimately serve the interest of the

content owner, they can have unintended but adverse effects on the operator

network. In some cases the third-party cache is even a platform for services that

compete with the operator’s own. The impact of third-party caches are being

assessed beyond the network savings aspects and the mutual benefit is

decreasing as the delivery environment becomes more competitive.

Transparent caches serve the interest of the network operator, and are fully in

the network operator’s control. As such the transparent cache can provide a

“safety valve” that shields the operator from problems caused by third-party

caches. Increasingly, operators are seeing the intelligent deployment of

transparent caches as an effective means to circumvent problems introduced by

third-party caches

About PeerApp Ltd.

PeerApp enables network operators to meet the exploding user demand for over-the-top multimedia and data

content. Our award-winning UltraBand multiservice transparent caching platform enhances subscribers’ quality of

experience, improves network efficiency and optimizes content delivery networks by delivering both managed and

unmanaged video, audio, file-sharing, software updates, and peer-to-peer traffic from the network edge. PeerApp is

the acknowledged leader in transparent caching, with systems commercially deployed by hundreds of operators

worldwide. PeerApp is headquartered in Newton, Massachusetts, USA. For more information, visit

www.peerapp.com.

Copyright 2013 PeerApp, Ltd. PeerApp, UltraBand, UBView, UBInsight, UBWeb and their respective logos are trademarks of PeerApp Ltd. All other

trademarks, logos and copyrights are the property of their respective owners. The information in this document is believed to be accurate in all aspects

at the time of publication and is subject to change without notice. Not all features are available or standard on all models. PeerApp Ltd. is not liable for

any errors that appear in this document.

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Documents

Third Party Cache White Paper Jan 2013