What’s The OCM (And Why It’s Needed)
Once upon a time, in a conference room far, far away, some CDN folks, along with some ISPs, and a few technology providers got together to try and figure out a way to work better together. The year was 2012 and the initiative, led by Cisco, was a way to make it easier for content providers to utilize multiple CDNs and “federate” traffic amongst those CDNs. (in another conference room, far, far away). But, this was a complicated way to deal with something that is managed very easily today–a multi-CDN strategy. Of course, it simplified the business relationships. The content provider only had to deal with one CDN but the CDNs had to figure out how to split up the money (so the primary CDN had to pay all the sub-CDNs). Needless to say, it failed because of the complexity of the business relationships.
Fast forward and while content providers are comfortable with switching between CDNs (and managing those bi-lateral business relationships), ISPs are not happy. In most cases, commercial CDNs terminate on the operator’s network at the peering point. That means the ISP is responsible for moving that traffic from that peering point, through the middle mile, and down the last mile to the end-user…all without getting paid for delivering those specific bits. The latest iteration of this fight, happening in 2020 (), SK Telecom claimed that Netflix should pay for increased traffic and network maintenance. , it raised a very real question that was also taken up by the EU–”how does the ISP get compensated for content delivery”? (Although apparently the initiative, , while not available today, is rebranding sometime soon) While some of the biggest access networks in the world (Comcast, Verizon, Telefonica, Orange) have begun to build out and market their own CDNs to content providers, that just creates more complexity. If CPs contract directly with those access networks to improve on-net delivery of their content, it’s just another bi-lateral relationship that needs to be managed (and new SLAs). But more CDNs creates more complexity, and not just with business relationships–switching between CDNs can be complicated and involve a lot of bespoke technology which introduces operational challenges for ensuring viewers get the best content delivery.
The ideal situation is one in which CPs, CDNs, and ISPs can work out business relationships together, sharing in revenue and cost, while ensuring seamless and transparent cooperation so that the best network is used to ensure the best possible end-user experience with the content delivery.
But in 2012, the technologies necessary to make this happen didn’t exist. Today, that’s all changed.
A Convergence of Technology To Enable More Than Just CDN Federation
Let’s be real.
Anything that makes complicated business and technology relationships easier is welcomed by everyone. I mean that’s the heart of automation and AI. So the CDN Federation was a great idea. It was intended to simplify everything. But the components to make it happen just didn’t exist in a way that was implementable (or at all in the case of codifying business relationships and settlement of work accomplished). Let’s take a look at the three components that were needed: seamless interconnection between networks, a standard way to shift traffic between networks, and a more trusted way to engage and settle bi-lateral business relationships.
Seamless Interconnection Between Networks
One of the biggest issues with CDNs communicating to each other, such as what was proposed in the Cisco CDN Federation proposal, is the lack of a standard set of interfaces. The IETF’s CDNi was created just for that purpose — to help CDNs communicate with one another. But as the idea of CDN Federation died and CDN switching rose, CDNi kind of, well, petered out. Until Open Caching.
The idea behind Open Caching, developed by the Streaming Video Technology Alliance, was to address the operational gaps in CDNi. And while a lot of Open Caching definitions you might find on the Internet speaks to Open Caching enabling ISPs to build their own CDNs, Open Caching really just enables CDNs, whether operated by a commercial provider, a streaming platform operator, or an ISP, to communicate better, to be included into a larger, more interconnected network of CDNs just like CDN Federation. Of course, the Open Caching specifications are technical and don’t address the elephant in the room, the business rules, which caused CDN Federation to fail in the first place. But those specifications provided a standardized, common interface for different networks to communicate with each other and an upstream consumer, like a content provider. Open Caching solved a fundamental problem with CDN Federation by creating the possibility of a big pool of delivery networks all available to a content provider through programmatic interfaces. But Open Caching is just one part of this convergence.
A Standard Way to Shift Traffic Between Networks
The second part is content steering. While multi-CDN strategies are common today, actually carrying out the switching is often a bespoke solution. Yes, there are commercial options for CDN switching but many content providers have very unique systems and integrations that require them to build their own. Content steering, on the other hand, is an industry-wide approach to this. The two major streaming formats, DASH and HLS, both provide specifications for using a content steering server to direct traffic in near real-time (unlike client-side switching solutions which can introduce latency and undermine QoE). It’s important to note, though, that not all CPs will deliver streaming video. Shifting other kinds of traffic, like websites or software downloads, will require something different, like request routing (). Content steering did for ABR what CDNi did for all other traffic.
A More Trusted Way to Engage and Settle Bi-Lateral Business Relationships
Finally, the third part of this convergence is Web3. Remember that one of the biggest issues with the CDN Federation was handling the business relationship. But what’s the root of that issue? Trust. If there’s no way to verify that the contracted traffic delivery was actually carried out, then there’s no way to guarantee the business relationship. Blockchain solves that issue. With an immutable record and smart contracts, the bi-latteral business relationship between CDNs, CPs, and ISPs can be codified through an SLA which governs exactly how content delivery should work. By verifying delivery against the SLA, the contractor initiator (in this case, a content provider) can keep real-time tabs on performance with delivery data that cannot be changed because it’s stored in the ledger. Truth is not only established but the entire system is permissionless, not requiring a broker, middleman, or other agent to establish, or maintain, the relationship.
Welcome to the Open Capacity Marketplace
The result of this convergence is much more than the promise of CDN Federation. It creates the possibility of addressing not only content providers working simultaneously with multiple network providers (not just CDNs, but also ISPs) but also a way to codify the business relationship and automate settlement in a way that is secured and permissionless. This is the .
What Is the OCM?
The OCM is a technology platform that enables three things:
- Capacity requests. Through the platform, content providers can make requests for capacity according to their business requirements. This can include both traditional capacity, such as a commercial unicast CDN, or non-traditional capacity such as ATSC 3.0 data channels.
- Capacity selling. Capacity providers of all kinds, from commercial CDNs to broadcasters to mobile operators, can include their capacity in the marketplace. This is enabled by standard interfaces like Open Caching.
- Permissionless participation. Through the use of Blockchain (verification, smart contracts), all relationships between CPs and capacity providers happen without anyone in the middle.
Using standard interfaces, like , CPs can see capacity as one footprint when they incorporate the network details of those capacity providers they choose into their delivery architecture.
You can to get more detail on the architecture and how transactions happen within the marketplace.
So…Why OCM?
When content margins are so tight, CPs are looking for anything to save money. Reducing complexity saves money. Increasing efficiency saves money. By moving the manual process of finding, securing, and engaging with capacity networks (which may be dozens at the end of the day, especially as ISPs want their piece of the action) into an automated technology platform. This is the vision of CDN Federation…only better.
But the OCM is more than that. It’s also about giving ISPs an opportunity to participate in content delivery revenue. They are ultimately responsible for delivering the traffic because they control the last mile. Why shouldn’t they have an opportunity to capitalize on that?
Because the OCM is built on industry standards, it really is the glue to connect the three constituents — CPs, ISPs, and CDNs — together in a way that allows for future methods of delivery (and capacity types) to connect. Consider ATSC 3.0 broadcasters. As receivers become integrated in more devices, those broadcasters will want to find a way to generate revenue from that channel. But they aren’t CDN providers. They don’t have a sales staff to sell their capacity. And what about when capacity networks start incorporating multicast? Content requests could include any capacity in selected geographic regions that include multicast (which further reduces CP content delivery costs).
A Marketplace To Unite The Industry
While CIsco made a valiant effort to bring the industry together under emerging industry standards (CDNi), the technologies didn’t really exist to enable the kind of exchange they imagined. What’s more, it didn’t address what has become an even bigger issue — ISPs wanting their fair share of the revenue. Now, though, the combination of industry standards like (which continues the work of CDNi), Blockchain and smart contracts, and content steering, have provided a means by which to create a technology platform that can finally unite the industry in a way that enables multi-party, complex business relationships to be handled, and settled, in an automated fashion.
Welcome to the future of content delivery.
