Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) deliver a majority of the user-requested content on the Internet, including web pages, videos, and software downloads. A CDN server caches and serves the content requested by users. Designing caching algorithms that automatically adapt to the heterogeneity, burstiness, and non-stationary nature of real-world content requests is a major challenge and is the focus of our work. While there is much work on caching algorithms for stationary request traffic, the work on non-stationary request traffic is very limited. Consequently, most prior models are inaccurate for production CDN traffic that is non-stationary.
We propose two TTL-based caching algorithms and provide provable guarantees for content request traffic that is bursty and non-stationary. The first algorithm called d-TTL dynamically adapts a TTL parameter using a stochastic approximation approach. Given a feasible target hit rate, we show that the hit rate of d-TTL converges to its target value for a general class of bursty traffic that allows Markov dependence over time and non-stationary arrivals. The second algorithm called f-TTL uses two caches, each with its own TTL. The first-level cache adaptively filters out non-stationary traffic, while the second-level cache stores frequently-accessed stationary traffic. Given feasible targets for both the hit rate and the expected cache size, f-TTL asymptotically achieves both targets. We implement d-TTL and f-TTL and evaluate both algorithms using an extensive nine-day trace consisting of 500 million requests from a production CDN server. We show that both d-TTL and f-TTL converge to their hit rate targets with an error of about 1.3%. But, f-TTL requires a significantly smaller cache size than d-TTL to achieve the same hit rate, since it effectively filters out the non-stationary traffic for rarely-accessed objects.
TTL caching models have recently regained significant research interest, largely due to their ability to fit popular caching policies such as LRU. This paper advances the state-of-the-art analysis of TTL-based cache networks by developing two exact methods with orthogonal generality and computational complexity. The first method generalizes existing results for line networks under renewal requests to the broad class of caching policies whereby evictions are driven by stopping times. The obtained results are further generalized, using the second method, to feedforward networks with Markov arriv…
Standard Time-to-Live (TTL) cache management prescribes the storage of entire files, or possibly fractions thereof, for a given amount of time after a request. As a generalization of this approach, this work proposes the storage of a time-varying, diminishing, fraction of a requested file. Accordingly, the cache progressively evicts parts of the file over an interval of time following a request. The strategy, which is referred to as soft-TTL, is justified by the fact that traffic traces are often characterized by arrival processes that display a decreasing, but non-negligible, probability of o…
We consider Time-to-Live (TTL) caches that tag every object in cache with a specific (and possibly renewable) expiration time. State-of-the-art models for TTL caches assume zero object fetch delay, i.e., the time required to fetch a requested object that is not in cache from a different cache or the origin server. Particularly, in cache hierarchies, this delay has a significant impact on performance metrics such as the object hit probability. Recent work suggests that the impact of the object fetch delay on the cache performance will continue to increase due to the scaling mismatch between shr…
The DNS relies on caching to ensure high scalability and good performance. In optimizing caching, TTL adjustment provides a means of balancing between query load and TTL-dependent performances such as data consistency, load balancing, migration time, etc. To gain the desired balance, TTL adjustment depends on predictions of query loads under alternative TTLs. This paper proposes a model of DNS server load, which employs the uniform aggregate caching model to simplify the complexity of modeling clients' requests and their caching. A method of predicting DNS server load is developed using that m…
Most non-safety applications deployed in Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET) use vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) and I2V communications to receive various forms of content such as periodic traffic updates, advertisements from adjacent road-side units (RSUs). In case of heavy traffic on highways and urban areas, content delivery time (CDT) can be significantly affected. Increase in CDT can be attributed to high load on the RSU or high volume of broadcasted content which can flood the network. Therefore, this paper suggests a novel caching strategy to improve CDT in high traffic areas and three maj…
In-network caching is a central aspect of Information-Centric Networking (ICN). It enables the rapid distribution of content across the network, alleviating strain on content producers and reducing content delivery latencies. ICN has emerged as a promising candidate for use in the Internet of Things (IoT). However, IoT devices operate under severe constraints, most notably limited memory. This means that nodes cannot indiscriminately cache all content; instead, there is a need for a caching strategy that decides what content to cache. Furthermore, many applications in the IoT space are timesen…
This paper describes the envisioned interactions between the information and communication technology and aerospace industries to serve autonomous devices for next generation aerial parcel delivery networks. The autonomous features of fleet elements of the delivery network are enabled by the increased throughput, improved coverage, and near-user computation capabilities of vertical heterogeneous networks (VHetNets). A high altitude platform station (HAPS), located around 20~km above the ground level in a quasi-stationary manner, serves as the main enabler of the vision we present. In addition …
In this work, we study the joint optimization of edge caching and data sponsoring for a video content provider (CP), aiming at reducing the content delivery cost and increasing the CP's revenue. Specifically, we formulate the joint optimization problem as a two-stage decision problem for the CP. In Stage I, the CP determines the edge caching policy (for a relatively long time period). In Stage II, the CP decides the real-time data sponsoring strategy for each content request within the period. We first propose a Lyapunov-based online sponsoring strategy in Stage II, which reaches 90% of the of…
Internet usage has shifted from host-centric end-to-end communication to a content-centric approach mainly used for content delivery. Information Centric Networking (ICN) was proposed as a promising novel content delivery architecture. ICN includes in-network caching features at every node which has a major impact on content retrieval. For instance, the ICN efficiency depends drastically on the management of the caching resources. The management of caching resources is achieved with caching strategies. Caching strategies decide what, where and when content is stored in the network. In this pap…
-- Within the Future Internet, a new trend is foreseen with the creation of overlay networks composed of residential gateways (i.e. Home-Box), leveraging their storage and upload capacity in order to achieve scalable and cost-efficient content distribution. In this paper, we highlight an architecture of such a home-box overlay for Video On Demand (VOD) services, in cooperation with a network-aware request redirection and content caching strategy that optimize the resource usage at both network and client side to reduce the overall distribution cost. The proposed system is compared to existing …
Edge networks are promising to provide better services to users by provisioning computing and storage resources at the edge of networks. However, due to the uncertainty and diversity of user interests, content popularity, distributed network structure, cache sizes, it is challenging to decide where to place the content, and how long it should be cached. In this paper, we study the utility optimization of content placement at edge networks through timer-based (TTL) policies. We propose provably optimal distributed algorithms that operate at each network cache to maximize the overall network uti…
Blockchains enables tamper-proof, ordered logging for transactional data in a decentralized manner over open-access, overlay peer-to-peer networks. In this paper, we propose a decentralized framework of proactive caching in a hierarchical wireless network based on blockchains. We employ the blockchain-based smart contracts to construct an autonomous content caching market. In the market, the cache helpers are able to autonomously adapt their caching strategies according to the market statistics obtained from the blockchain, and the truthfulness of trustless nodes are financially enforced by sm…
The rapid proliferation of shared edge computing platforms has enabled application service providers to deploy a wide variety of services with stringent latency and high bandwidth requirements. A key advantage of these platforms is that they provide pay-as-you-go flexibility by charging clients in proportion to their resource usage through short-term contracts. This affords the client significant cost-saving opportunities, by dynamically deciding when to host its service on the platform, depending on the changing intensity of requests. A natural policy for our setting is the Time-To-Live (TTL)…
Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) generated a plethora of data prior to support various vehicle applications. Thus, a big storage and high computation platform is necessary, and this is possible with the presence of Cloud Computing (CC). However, the computation for vehicular networks at the cloud computing suffers from several drawbacks, such as latency and cost, due to the proximity issue. As a solution, the computing capability has been recently proposed at the edge of vehicular networks, which is known as Vehicle Edge Computing (VEC). This leads to other open problems for vehicles to offload and c…
Pushing popular content to cheap "helper" nodes (e.g., small cells) during off-peak hours has recently been proposed to cope with the increase in mobile data traffic. User requests can be served locally from these helper nodes, if the requested content is available in at least one of the nearby helpers. Nevertheless, the collective storage of a few nearby helper nodes does not usually suffice to achieve a high enough hit rate in practice. We propose to depart from the assumption of hard cache hits, common in existing works, and consider "soft" cache hits, where if the original content is not a…
With similarity-based content delivery, the request for a content can be satisfied by delivering a related content under a dissimilarity cost. This letter addresses the joint optimization of caching and similarity-based delivery decisions across a network so as to minimize the weighted sum of average delay and dissimilarity cost. A convergent alternate gradient descent ascent algorithm is first introduced for an offline scenario with prior knowledge of the request rates, and then extended to an online setting. Numerical results validate the advantages of the approach with respect to standard p…
Video content delivery at the wireless edge continues to be challenged by insufficient bandwidth and highly dynamic user behavior which affects both effective throughput and latency. Caching at the network edge and coded transmissions have been found to improve user performance of video content delivery. The cache at the wireless edge stations (BSs, APs) and at the users' end devices can be populated by pre-caching content or by using online caching policies. In this paper, we propose a system where content is cached at the user of a WiFi network via online caching policies, and coded delivery…
Large urban communication networks such as smart cities are an ecosystem of devices and services cooperating to address multiple issues that greatly benefit end users, cities and the environment. LinkNYC is a first-of-its-kind urban communications network aiming to replace all payphones in the five boroughs of New York City (NYC) with kiosk-like structures providing free public Wi-Fi. We consolidate these networks with standalone edge cloud devices known as cloudlets and introduce geographically distributed content delivery cloudlets (CDCs) to store popular Internet content closer to end users…
In this work, we propose a content caching and delivery strategy to maximize throughput capacity in cache-enabled wireless networks. To this end, efficient betweenness (EB), which indicates the ratio of content delivery paths passing through a node, is first defined to capture the impact of content caching and delivery on network traffic load distribution. Aided by EB, throughput capacity is shown to be upper bounded by the minimal ratio of successful delivery probability (SDP) to EB among all nodes. Through effectively matching nodes' EB with their SDP, the proposed strategy improves throughp…
In wireless caching networks, the design of the content delivery method must consider random user requests, caching states, network topology, and interference management. In this paper, we establish a general framework for content delivery in wireless caching networks without stringent assumptions that restrict the network structure, delivery link, and interference model. Based on the framework, we propose a dynamic and distributed link scheduling and power allocation scheme for content delivery that is assisted by belief-propagation (BP) algorithms. Considering content-requesting users and po…
Content caching on the edge of 5G networks is an emerging and critical feature to quench the thirst for content of future connected cars. However, the tight packaging of 5G cells, the finite storage capacity at the edge, and the need for content availability while driving motivate the need to develop smart edge caching strategies adapted to the mobility characteristics of connected cars. In this paper, we propose a scheme called RICH (RoadsIde CacHe), which optimally caches content at edge nodes where connected vehicles require it most. In particular, our scheme is designed to ensure in-order …
The reliability of current virtual reality (VR) delivery is low due to the limited resources on VR head-mounted displays (HMDs) and the transmission rate bottleneck of sub-6 GHz networks. In this paper, we propose a dual-connectivity sub-6 GHz and mmWave heterogeneous network architecture empowered by mobile edge capability. The core idea of the proposed architecture is to utilize the complementary advantages of sub-6 GHz links and mmWave links to conduct a collaborative edge resource design, which aims to improve the reliability of VR delivery. From the perspective of stochastic geometry, we …
Latency-minimization is recognized as one of the pillars of 5G network architecture design. Information-Centric Networking (ICN) appears a promising candidate technology for building an agile communication model that reduces latency through in-network caching. However, no proposal has developed so far latency-aware cache management mechanisms for ICN. In the paper, we investigate the role of latency awareness on data delivery performance in ICN and introduce LAC, a new simple, yet very effective, Latency-Aware Cache management policy. The designed mechanism leverages in a distributed fashion l…
Caching is emerging as a vital tool for alleviating the severe capacity crunch in modern content-centric wireless networks. The main idea behind caching is to store parts of popular content in end-users' memory and leverage the locally stored content to reduce peak data rates. By jointly designing content placement and delivery mechanisms, recent works have shown order-wise reduction in transmission rates in contrast to traditional methods. In this work, we consider the secure caching problem with the additional goal of minimizing information leakage to an external wiretapper. The fundamental …
Caching popular files in small base stations (SBSs) has been proved to be an effective way to reduce bandwidth pressure on the backhaul links of dense small cell networks (DSCNs). Many existing studies on cache-enabled DSCNs attempt to improve user experience by optimizing end-to-end file delivery delay. However, under practical scenarios where files (e.g., video files) have diverse quality of service requirements, energy consumption at SBSs should also be concerned from the network perspective. In this paper,we attempt to optimize these two critical metrics in cache-enabled DSCNs. Firstly, we…
This paper proposes a video delivery strategy for dynamic streaming services which maximizes time-average streaming quality under a playback delay constraint in wireless caching networks. The network where popular videos encoded by scalable video coding are already stored in randomly distributed caching nodes is considered under adaptive video streaming concepts, and distance-based interference management is investigated in this paper. In this network model, a streaming user makes delay-constrained decisions depending on stochastic network states: 1) caching node for video delivery, 2) video q…
Industrial automation deployments constitute challenging environments where moving IoT machines may produce high-definition video and other heavy sensor data during surveying and inspection operations. Transporting massive contents to the edge network infrastructure and then eventually to the remote human operator requires reliable and high-rate radio links supported by intelligent data caching and delivery mechanisms. In this work, we address the challenges of contents dissemination in characteristic factory automation scenarios by proposing to engage moving industrial machines as device-to-d…
The live streaming services have gained extreme popularity in recent years. Due to the spiky traffic patterns of live videos, utilizing the distributed edge servers to improve viewers' quality of experience (QoE) has become a common practice nowadays. Nevertheless, current client-driven content caching mechanism does not support caching beforehand from the cloud to the edge, resulting in considerable cache missing in live video delivery. State-of-the-art research generally sacrifices the liveness of delivered videos in order to deal with the above problem. In this paper, by jointly considering…
The recent surge of applications involving the use of $360^o$ video challenges mobile networks infrastructure, as $360^o$ video files are of significant size, and current delivery and edge caching architectures are unable to guarantee their timely delivery. In this paper, we investigate the problem of joint collaborative content-aware caching and delivery of $360^o$ videos in a video on demand setting. The proposed scheme takes advantage of $360^o$ video encoding in multiple tiles and layers to make fine-grained decisions regarding which tiles to cache in each Small Base Station (SBS), and whe…
In a Fog Radio Access Network (F-RAN) architecture, edge nodes (ENs), such as base stations, are equipped with limited-capacity caches, as well as with fronthaul links that can support given transmission rates from a cloud processor. Existing information-theoretic analyses of content delivery in F-RANs have focused on offline caching with separate content placement and delivery phases. In contrast, this work considers an online caching set-up, in which the set of popular files is time-varying and both cache replenishment and content delivery can take place in each time slot. The analysis is ce…
The performance of existing coded caching schemes is sensitive to the worst channel quality, a problem which is exacerbated when communicating over fading channels. In this paper, we address this limitation in the following manner: in short-term, we allow transmissions to subsets of users with good channel quality, avoiding users with fades, while in long-term we ensure fairness among users. Our online scheme combines (i) the classical decentralized coded caching scheme \cite{maddah2013decentralized} with (ii) joint scheduling and power control for the fading broadcast channel, as well as (iii…
Content caching at the edge of network is a promising technique to alleviate the burden of backhaul networks. In this paper, we consider content caching along time in a base station with limited cache capacity. As the popularity of contents may vary over time, the contents of cache need to be updated accordingly. In addition, a requested content may have a delivery deadline within which the content need to be obtained. Motivated by these, we address optimal scheduling of content caching in a time-slotted system under delivery deadline and cache capacity constraints. The objective is to minimiz…
Fog Radio Access Network (F-RAN) architectures can leverage both cloud processing and edge caching for content delivery to the users. To this end, F-RAN utilizes caches at the edge nodes (ENs) and fronthaul links connecting a cloud processor to ENs. Assuming time-invariant content popularity, existing information-theoretic analyses of content delivery in F-RANs rely on offline caching with separate content placement and delivery phases. In contrast, this work focuses on the scenario in which the set of popular content is time-varying, hence necessitating the online replenishment of the ENs' ca…
Mobile edge caching is a promising technology for the next-generation mobile networks to effectively offer service environment and cloud-storage capabilities at the edge of networks. By exploiting the storage and computing resources at the network edge, mobile edge caching can significantly reduce service latency, decrease network load, and improve user experience. On the other hand, edge caching is subject to a number of threats regarding privacy violation and security breach. In this article, we first introduce the architecture of mobile edge caching, and address the key problems regarding w…
This paper investigates the cross-layer optimization of fast video delivery and caching for minimization of the overall video delivery time in a two-hop relaying network. The half-duplex relay nodes are equipped with both a cache and a buffer which facilitate joint scheduling of fetching and delivery to exploit the channel diversity for improving the overall delivery performance. The fast delivery control is formulated as a two-stage functional non-convex optimization problem. By exploiting the underlying convex and quasi-convex structures, the problem can be solved exactly and efficiently by …
Enabling caching capabilities in dense small cell networks (DSCNs) has a direct impact on file delivery delay and power consumption. Most existing work studied these two performance metrics separately in cache-enabled DSCNs. However, file delivery delay and power consumption are coupled with each other and cannot be minimized simultaneously. In this paper, we investigate the optimal tradoff between these two performance metrics. Firstly, we formulate the joint file delivery delay and power consumption optimization (JDPO) problem where power control, user association and file placement are join…
Coded caching is a recently proposed technique that achieves significant performance gains for cache networks compared to uncoded caching schemes. However, this substantial coding gain is attained at the cost of large delivery delay, which is not tolerable in delay-sensitive applications such as video streaming. In this paper, we identify and investigate the tradeoff between the performance gain of coded caching and the delivery delay. We propose a computationally efficient caching algorithm that provides the gains of coding and respects delay constraints. The proposed algorithm achieves the o…
We propose an intelligent proactive content caching scheme to reduce the energy consumption in wireless downlink. We consider an online social network (OSN) setting where new contents are generated over time, and remain \textit{relevant} to the user for a random lifetime. Contents are downloaded to the user equipment (UE) through a time-varying wireless channel at an energy cost that depends on the channel state and the number of contents downloaded. The user accesses the OSN at random time instants, and consumes all the relevant contents. To reduce the energy consumption, we propose \textit{p…
Due to the explosive growth in multimedia traffic, the scalability of video-on-demand (VoD) services becomes increasingly important. By exploiting the potential cache ability at the client side, the performance of VoD multicast delivery can be improved through video segment pre-caching. In this paper, we address the performance limits of client caching enabled VoD schemes in wireless multicast networks with asynchronous requests. Both reactive and proactive systems are investigated. Specifically, for the reactive system where videos are transmitted on demand, we propose a joint cache allocatio…
Caching at the network edge has emerged as a viable solution for alleviating the severe capacity crunch in modern content centric wireless networks by leveraging network load-balancing in the form of localized content storage and delivery. In this work, we consider a cache-aided network where the cache storage phase is assisted by a central server and users can demand multiple files at each transmission interval. To service these demands, we consider two delivery models - $(1)$ centralized content delivery where user demands at each transmission interval are serviced by the central server via …
This paper focuses on edge caching in dense heterogeneous cellular networks (HetNets), in which small base stations (SBSs) with limited cache size store the popular contents, and massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) aided macro base stations provide wireless self-backhaul when SBSs require the non-cached contents. Our aim is to address the effects of cell load and hit probability on the successful content delivery (SCD), and present the minimum required base station density for avoiding the access overload in an arbitrary small cell and backhaul overload in an arbitrary macrocell. The…
With an ever increasing demand for the delivery of internet video service, the service providers are facing a huge challenge to deliver ultra-HD (2k/4k) video at sub-second latency. The multi-access edge computing (MEC) platform actually helps in achieving this objective by caching popular contents at the edge of cellular network. This not only reduces the delivery latency, but also the load and the cost of the backhaul links. However, MEC platforms are afflicted by constrained resources in terms of storage and processing capabilities; and centralized caching of contents may nullify the advant…
Edge caching via the placement of distributed storages throughout the network is a promising solution to reduce latency and network costs of content delivery. With the advent of the upcoming 5G future, billions of F-RAN (Fog-Radio Access Network) nodes will created and used for for the purpose of Edge Caching. Hence, the total amount of memory deployed at the edge is expected to increase 100 times. Currently, used DRAM-based caches in CDN (Content Delivery Networks) are extremely power-hungry and costly. Our purpose is to reduce the cost of ownership and recurring costs (of power consumption) …
Emerging Metaverse applications, designed to deliver highly interactive and immersive experiences that seamlessly blend physical reality and digital virtuality, are accelerating the need for distributed compute platforms with unprecedented storage, computation, and communication requirements. To this end, the integrated evolution of next-generation networks (e.g., 5G and beyond) and distributed cloud technologies (e.g., fog and mobile edge computing), have emerged as a promising paradigm to address the interaction- and resource-intensive nature of Metaverse applications. In this paper, we focu…
Blockchain is a merging technology for decentralized management and data security, which was first introduced as the core technology of cryptocurrency, e.g., Bitcoin. Since the first success in financial sector, blockchain has shown great potentials in various domains, e.g., internet of things and mobile networks. In this paper, we propose a novel blockchain-based architecture for content delivery networks (B-CDN), which exploits the advances of the blockchain technology to provide a decentralized and secure platform to connect content providers (CPs) with users. On one hand, the proposed B-CD…
In this paper we determine the delivery time for a multi-server coded caching problem when the cache size of each user is small. We propose an achievable scheme based on coded cache content placement, and employ zero-forcing techniques at the content delivery phase. Surprisingly, in contrast to previous multi-server results which were proved to be order-optimal within a multiplicative factor of 2, for the low memory regime we prove that our achievable scheme is optimal. Moreover, we compare the performance of our scheme with the uncoded solution, and show our proposal improvement over the unco…
