| Today, a large fraction of Internet traffic is originated by Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). To cope with the increasing demand for content CDNs, deploy massively distributed infrastructures. Moreover, to minimize their cost, content delivery networks perform their own traffic optimization by assigning end-users to their servers. Such an assignment is at large unaware of the network conditions and based on inaccurate information on the location of the end-user. Thus, users are not always assigned to the CDN servers that provide optimal end-user performance. To improve user assignment especially from a performance perspective we propose and deploy a Provider-aided Distance Information System (PaDIS). PaDIS is a novel system that allows ISPs to utilize their unique knowledge about the network conditions and user locations to better assign users to servers. Our field test results show that significant improvements in download time up to a factor of four for content offered by popular CDNs can be achieved when utilizing PaDIS. |