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The increasing amount and more demanding nature of Internet content has led Amazon Web Services to add streaming capabilities to its Amazon CloudFront content-delivery network. The company said content will stream from 14 edge servers located around the world. The goal, according to Amazon, is to empower users and ease the cumbersome and inefficient procedure of downloading entire files to end user's devices.

Amazon says streaming -- in which content is viewed as it is received -- gives end users more control and reduces costs. Costs shrink because once the user stops the session, delivery ceases immediately. In traditional approaches, an entire file is downloaded -- making the cost of the operation higher.

CDNs: An Important Tool

Content-delivery services have been mainstays in the Internet infrastructure for years. The idea is that strategically placing content nearer to users will cut down on delays and network congestion and reduce costs simply by limiting the distance that data has to flow.

Initially, the goal was to provide small remote updates to large files. A CDN used by a sports site could drive efficiency, for instance, by updating scores without resending the entire game description.

Amazon CloudFront, which launched in November 2008, is a newer entrant. It currently has eight servers in the United States, four in Europe, and two in Asia, said Tal Saraf, Amazon CloudFront's general manager.

Amazon said content owners can make their content available to the streaming service by storing it in the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and triggering a simple command at the AWS Management Console or through the CloudFront application-programming interface. Saraf added that many third-party applications -- aimed at things such as encoding, decoding and managing content -- are available on a page at the CloudFront site.

Users requesting streamed content will automatically be directed to the most appropriate of...