A Management Framework for Service Personalization

Abstract

Content Network, also referred to as Content Distribution Network or Content Delivery Network, is an overlay network of caches and web servers between content providers’ origin servers and end users. It allows content providers to move content closer to end users thereby improving content availability and user access latencies. Recently, value-added content delivery has become both economically and technologically feasible with the advent of last-mile broadband access. Of particular interest is Service Personalization that refers to the process of delivering personalized services, that operate on and provide value addition to the basic content based on end-user service and device profile information. Examples of personalized services include virus scanning, content adaptation based on subscriber bandwidth and device capability, request and content filtering, and localization services. In this paper, we propose a framework for managing service personalization in a content network. We believe such a service management framework is essential in increasing the scale and reachability of service personalization and in improving the reliability and availability of content services. The framework builds on the IETF-proposed OPES (Open Pluggable Edge Services) model by adding two components, namely, a Service Manager and an Authorization Server, to automate the service personalization process. The service manager is involved in all phases of service personalization management including subscriber management, authorization of content service requests, service layer fault management, and service layer accounting. The authorization server, on the other hand, collects and maintains subscriber profile, generates accounting records and performs service authorization for end-users.KeywordsService ManagementContent NetworkService PersonalizationSubscriber ManagementOpen Pluggable Edge ServicesContent Services Network