Flexible and efficient CDNs are critical to facilitate content distribution in 5G+ architectures. Current CDNs suffer from inefficient request mapping based on DNS redirection, and inefficient content distribution from origin to edge servers, through content reflection. We proposes a novel, flexible CDN architecture that removes the need for DNS-based mapping and content reflection. Instead, requests to from the CDN are treated as service transactions in the network, which utilises a routing function embraced from emerging research in Information-Centric Networks (ICN) to route edge-to-edge transactions to the true nearest service point. The same function is utilized to establish path-based flows over a fast forwarding substrate; thereby, eliminating the need for IP routing between service points within a single domain, and potentially at peering points with other domains. We model our architecture and formulate the resource placement problem as a variance of the K-center problem. To address the problem, we propose a greedy algorithm, Swing, that balances the placement of service points between highly and poorly connected nodes. We evaluate the efficiency of our architecture in utilising the CDN and network resources through Monte Carlo simulations that explore a range of K values. Moreover, we compare the goodness of the placement solutions provided by Swing with those provided by Largest First and Closest First Algorithms. Evaluation results show the superiority of our fCDN solution in reducing the edge-to-edge path length and the required network resources.
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@cite_1: A large fraction of today's Internet applications are internally publish subscribe in nature; the current architecture makes it cumbersome and inept to support them. In essence, supporting efficient publish subscribe requires data-oriented naming, efficient multicast, and in-network caching. Deployment of native IP-based multicast has failed, and overlay-based multicast systems are inherently inefficient. We surmise that scalable and efficient publish subscribe will require substantial architectural changes, such as moving from endpoint-oriented systems to information-centric architectures. In this paper, we propose a novel multicast forwarding fabric, suitable for large-scale topic-based publish subscribe. Due to very simple forwarding decisions and small forwarding tables, the fabric may be more energy efficient than the currently used ones. To understand the limitations and potential, we provide efficiency and scalability analysis via simulations and early measurements from our two implementations. We show that the system scales up to metropolitan WAN sizes, and we discuss how to interconnect separate networks.
@cite_17: Streaming media on the Internet has experienced rapid growth over the last few years and will continue to increase in importance as broadband technologies and authoring tools continue to improve. As the Internet becomes an increasingly popular alternative to traditional communications media, Internet streaming will become a significant component of many content providers' communications strategies. Internet streaming, however, poses significant challenges for content providers, since it has significant distribution problems. Scalability, quality, reliability, and cost are all issues that have to be addressed in a successful streaming media offering. Streaming content delivery networks (streaming CDNs) attempt to provide solutions to the bottlenecks encountered by streaming applications on the Internet. However, only a small number of them has been deployed, and little is known about the internal organization of these systems. In this paper, we discuss the design choices made during the evolution of Akamai's CDN for streaming media. In particular, we look at the design choices made to ensure the network's scalability, quality of delivered content, and reliability while keeping costs low. Performance studies conducted on the evolving system indicate that our design scores highly on all of the above categories.
The architecture above loosens the tie between information and location, as it treats an IP address, FQDN or URL as services, decoupled from the location of their actuators. Hence matching supply with demand is independent from location, where the latter's awareness is limited to the TM function to create edge-to-edge paths or multicast trees. This renders the DNS service irrelevant and not required to facilitate the communication paradigm. Furthermore, the Pub Sub model is more aligned with the transport semantics of existing CDNs, which already uses a Pub Sub model in the transport overlay; particularly that of streaming CDNs @cite_17 . Forwarding in the core is enabled through fast functions (FW), such as that proposed by @cite_1 and its variant suitable for SDN @cite_0 . We utilise this architecture to propose our novel, flexible CDN (fCDN) solution in the following section. We show that by using the RV for matching supply with demand, we no longer need DNS redirects or DNS extension to provide mapping. Furthermore, the network is natively supporting multicast, thereby eliminating the need for content splitters.