摘要：The existing Internet architecture has been designed for efficientcommunication but not for distribution. Since the commercializationof Internet by the 1990s it has achieved huge success and incorporatedinto virtually every aspect of modern human life. It is estimated thatthere are about 2.267 billion Internet users on December 31, 2011[1]. However, with the advances of Internet technologies we arewitnessing the reshaping of most traditional communications mediaincluding telephone, music, film and television by the Internet. Moreand more contents are distributed from content providers to manyusers. It is estimated a high 90% level of Internet traffic consists of datadisseminated to a number of users. With high-quality content suchas high definition TV to be disseminated over Internet there will behuge growth of content, which requires scalable and robust networkarchitectures to efficiently distribute over next generation Internet. Inthis article we analyze several existing network architectures deployedor proposed for future content distribution. The ideas behind thesedesigns will be highlighted and their potentials and issues will bediscussed.
