Difference between revisions of "Guides/Platform Development/Components/Content Distribution Network"
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The CDN supports two levels: names and content. The inputs to the CDN are always URIs. All URIs can respond with data directly. However, the preferred organization is to use a hash URI for direct data storage. This allows efficient storage, replication, and flexibility in the source of the data (e.g. direct from the provider, via a torrent, etc). Then, when referring to the content, for example when specifying a mesh, a human readable URI is used. This attaches some semantic meaning the URL and allows changes to be made in hierarchical resources without requiring large adjustments (for instance, changing a texture only requires pointing the name URI at a different hash URI; since the mesh refers to the named resource its hash doesn't change and so the content for the mesh remains the same but now points to the new texture). | The CDN supports two levels: names and content. The inputs to the CDN are always URIs. All URIs can respond with data directly. However, the preferred organization is to use a hash URI for direct data storage. This allows efficient storage, replication, and flexibility in the source of the data (e.g. direct from the provider, via a torrent, etc). Then, when referring to the content, for example when specifying a mesh, a human readable URI is used. This attaches some semantic meaning the URL and allows changes to be made in hierarchical resources without requiring large adjustments (for instance, changing a texture only requires pointing the name URI at a different hash URI; since the mesh refers to the named resource its hash doesn't change and so the content for the mesh remains the same but now points to the new texture). | ||
| − | The CDN should support additional features that are especially useful in this context -- attaching certain types of standard metadata, range requests, and hashes on partial data to allow for safe use of partial data for lower levels of detail | + | The CDN should support additional features that are especially useful in this context -- attaching certain types of standard metadata, range requests, and hashes on partial data to allow for safe use of partial data for lower levels of detail. |
Latest revision as of 02:19, 26 May 2012
Content Distribution Network
The content distribution network is used to store and distribute large, static, long-lived content. Some examples include meshes, textures, and object scripts. Although we can take advantage of its use in a virtual world to optimize it, the content distribution network looks very similar to existing solutions for other applications. We take advantage of this by leveraging existing solutions.
The CDN supports two levels: names and content. The inputs to the CDN are always URIs. All URIs can respond with data directly. However, the preferred organization is to use a hash URI for direct data storage. This allows efficient storage, replication, and flexibility in the source of the data (e.g. direct from the provider, via a torrent, etc). Then, when referring to the content, for example when specifying a mesh, a human readable URI is used. This attaches some semantic meaning the URL and allows changes to be made in hierarchical resources without requiring large adjustments (for instance, changing a texture only requires pointing the name URI at a different hash URI; since the mesh refers to the named resource its hash doesn't change and so the content for the mesh remains the same but now points to the new texture).
The CDN should support additional features that are especially useful in this context -- attaching certain types of standard metadata, range requests, and hashes on partial data to allow for safe use of partial data for lower levels of detail.