The Decentralization of Online Content Delivery Models

Online content delivery models have been undergoing a revolution from a historically centralized architecture to a decentralized architecture, due greatly in part to the adoption of peer based, and grid-streaming technology.

In traditional CDN and unicast distribution models the architecture is centralized, meaning the data is transmitted directly from the media servers to the users. Currently, emerging technologies such as DigiMeld's grid-streaming architecture, have been utilizing a highly decentralized model, in which video data is transmitted from user to user through an advanced grid network. The grid architecture that DigiMeld employs does not require vast amounts of expensive servers to deliver content efficiently like traditional CDN and unicast models. This feature allows DigiMeld to greatly reduce its cost to serve its streams. As an example, one Grid Control Server employed by DigiMeld can serve up to 20,000 concurrent viewers, while a traditional CDN server can only handle a mere 600 on average.

The Internet was originally designed as a highly decentralized facility, but when online content delivery models were originally adopted they became quite the opposite. Technology to deliver content via the Internet has been evolving because the realization that a decentralized architecture can be a more efficient, and cost effective solution for the distribution of rich media content. We should continue to observe the trend of decentralized models, like DigiMeld's grid-streaming architecture, becoming a popular solution to various applications in the online video delivery industry.