Deploying Large File Transfer on an HTTP Content Distribution Network

While HTTP-based Content Distribution Networks have been successfully used to serve Web users, several design and operational issues have prevented them from being used for the scalable and efficient transfer of large files. We show that with a small number of changes, supporting large file transfer can be efficiently handled on existing HTTP CDNs, without modifying client or server software. This approach not only reduces infrastructure and the need for resource provisioning between services, but can also improve reliability by leveraging the stability of the existing CDN to deploy this new service. We show that this approach can be implemented at low cost, and provides efficient transfers even under heavy load.