This is the first part in a set of documents that specifies the motivational drivers, use cases, and standards for a configuration interface to facilitate interoperability within the content delivery network (CDN) and open caching ecosystems. This document set presents a layered architecture that extends the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) CDN Interconnect (CDNi) metadata model and adds publishing layer Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to provide configuration management capabilities required by the CDN and open caching industries.