An efficient in‐network caching decision algorithm for Internet of things

Recently, content‐centric networking (CCN) has become one of the important technologies for enabling the future networks. Along with its recognized potentialities as a content retrieval and dissemination solution, CCN has been also recently considered as a promising architecture for the Internet of things (IoT), because of 2 main features such as named‐based routing and in‐network caching. However, IoT is characterized by challenging features: small storage capacity of resource‐constrained devices due to cost and limitation of energy and especially transient data that impose stringent requirements on the information freshness. As a consequence, the intrinsic caching mechanisms existing in CCN approach do not well suit IoT domains; hence, providing a specific caching policy at intermediate nodes is a very challenging task. This paper proposes an effective multiattribute in‐network caching decision algorithm that performs a caching strategy in CCN‐IoT network by considering a set of crucial attributes including the content store size, hop count, particularly key temporal properties like data freshness, and the node energy level. Simulation results proved that our proposed approach outperforms 2 cache management schemes (probabilistic least recently used and AlwaysCache–first in first out in terms of improving total hit rate, reducing data retrieval delay, and enhancing content reusability in IoT environment).     

Incentive edge caching in software‐defined internet of vehicles: A Stackelberg game approach

In this paper, we investigate an incentive edge caching mechanism for an internet of vehicles (IoV) system based on the paradigm of software‐defined networking (SDN). We start by proposing a distributed SDN‐based IoV architecture. Then, based on this architecture, we focus on the economic side of caching by considering competitive cache‐enablers market composed of one content provider (CP) and multiple mobile network operators (MNOs). Each MNO manages a set of cache‐enabled small base stations (SBS). The CP incites the MNOs to store its popular contents in cache‐enabled SBSs with highest access probability to enhance the satisfaction of its users. By leasing their cache‐enabled SBSs, the MNOs aim to make more monetary profit. We formulate the interaction between the CP and the MNOs, using a Stackelberg game, where the CP acts first as the leader by announcing the popular content quantity that it which to cache and fixing the caching popularity threshold, a minimum access probability under it a content cannot be cached. Then, MNOs act subsequently as followers responding by the content quantity they accept to cache and the corresponding caching price. A noncooperative subgame is formulated to model the competition between the followers on the CP's limited content quantity. We analyze the leader and the follower's optimization problems, and we prove the Stackelberg equilibrium (SE). Simulation results show that our game‐based incentive caching model achieves optimal utilities and outperforms other incentive caching mechanisms with monopoly cache‐enablers whilst enhancing 30% of the user's satisfaction and reducing the caching cost.     

Dynamic theoretic proactive caching placement game for energy saving in H‐CRAN

Edge caching is an effective feature of the next 5G network to guarantee the availability of the service content and a reduced time response for the user. However, the placement of the cache content remains an issue to fully take advantage of edge caching. In this paper, we address the proactive caching problem in Heterogeneous Cloud Radio Access Network (H‐CRAN) from a game theoretic point of view. The problem is formulated as a bargaining game where the remote radio heads (RRHs) dynamically negotiate and decide which content to cache in which RRH under energy saving and cache capacity constraints. The Pareto optimal equilibrium is proved for the cooperative game by the iterative Nash bargaining algorithm. We compare between cooperative and noncooperative proactive caching games and demonstrate how the selfishness of different players can affect the overall system performance. We also showed that our cooperative proactive caching game improves the energy consumption of 40% as compared with noncooperative game and of 68% to no‐game strategy. Moreover, the number of satisfied requests at the RRHs with the proposed cooperative proactive caching scheme is significantly increased.     

Proactive content caching by exploiting transfer learning for mobile edge computing

To address the vast multimedia traffic volume and requirements of user quality of experience in the next‐generation mobile communication system (5G), it is imperative to develop efficient content caching strategy at mobile network edges, which is deemed as a key technique for 5G. Recent advances in edge/cloud computing and machine learning facilitate efficient content caching for 5G, where mobile edge computing can be exploited to reduce service latency by equipping computation and storage capacity at the edge network. In this paper, we propose a proactive caching mechanism named learning‐based cooperative caching (LECC) strategy based on mobile edge computing architecture to reduce transmission cost while improving user quality of experience for future mobile networks. In LECC, we exploit a transfer learning‐based approach for estimating content popularity and then formulate the proactive caching optimization model. As the optimization problem is NP‐hard, we resort to a greedy algorithm for solving the cache content placement problem. Performance evaluation reveals that LECC can apparently improve content cache hit rate and decrease content delivery latency and transmission cost in comparison with known existing caching strategies.     

Coordinated caching scheme based on popular content awareness and tracking

To overcome the problems of the on-path caching schemes in the content centric networking,a coordinated caching scheme based on the node with the max betweenness value and edge node was designed.According to the topol-ogy characteristics,the popular content was identified at the node with the max betweenness value and tracked at the edge node.The on-path caching location was given by the popularity and the cache size.Simulation results show that,com-pared with the classical schemes,this scheme promotes the cache hit ratio and decreases the average hop ratio,thus en-hancing the efficiency of the cache system.     

A zone co‐operation approach for efficient caching in mobile ad hoc networks

Mobile Ad hoc NETwork (MANET) presents a constrained communication environment due to fundamental limitations of client resources, insufficient wireless bandwidth and users' frequent mobility. Caching of frequently accessed data in such environment is a potential technique that can improve the data access performance and availability. Co‐operative caching, which allows the sharing and co‐ordination of cached data among clients, can further explore the potential of the caching techniques. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme, called zone co‐operative (ZC) for caching in MANETs. In ZC scheme, one‐hop neighbours of a mobile client form a co‐operative cache zone. For a data miss in the local cache, each client first searches the data in its zone before forwarding the request to the next client that lies along routing path towards server. As a part of cache management, cache admission control and value‐based replacement policy are developed to improve the data accessibility and reduce the local cache miss ratio. An analytical study of ZC based on data popularity, node density and transmission range is also performed. Simulation experiments show that the ZC caching mechanism achieves significant improvements in cache hit ratio and average query latency in comparison with other caching strategies. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dynamic Probabilistic Caching Algorithm with Content Priorities for Content‐Centric Networks

This paper presents a caching algorithm that offers better reconstructed data quality to the requesters than a probabilistic caching scheme while maintaining comparable network performance. It decides whether an incoming data packet must be cached based on the dynamic caching probability, which is adjusted according to the priorities of content carried by the data packet, the uncertainty of content popularities, and the records of cache events in the router. The adaptation of caching probability depends on the priorities of content, the multiplication factor adaptation, and the addition factor adaptation. The multiplication factor adaptation is computed from an instantaneous cache‐hit ratio, whereas the addition factor adaptation relies on a multiplication factor, popularities of requested contents, a cache‐hit ratio, and a cache‐miss ratio. We evaluate the performance of the caching algorithm by comparing it with previous caching schemes in network simulation. The simulation results indicate that our proposed caching algorithm surpasses previous schemes in terms of data quality and is comparable in terms of network performance.     

In-network caching for energy efficiency in content-centric networking

Recently, Internet energy efficiency is paid more and more attention. New Internet architectures with more energy efficiency were proposed to promote the scalability in energy consumption. The eontent-eentrie networking （CCN） proposed a content-centric paradigm which was proven to have higher energy efficiency. Based on the energy optimization model of CCN with in-network caching, the authors derive expressions to tradeoff the caching energy and the transport energy, and then design a new energy efficiency cache scheme based on virtual round trip time （EV） in CCN. Simulation results show that the EV scheme is better than the least recently used （LRU） and popularity based cache policies on the network average energy consumption, and its average hop is also much better than LRU policy.     

大规模无线通信网络移动边缘计算和缓存研究

面向未来6G移动通信的大规模网络移动边缘计算与缓存技术,首先,介绍了大规模无线网络下移动边缘计算和缓存的架构与原理,并阐释了移动边缘计算和缓存技术在大规模无线网络中的必要性和普适性。接着,从计算卸载、边缘缓存、多维资源分配、用户关联和隐私保护这5个关键问题出发,综述和分析了移动边缘计算和缓存赋能大规模无线网络时会引入的新型关键问题以及对应的解决方案研究,并进一步指出了未来的发展趋势和研究方向。最后,针对隐私保护问题,提出了一种基于联邦学习的隐私保护方案,并通过仿真结果表明所提方案能够同时保护用户数据隐私且改善系统服务质量。     

Location‐based distributed caching for device‐to‐device communications underlaying cellular networks

Device‐to‐device (D2D) communications have been viewed as a promising data offloading solution in cellular networks because of the explosive growth of multimedia applications. Because of the nature of distributed device location, distributed caching becomes an important function of D2D communications. By taking advantage of the caching capacity of the device, in this work, we explore the device storage and file frequent reuse to realize distributed content dissemination, that is, storing contents in mobile devices (named helpers). Specifically, we first investigate the average and lower bound of helper amount by dividing the network into small areas where the nodes are within each other's communication radius. Then, optimal helper amount is derived based on average helper amount and network topology. Subsequently, a location‐based distributed helper selection scheme for distributed caching is proposed based on the given optimal helper amount. In particular, nodes are selected as helpers according to their locations and degrees, and contents are placed in the manner for maximizing total user utility. Extensive simulation results demonstrate the factors that affect the optimal helper amount and the total user utility. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Proactive caching with content‐based pricing for cooperative femtocells in two‐tier heterogeneous networks

With increase in the number of smart wireless devices, the demand for higher data rates also grows which puts immense pressure to the network. A vast majority of this demand comes from video files, and it is observed that only a few popular video files are requested more frequently during any specified time interval. Recent studies have shown that caching provides a better performance as it minimizes the network load by avoiding the fetching of same files multiple times from the server. In this paper, we propose to combine two ideas; proactive caching of files and content‐based pricing in macro‐femto heterogeneous networks. The femtocell access point (FAP) is allowed to manipulate its users' demand through content‐based pricing and serve the users' requests by proactively downloading suitable content into its cache memory which reduces the load of the femtocell. In addition, an incentive mechanism is also proposed which encourages the FAP to help macrocell users under its coverage zone by allowing access to its cached content and thereby reduces the macrocell load. The proposed content‐based pricing and proactive caching scheme for femtocells is modeled as a Stackelberg game among the macrocell base station and the FAP to jointly maximize both of their utilities. Performance analysis of the scheme is presented for a single femtocell scenario and compared with the conventional flat pricing‐based scheme via numerical examples. The results demonstrate significant reduction in network load using our proposed scheme.     

Cooperative caching for content dissemination in vehicular networks

The explosive growth of mobile data traffic has made cellular operators to seek low‐cost alternatives for cellular traffic off‐loading. In this paper, we consider a content delivery network where a vehicular communication network composed of roadside units (RSUs) is integrated into a cellular network to serve as an off‐loading platform. Each RSU subjecting to its storage capacity caches a subset of the contents of the central content server. Allocating the suitable subset of contents in each RSU cache such that maximizes the hit ratio of vehicles requests is a problem of paramount value that is targeted in this study. First, we propose a centralized solution in which, we model the cache content placement problem as a submodular maximization problem and show that it is NP‐hard. Second, we propose a distributed cooperative caching scheme, in which RSUs in an area periodically share information about their contents locally and thus update their cache. To this end, we model the distributed caching problem as a strategic resource allocation game that achieves at least 50% of the optimal solution. Finally, we evaluate our scheme using simulation for urban mobility simulator under realistic conditions. On average, the results show an improvement of 8% in the hit ratio of the proposed method compared with other well‐known cache content placement approaches.     

命名数据网络中基于内容请求相关性的协作缓存算法

针对命名数据网络(Named Data Networking, NDN)存储空间的有效利用和应答内容的高效缓存问题,该文采用差异化缓存的方式,提出一种依据内容请求序列相关性的协作缓存算法。在内容请求中,预先发送对于后续相关数据单元的并行预测请求,增大内容请求的就近响应概率;缓存决策时,提出联合空间存储位置与缓存驻留时间的2维差异化缓存策略。根据内容活跃度的变化趋势,空间维度上逐跳推进内容存储位置,时间维度上动态调整内容缓存时间,以渐进式的方式将真正流行的请求内容推送至网络边缘存储。该算法减小了内容请求时延和缓存冗余,提高了缓存命中率,仿真结果验证了其有效性。     

Cache‐at‐relay: energy‐efficient content placement for next‐generation wireless relays

Uploading and downloading content have recently become one of the major reasons for the growth of Internet traffic volume. With the increasing popularity of social networking tools and their video upload/download applications, as well as the connectivity enhancements in wireless networks, it has become a second nature for mobile users to access on‐demand content on‐the‐go. Urban hot spots, usually implemented via wireless relays, answer the bandwidth need of those users. On the other hand, the same popular contents are usually acquired by a large number of users at different times, and fetching those from the initial content source each and every time makes inefficient use of network resources. In‐network caching provides a solution to this problem by bringing contents closer to the users. Although in‐network caching has been previously studied from latency and transport energy minimization perspectives, energy‐efficient schemes to prolong user equipment lifetime have not been considered. To address this problem, we propose the cache‐at‐relay (CAR) scheme, which utilizes wireless relays for in‐network caching of popular contents with content access and caching energy minimization objectives. CAR consists of three integer linear programming models, namely, select relay, place content, and place relay, which respectively solve content access energy minimization, joint minimization of content access and caching energy, and joint minimization of content access energy and relay deployment cost problems. We have shown that place relay significantly minimizes the content access energy consumption of user equipments, while place content provides a compromise between the content access and the caching energy budgets of the network. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An overview of web caching replacement algorithms

The increasing demand for World Wide Web (WWW) services has made document caching a necessity to decrease download times and reduce Internet traffic. To make effective use of caching, an informative decision has to be made as to which documents are to be evicted from the cache in case of cache saturation. This is particularly important in a wireless network, where the size of the client cache at the mobile terminal (MT) is small. Several types of caching are used over the Internet, including client caching, server caching, and more recently, proxy caching. In this article we review some of the well known proxy-caching policies for the Web. We describe these policies, show how they operate, and discuss the main traffic properties they incorporate in their design. We argue that a good caching policy adapts itself to changes in Web workload characteristics. We make a qualitative comparison between these policies after classifying them according to the traffic properties they consider in their designs. Furthermore, we compare a selected subset of these policies using trace-driven simulations.     

Batched patch caching for streaming media

This letter elaborates on a scheme that combines batch patching at an origin server and prefix/interval caching at an edge server receiving the clients' requests. We derive a cost function that factors in the aggregate backbone rate, the cache occupancy, and the disk bandwidth utilization. We define the optimal batched patch caching strategy as a function of the client request rate. Finally, we show how various strategies including full caching, no caching and pure prefix caching with no patching are optimal derivations of our scheme under different request rates. We demonstrate the benefits of our scheme compared to classical streaming strategies     

A framework of data caching for improving decoding efficiency of opportunistic network coding

Throughput performance of wireless networks can be enhanced by applying network coding (NC) technique based on opportunistic listening. The packets sent or overheard by a network node should be locally cached for the purpose of possible future decoding. How to manage the cache to reduce the overhead incurred in performing NC and, meanwhile, exploit performance gain is an interesting issue that has not been deeply investigated. In this paper, we present a framework for packet caching policy in multihop wireless networks, aiming at improving decoding efficiency, and thus throughput gain of NC. We formulate the caching policy design as an optimization problem for maximizing decoding utility and derive a set of optimization rules. We propose a distributed network coding caching policy (NCP), which can be readily incorporated into various existing NC architectures to improve NC performance gain. We theoretically analyze the performance improvement of NCP over completely opportunistic NC (COPE). In addition, we use simulation experiments based on ns‐2 to evaluate the performance of NCP. Numerical results validate our analytical model and show that NCP can effectively improve the performance gain of NC compared with COPE. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Efficient complementary caching for ISP-aware networks

Internet service providers(ISPs) have taken some measures to reduce intolerable inter-ISP peer-to-peer(P2P) traffic costs,therefore user experiences of various P2P applications have been affected.The recently emerging offline downloading service seeks to improve user experience by using dedicate servers to cache requested files and provide high-speed uploading.However,with rapid increase in user population,the server-side bandwidth resource of offline downloading system is expected to be insufficient in the near future.We propose a novel complementary caching scheme with the goal of mitigating inter-ISP traffic,alleviating the load on servers of Internet applications and enhancing user experience.Both architecture and caching algorithm are presented in this paper.On the one hand,with full knowledge of P2P file sharing system and offline downloading service,the infrastructure of complementary caching is designed to conveniently be deployed and work together with existing platforms.The co-operational mechanisms among different major components are also included.On the other hand,with in-depth understanding of traffic characteristics that are relevant to caching,we develop complementary caching algorithm with respect to the density of requests,the redundancy of file and file size.Since such relevant information can be real-time captured in our design,the proposed policy can be implemented to guide the storage and replacement of caching unities.Based on real-world traces over 3 months,we demonstrate that the complementary caching scheme is capable to achieve the ’three-win’ objective.That is,for P2P downloading,over 50% of traffic is redirected to cache;for offline downloading,the average server-dependence of tasks drops from 0.71 to 0.32;for user experience,the average P2P transfer rate is increased by more than 50 KB/s.     

Analytical characterization of cache replacement policy impact on content delivery time in information‐centric networks

Information‐centric networking (ICN) has emerged as a promising candidate for designing content‐based future Internet paradigms. ICN increases the utilization of a network through location‐independent content naming and in‐network content caching. In routers, cache replacement policy determines which content to be replaced in the case of cache free space shortage. Thus, it has a direct influence on user experience, especially content delivery time. Meanwhile, content can be provided from different locations simultaneously because of the multi‐source property of the content in ICN. To the best of our knowledge, no work has yet studied the impact of cache replacement policy on the content delivery time considering multi‐source content delivery in ICN, an issue addressed in this paper. As our contribution, we analytically quantify the average content delivery time when different cache replacement policies, namely, least recently used (LRU) and random replacement (RR) policy, are employed. As an impressive result, we report the superiority of these policies in term of the popularity distribution of contents. The expected content delivery time in a supposed network topology was studied by both theoretical and experimental method. On the basis of the obtained results, some interesting findings of the performance of used cache replacement policies are provided.     

A unifying co‐operative web caching architecture

Network caching of objects has become a standard way of reducing network traffic and latency in the web. However, web caches exhibit poor performance with a hit rate of about 30%. A solution to improve this hit rate is to have a group of proxies form co‐operation where objects can be cached for later retrieval. A co‐operative cache system includes protocols for hierarchical and transversal caching. The drawback of such a system lies in the resulting network load due to the number of messages that need to be exchanged to locate an object. This paper proposes a new co‐operative web caching architecture, which unifies previous methods of web caching. Performance results shows that the architecture achieve up to 70% co‐operative hit rate and accesses the cached object in at most two hops. Moreover, the architecture is scalable with low traffic and database overhead. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.