OSP

Online Service Provider

A company that provides customer-only content to it's subscribers. Think old-school AOL, this term has broadened to include content delivery network CDN companies that provide online services for other companies, such as Akamai and Amazon's CloudFront. Most traditional OSPs offer Internet access (like an ISP).

The term online service provider has morphed into edge provider - a website, web service, web application, online content hosting or online content delivery service that customers connect to over the Internet. The difference here is "edge providers" such as Google, Amazon, Netflix and Facebook use the customer's internet service provider (ISP) to deliver content. The primary feature of edge providers is their privately maintained network that is only accessible to their subs.

NetLingo Classification: Technical Terms

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