Abstract: One of the limitations of current content delivery networks is lack of support for environment aware content delivery. This paper first discusses the requirements of such support, and proposes a new metadata gateway based environment aware content delivery architecture. The paper discusses in some details key functions and technologies of environment aware content delivery architecture, including its APIs and control policies. Finally the paper presents an application to illustrate advantages of environment aware content delivery architecture in the context of next generation network. 16 Refs. In English.

Key words: adaptive service provisioning; environment aware adaptation; content delivery; metadata