Saguna Networks announced today its work with Akamai to deliver content for mobile subscribers from 4G mobile base stations. The solution will be jointly demonstrated at 4GWorld/CTIA next week. The demonstration will show a content delivery network (CDN) operating within a mobile base station. In addition, it has been chosen as a finalist for 4G World’s ‘Best of 4G World’.
By integrating Akamai’s CDN as a server-side application running on the Saguna Content Optimization Delivery System (CODS) Open-RAN platform, the content is moved much closer to the mobile subscriber. The Saguna solution operates inside of the mobile base station and allows the Akamai CDN to cache content for delivery at the edge of the mobile network. By reducing the round-trip-time (RTT), the mobile customer has an improved user experience. This is especially true related to optimizing HTTPS content. Today this content cannot be cached using standard ‘transparent’ caching methods or optimization techniques in the mobile network.
There are many mobile network ‘edge’ CDN solutions, so how is what Saguna doing different? It is allowing for the CDN to be deployed in the RAN through the use of CODS Connect. CODS Connect is an open interface to enable CDN networks to extend into the 4G RAN.
By using its CDN-Extend product, any server-side application can operate from within the 4G RAN to bring its ‘closer is faster’ vision to reality, according to the company.
“We are very proud about working with Akamai to demonstrate the first CDN operating from the Mobile 4G Radio Access Network using Saguna CODS Open-RAN,” said Lior Fite, CEO of Saguna “Saguna CODS Open-RAN was created as an open platform that brings third-party content delivery solutions media portals into the mobile base station. Our showcase with Akamai highlights the business value and opportunity presented by Saguna’s innovative Open-RAN platform.”
There are many players around the web theorizing that LTE solves the challenge with delivering content from a traditional CDN solution because of the increased bandwidth capacity and performance. Although this could be true, why utilize all of that additional network capacity by having the traffic fill up more of your edge network to reach the traditional CDN than keep it localized? It seems like a logical solution to me to go down the path Saguna is leading the industry down.
See the full announcement here.
