Cloud‐Based Content Delivery to Home Ecosystems

This chapter addresses the delivery of cloud‐based content to home ecosystems. It provides a broad perspective on key challenges, industry practices, and recent trends. Cloud computing is the result of several technological advances, such as virtualization and the pervasive availability of broadband network access, enabling a multitude of new services and support infrastructures. The challenges of delivering cloud services to home networks are discussed here. The chapter presents an overview of access network, mediation, and home local area network (LAN) technologies, explaining how both mutual influence and new technology trends shape their evolution. It discusses how to use device and service virtualization to improve the delivery of services to the home environment. The chapter further explains the Residential Gateway (RGW) virtualization approach that moves most of its functions to the operator infrastructure (using virtualization and private clouds).