Paper Info
Title
Characterizing the Deployment and Performance of Multi-CDNs.
Abstract
Pushing software updates to millions of geographically diverse clients is an important technical challenge for software providers. In this paper, we characterize how content delivery networks (CDNs) are used to deliver software updates of two prominent operating systems (Windows and iOS), over a span of 3 years. We leverage a data set of DNS and ping measurements from 9,000 RIPE Atlas clients, distributed across 206 countries, to understand regional and temporal trends in the use of multiple CDNs for delivering OS updates. We contrast two competing methodologies for distributing OS updates employed by Microsoft and Apple, where the majority of Microsoft clients download Windows updates from their local ISP. But, 90% of Apple clients access iOS updates from Apple's own network. We find an approximate improvement of 70 ms in the latency observed by clients in Asia and Africa when accessing content from edge caches in local ISPs. Additionally, Microsoft provides lower latencies to its clients in developing regions by directing them to Akamai's rich network of edge caches. We also observe that clients in developing regions accessing Windows updates from Level 3 get poor latencies arising from the absence of Level 3's footprint in those regions.
Year
DOI
Venue
2018
10.1145/3278532.3278548
IMC
Field
DocType
ISBN
Ping (video games),Content delivery,Software deployment,Computer science,Latency (engineering),Download,Computer network,Software,Footprint,Developing regions
Conference
978-1-4503-5619-0
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
2
0.36
0
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Rachee Singh1234.54
Arun Dunna220.70
Phillipa Gill31504114.56