Two-Sidedness of Internet Content Delivery

The amount and importance of content is increasing in the Internet whereas the current Internet's ability to scale to the growing demand of transport capacity is unclear. Information networking featuring in-network caching has been suggested as a future networking paradigm but its market potential has not been widely studied. This paper evaluates market prospects of information networking by analyzing the current and future Internet content delivery models: the client-server model, content delivery network model, and information networking model. Value networks and two-sided markets of these content delivery models are identified in the process. The results suggest that content providers may be willing to invest in information networking due to their high willingness to pay for better than best effort content delivery. In addition, if information networking reduces off-net costs for Internet access providers significantly, they may consider investing in information networking deployment. The results are valuable in recognizing the need for further research on information networking's business models and feasibility.