ICICD: An Efficient Content Distribution Architecture in Mobile Cellular Network

With the recent proliferation of powerful mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablets, data traffic on mobile networks is growing explosively. To cope with the challenges brought by the explosive growth of mobile traffic, mobile network operators tend to deploy and operate their own content distribution system within their existing network infrastructure. In this paper, we present a novel content distribution architecture called ISP-Controlled In-network Content Distribution (ICICD) to improve the content delivery performance in mobile network, which benefits from content request aggregation, hybrid cache decision mechanism, distributed load balancing, and seamless mobility support. Content request aggregation is used to decrease duplicate transmission. Hybrid cache decision mechanism enables the ICICD to cache content more efficiently. Distributed load balancing is able to ensure the overall performance and reliability of the content distribution architecture. Seamless mobility support function enables service continuity when mobile users move from one eNodeB to another. In this paper, we first give a detailed description about the key components of the ICICD architecture and then discuss a number of challenges in deploying the proposed ICICD architecture. Finally, simulation results are presented to show the performance and benefits of the proposed mobile content distribution architecture.