P2P Middleware for Extending the Reach, Scale and Functionality of Content Delivery Networks

The contribution of this paper is a novel peer-to-peer (P2P) middleware solution for extending the reach, scale and functionality of content delivery networks (CDNs). The research problem of extending legacy CDN functionality towards user-to-user content networking and enhancing the CDN quality attributes of reach and scale are addressed. The proposed P2P middleware solution extends the reach and scale of CDNs to cover the digital home environment via specialized virtual multimedia home gateways and extends the legacy CDN functionality by enabling user-generated content sharing via the P2P extended CDN infrastructure.