Patent attributes
Some embodiments provide a capacity exchange whereby capacity from different content delivery networks (CDNs) can be bought, sold, and traded. The capacity exchange is part of an “Open CDN” platform. The Open CDN platform federates the independent operation of CDNs and other operators of and service providers to distributed platforms participating in the Open CDN platform so that each participant can (1) dynamically scale its capacity without incurring additional infrastructure costs, (2) expand its service into previously untapped geographic regions without physically establishing points of presence (POPs) at those geographic regions, and (3) reduce sunk costs associated with unused capacity of already deployed infrastructure by selling that unused capacity to other participants that are in need of additional capacity. The Open CDN platform includes one or more APIs for facilitating intercommunication between the federation participants by performing configuration mapping, command interoperability, traffic management, and reporting aggregation.