Ask HN: Why isn't a content addressable cache built into the Internet?

Re:Ask HN: Why isn't a content addressable cache built into ... by tobylane on Wednesday March 02, 2011 @07:27AM (#2279310)

It's done manually, when the iPlayer was new there was talk of this being done, that you can rent servers in every exchange. BBC are really relaxed about piracy (in comparison to others) so this might not be common.

Too hard to work out what should be cached. Should BBC send the latest episode of Eastenders, Hustle, Tudors etc to every ISP before it's up for download? (Yes) Should Youtube try to guess which of its popular videos will be in demand next week? (No) Should Steam send out its new games? (Yes) You have to pick services where there aren't too many options, the iPlayer and Steam together have less than 2k items, and have a fairly predictable future demand.

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Re:Ask HN: Why isn't a content addressable cache built into ... by mckoss on Wednesday March 02, 2011 @09:26AM (#2279625)

The point of what I'm trying to describe is an adaptive edge-caching service for the Internet. Support your ISP has cache a 100GB cache in your data center (probably RAM-based - think memcache). They could just leave in the cache those chunks that have the most demand from their customers. No one needs to decide if one "show" or another is most popular. Perhaps the cache would contain the first 15 minutes of Eastenders, and the last 30 minutes of the Oscars.

That's the beauty of a system like this is that is self-optimizes w/o a complex source-to-edge protocol.

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