On the Optimality of 0–1 Data Placement in Cache Networks

Considering cache enabled networks, optimal content placement minimizing the total cost of communication in such networks is studied, leading to a surprising fundamental 0-1 law for non-redundant cache placement strategies, where the total cache sizes associated with each file does not exceed the file size. In other words, for such strategies, we prove that any non-redundant cache placement strategy can be transformed, with no additional cost, to a strategy in which at every node, each file is either cached completely or not cached at all. Moreover, we obtain a sufficient condition under which the optimal cache placement strategy is in fact non-redundant. This result together with the 0-1 law reveals that situations exist, where optimal content placement is achieved just by uncoded placement of whole files in caches.