RESEARCH 》 INDEX :: Content Delivery Networks or Content Distribution Networks (CDN)

It is quite interesting that there are few web hosting firms are offering direct CDN based hosting services. Since it is a direct CDN based hosting, it is cheap, extremely easy or transparent CDN service. It is transparent, since each time you publish your content in the hosting web-server (origin server), it is immediately is in sync automatically in the user-serving CDN caching machines. Since the hosting vendor and the CDN vendor are all the same, it is also easy to use their services. There is no incompatibility issues, interoperability issues, and better integrated analytics, are all the benefits of CDN Hosting services.

TrafficSqueezer is an open-source WAN Optimization project. TrafficSqueezer is mainly a research project which is started around mid-2006. It is initially started as a research (or prototype) code even before it is officially registered in Sourceforge.net. But this code is just primitive user-space raw socket modules. This is later refined and a pre-alpha version is created. Followed by which Alpha release. This prototype code is moved from user-space to Linux Kernel (Kernel Space) and then the journey begin in terms of making a serious WAN Optimization solution. Once the pre-beta and beta releases are complete the mainstream series is started.

Here is the TOFFEE WAN Optimization benchmarks of the TOFFEE version: TOFFEE-1.1.28. This is the current TOFFEE development version till date (2-Jul-2016). This is a HPC TOFFEE variant meant for high-end custom build servers and high-end desktops (i.e High Performance Computing a.k.a HPC). TOFFEE built this way often needs customized kernel compilation and build such as processor specific and hardware specific tune-ups since it is highly CPU intensive (if not offloaded via Hardware Accelerator Cards).

I was doing some specific tests in my TOFFEE and TOFFEE-DataCenter (WAN optimization) scenarios such as variable upload and download speeds. And I was also doing some experiments with speedtest.net and I did some of these tests with TOFFEE-Mocha. I realized there is a case that I can introduce asymmetric constant delays so that you can get different download speed and a different upload speed. And in some cases much faster download speeds and relatively slower upload speeds.

When you build a WAN Optimization device with TOFFEE the entire packet processing (data optimization) takes place in software layer or in other words more precisely Operating System kernel space. However if you have any compression or encryption hardware accelerator hardware card the parts of the TOFFEE packet processing modules can be offloaded to hardware layer and thus improving its efficiency.

There are various techniques with which one can optimize their WAN Network Data. Any long distance communication can be considered as WAN Network. A decade ago any network connecting two countries, considered as a WAN network, and a network within a city as MAN and soon. But these days in general any long distance communication is considered as WAN Network. Such as your Mobile communication networks, Satellite networks, Space Networks (Deep space networks), Trans-Atlantic cable networks, etc.

If you want to deploy TOFFEE along with a web-proxy cache (such as Squid Proxy) you can deploy the same as shown below. TOFFEE does not cache files. TOFFEE does packet level network optimization. So if you want caching your web content you can use transparent mode web-proxy cache intercepting your WAN links. A web-proxy may reduce amount of data being processed (optimized) within these TOFFEE devices and so reduce the CPU overheads and improve its performance.

Today I completed doing all the changes which are meant for the new upcoming TOFFEE-Mocha release. I have increased the resolution and the range of all factor variables. Instead 1 to 10 range now they have a range of 1 to 30. Unlike before the value 1 means it is lot more intense (or in some cases less intense) and the uppermost value 30 means lot less intense (or in some cases lot intense).

Here is a quick demo of TOFFEE WAN Optimization optimizing MySQL Data transfers of a MySQL Client to Server Remote Access.