Multicast Service Deployment Using Information Centric Cloud-Native Network Functions

One-to-many or many-to-many communication is certainly beneficial for various network services, such as online meetings and entertainment live-streaming. The multicast paradigm is one of the most effective communication techniques for enabling such services. However, owing to its various limitations, it is not yet widely deployed to the Internet. For simplified and effective multicast service deployments, we propose Information-Centric Cloud-Native Network Function (IC-CNF), which can be used to quickly create a multicast island in which various applications will benefit from a variety of multicast functionalities. To validate the effectiveness of IC-CNF, we implemented an actual system using an emerging microservice technology, i.e., Docker and conducted real-world experiments. The experimental results show that the proposed IC-CNF significantly reduces 4K live video streaming traffic by 71.6% compared with IP-based unicast networking. Conceptually, multiple multicast islands created by IC-CNF can be deployed and connected to the Internet; thus, a wider multicast network can be organized while maintaining efficiency.