Cache as a service: Leveraging SDN to efficiently and transparently support video-on-demand on the last mile

Abstract

High quality online video streaming, both live and on-demand, has become an essential part of consumers' everyday lives. The popularity of video streaming has placed a heavy burden on the network infrastructure that now has to transfer an enormous amount of data very quickly to the end-user. To further exacerbate the situation, the Video-on-Demand (VoD) distribution paradigm uses a unicast independent flow for each user request. This results in multiple duplicate flows carrying the same video assets many times end-to-end. We present OpenCache: a highly configurable, efficient and transparent in-network caching service that aims to improve the VoD distribution efficiency by caching video assets as close to the end-user as possible. OpenCache leverages Software Defined Networking to benefit last mile environments by improving network utilisation and increasing the Quality of Experience for the end-user. Our evaluation on a pan-European OpenFlow testbed uses adaptive video streaming and demonstrates that with the use of OpenCache, the external link utilisation is reduced by 100%. Furthermore the streaming application receives better quality video and observes higher throughput, lower latency and shorter start up and buffering times.

ContentSDN: A Content-Based Transparent Proxy Architecture in Software-Defined Networking

“…Georgopoulos et al present the OpenCache; an OpenFlowassisted in-networking caching system specialized in Videoon-Demand (VoD) [15]. OpenCache consists in two basic components, the OpenCache Controller (OCC) and the OpenCache Node (OCN).…”

Learning-based approach for layered adaptive video streaming over SDN

“…Similar to [10], in this study, there is one path between the server and the clients and all video packets are sent through this path; no path selection method is defined. In [11], a network caching service based on the SDN framework is proposed for video on demand (VoD) streaming applications. In addition to caching, the network caching service also provides load balancing.…”

OpenCache: A software-defined content caching platform

“…OpenCache is an open-source content distribution platform [6] that uses SDN-based technology to provide the redirection functionality necessary for a cache to perform. An SDN-based request routing mechanism is an alternative to traditional DNS techniques, and allows the service or application (retrieving, forwarding and serving cached content for instance), and the control decisions behind the content selection and delivery process, to be tied together.…”