More control over network resources: An ISP caching perspective

Management operations performed by Content Delivery Network (CDN) providers consist mainly in controlling the placement of contents at different storage locations and deciding where to serve client requests from. Configuration decisions are usually taken by using only limited information about the carrier networks, and this can adversely affect network usage. In this work we propose an approach by which ISPs can have more control over their resources. This involves the deployment of caching points within their network, which can allow them to implement their own content placement strategies. The work presented in this paper investigates lightweight strategies that can be used by the ISPs to manage the placement of contents in the various network caching locations according to user demand characteristics. The proposed strategies differ in terms of the volume and nature of the information required to determine the new caching configurations. We evaluate the performance of the proposed strategies, in terms of network resource utilization, based on a wide range of user demand profiles and we compare the obtained performance according to metrics we define to characterize the demand. The results demonstrate that the proposed metrics can provide useful indications regarding the performance one strategy can achieve over another and, as such, can be used by the ISP to improve the utilization of network resources.