Content Distribution Networks (CDN) promise to improve scalability and reliability while improving web-page response time for users. Many traditional CDN's have focused on serving relatively static content from existing distribution infrastructures of a service provider.

We have several research activities that are attempting to extend the capabilites of CDNs. For example, the Application Distribution research is underway to develop new techniques for serving dynamic, personalized content through CDNs by distributing functions and data. The Content Delivery Peering projects are focusing on ways to distribute content through peering agreements, rather than setting up dedicated CDNs. The Research Media Portal project seeks to efficiently distribute and cache digital video throughout the network.

Additionally, Web Performance Measurement research is helping us measure CDN performance and understand which content distribution architectures perform well under various conditions.