Replication algorithms in a remote caching architecture

Studies the cache performance in a remote caching architecture. The authors develop a set of distributed object replication policies that are designed to implement different optimization goals. Each site is responsible for local cache decisions, and modifies cache contents in response to decisions made by other sites. The authors use the optimal and greedy policies as upper and lower bounds, respectively, for performance in this environment. Critical system parameters are identified, and their effect on system performance studied. Performance of the distributed algorithms is found to be close to optimal, while that of the greedy algorithms is far from optimal     

Efficient LRU-based buffering in a LAN remote caching architecture

The possibility of fast access to the main memory of remote sites has been advanced as a potential performance improvement in distributed systems. Even if a page is not available in local memory, sites need not do a disk access. Instead, the sites can use efficient mechanisms that support rapid request/response exchanges in order to access pages that are currently buffered at a remote site. Hardware and software support in such a remote caching architecture must also include algorithms that determine which pages should be buffered at what sites. When each site uses the classic LRU replacement algorithm, performance can be much worse than optimal in many system configurations. Because sites do not coordinate individual decisions, overall system buffering/caching decisions yield very inefficient global configurations. This paper proposes an easily implementable modification of the LRU replacement algorithm for LAN environments that reduces replication. The algorithm substantially improves hit-ratios-and thus performance-over a wide range of parameters. The relatively simple LAN topology implies that much less state information need be available for good replacement decisions compared to general network topologies. Two implications of two variations of the algorithm are explored. In an environment where the network is not a performance bottleneck, and where performance is memory-limited, performance of the proposed replacement algorithm is shown to be close to optimal     

Network-aware partial caching for Internet streaming media

The delivery of multimedia over the Internet is affected by adverse network conditions such as high packet loss rate and long delay. This paper aims at mitigating such effects by leveraging client-side caching proxies. We present a novel cache architecture and associated cache management algorithms that turn edge caches into accelerators of streaming media delivery. This architecture allows partial caching of media objects and joint delivery from caches and origin servers. Most importantly, the caching algorithms are both network-aware and stream-aware; they take into account the popularity of streaming media objects, their bit rate requirements, and the available bandwidth between clients and servers. Using Internet bandwidth models derived from proxy cache logs and measured over real Internet paths, we have conducted extensive simulations to evaluate the performance of various cache management algorithms. Our experiments demonstrate that network-aware caching algorithms can significantly reduce startup delay and improve stream quality. Our experiments also show that partial caching is particularly effective when bandwidth variability is not very high.Shudong Jin: Corespondence to This research was supported in part by NSF (awards ANI-9986397, ANI-0095988, ANI-0205294 and EJA-0202067) and by IBM. Part of this work was done while the first author was at IBM Research in 2001.     

D2D网络中的缓存副本数布设算法

在Device-to-Device (D2D)缓存网络中,缓存文件的副本数量是制约系统缓存效率的重要因素,过多的副本会导致缓存资源不能得到充分利用,副本数过低又将使流行文件难以被有效获取。针对D2D缓存网络副本布设问题,以系统缓存命中率最大化为目标,利用凸规划理论,提出了一种缓存文件副本数布设算法(CRP)。仿真结果显示,与现有副本数量布设算法相比,该算法可以有效提升D2D缓存网络总体缓存命中率。     

COPACC: An Architecture of Cooperative Proxy-Client Caching System for On-Demand Media Streaming

Proxy caching is a key technique to reduce transmission cost for on-demand multimedia streaming. The effectiveness of current caching schemes, however, is limited by the insufficient storage space and weak cooperation among proxies and their clients, particularly considering the high bandwidth demands from media objects. In this paper, we propose COPACC, a cooperative proxy-and-client caching system that addresses the above deficiencies. This innovative approach combines the advantages of both proxy caching and peer-to-peer client communications. It leverages the client-side caching to amplify the aggregated cache space and rely on dedicated proxies to effectively coordinate the communications. We propose a comprehensive suite of distributed protocols to facilitate the interactions among different network entities in COPACC. It also realizes a smart and cost-effective cache indexing, searching, and verifying scheme. Furthermore, we develop an efficient cache allocation algorithm for distributing video segments among the proxies and clients. The algorithm not only minimizes the aggregated transmission cost of the whole system, but also accommodates heterogeneous computation and storage constraints of proxies and clients. We have extensively evaluated the performance of COPACC under various network and end-system configurations. The results demonstrate that it achieves remarkably lower transmission cost as compared to pure proxy-based caching with limited storage space. On the other hand, it is much more robust than a pure peer-to-peer communication system in the presence of node failures. Meanwhile, its computation and control overheads are both kept in low levels     

Optimal proxy cache allocation for efficient streaming media distribution

We address the problem of efficiently streaming a set of heterogeneous videos from a remote server through a proxy to multiple asynchronous clients so that they can experience playback with low startup delays. We determine the optimal proxy prefix cache allocation to the videos that minimizes the aggregate network bandwidth cost. We integrate proxy caching with traditional server-based reactive transmission schemes such as hatching, patching and stream merging to develop a set of proxy-assisted delivery schemes. We quantitatively explore the impact of the choice of transmission scheme, cache allocation policy, proxy cache size, and availability of unicast versus multicast capability, on the resulting transmission cost. Our evaluations show that even a relatively small prefix cache (10%-20% of the video repository) is sufficient to realize substantial savings in transmission cost. We find that carefully designed proxy-assisted reactive transmission schemes can produce significant cost savings even in a predominantly unicast environment such as the Internet.     

Proxy Cache Replacement Algorithms: A History-Based Approach

Accesing and circulation of Web objects has been facilitated by the design and implementation of effective caching schemes. Web caching has been integrated in prototype and commercial Web-based information systems in order to reduce the overall bandwidth and increase system's fault tolerance. This paper presents an overview of a series of Web cache replacement algorithms based on the idea of preserving a history record for cached Web objects. The number of references to Web objects over a certain time period is a critical parameter for the cache content replacement. The proposed algorithms are simulated and experimented under a real workload of Web cache traces provided by a major (Squid) proxy cache server installation. Cache and bytes hit rates are given with respect to different cache sizes and a varying number of request workload sets and it is shown that the proposed cache replacement algorithms improve both cache and byte hit rates.     

考虑内容异构5G无线网络云对边混合缓存策略

现有大多数内容缓存算法需要对内容流行度的准确估计，这在动态移动网络环境中是较难实现的。提出考虑内容异构5G无线网络云对边混合缓存策略，设计优化了内容缓存位置，其可以是原始内容服务器、云单元（CUs）和基站（BSs）。采用Lyapunov优化方法解决了NP-hard缓存控制问题与CU缓存和BS缓存控制决策之间的紧密耦合问题，有助于改善和识别网络体系结构的层次性和Cus缓存与BSs缓存之间的隶属关系，同时新的分层网络架构能够通过机会性地开发以云为中心和以边缘为中心的缓存来提高内容缓存性能，支持高平均请求的内容数据速率。采用李雅普诺夫优化技术，可实现恒定分数的容量区域的所有到达率的有限服务延迟，进而实现缓存数据的快速读取。仿真结果显示，所提缓存策略在平均端到端服务延迟和负载降低率方面具有较为显著的优势。     

Cache tiling for high performance morphological image processing

Morphological image analysis is a technique of processing images through shape characteristics (Jain 1989). Because images are regular data structures, morphology algorithm's memory access patterns are predictable. By using read and write patterns, we derive a model of processing to examine inefficiencies in cache processing. We then develop a cache architecture for windowed processing that reduces cache thrashing. Our caching technique, cache tiling, improves efficiency dramatically for small caches independent of compiler optimizations. Programs are not affected, providing a transparent solution to improve caching. A system code, compilers, or profiling programs can determine the blocking necessary for the best performance. An analytical model for morphological processing's memory characteristics is presented that provides for exact cache analysis and prediction. The analytical model is compared to address traces to validate the model. Other algorithms such as inner product, matrix multiplication, and convolution also benefit from the architecture presented herein.     

PPP: Prefix-Based Popularity Prediction for Efficient Content Caching in Contentcentric Networks

In the Content-Centric Networking (CCN) architecture, popular content can be cached in some intermediate network devices while being delivered, and the following requests for the cached content can be efficiently handled by the caches. Thus, how to design in-network caching is important for reducing both the traffic load and the delivery delay. In this paper, we propose a caching framework of Prefix-based Popularity Prediction (PPP) for efficient caching in CCN. PPP assigns a lifetime (in a cache) to the prefix of a name (of each cached object) based on its access history (or popularity), which is represented as a Prefix-Tree (PT). We demonstrate PPP’s predictability of content popularity in CCN by both traces and simulations. The evaluation results show that PPP can achieve higher cache hits and less traffic load than traditional caching algorithms (i.e., LRU and LFU). Also, its performance gain increases with users of high mobility.     

基于动态内容流行度的NDN缓存决策和替换策略研究

命名数据网络(NDN)中的路由器节点具有缓存能力,这就极大地提高了网络中的数据发送与检索效率。然而,由于路由器的缓存能力是有限的,设计有效的缓存策略仍然是一项紧迫的任务。为了解决这个问题,提出了一种动态内容流行度缓存决策和替换策略(DPDR)。DPDR综合考虑内容流行度和缓存能力,利用一个和式增加、积式减少(AIMD)的算法动态调节流行度阈值,并将超过流行度阈值的内容存入缓存空间;同时提出了一个缓存替换算法,综合考虑了缓存空间中内容的流行度和内容最后被访问时间等因素,将替换值最小的内容移出内容缓存。大量仿真结果显示,与其他算法相比,本文所提的算法能够有效提高缓存命中率,缩短平均命中距离和网络吞吐量。     

Designing Efficient and Robust Caching Algorithms for Streaming-on-Demand Services on the Internet

Content Delivery Networks (CDN) have been used on the Internet to cache media content so as to reduce the load on the original media server, network congestion, and latency. Due to the large size of media content compared to normal web objects, current caching algorithms used in the Internet are no longer suitable. This paper presents a high-performance prefetch system that accommodates user time-varying behavior. A hybrid caching technique, which combines prefetch and replacement algorithms, is also introduced. The robustness of the cache system against imperfect user request information is evaluated using three request noise models. Two prefetch performance indices are also presented to help content administrators in deciding when to update the user request profile for caching algorithms.     

Contention-aware data caching in wireless multi-hop ad hoc networks

This paper studies a challenging problem of cache placement in wireless multi-hop ad hoc networks. More specifically, we study how to achieve an optimal tradeoff between total access delay and caching overheads, by properly selecting a subset of wireless nodes as cache nodes when the network topology changes. We assume a data source updates a data item to be accessed by other client nodes. Most of the existing cache placement algorithms use hop counts to measure the total cost of a caching system, but hop delay in wireless networks varies much due to the contentions among these nodes and the traffic load on each link. Therefore, we evaluate the per-hop delay for each link according to the contentions detected by a wireless node from the MAC layer. We propose two heuristic cache placement algorithms, named Centralized Contention-aware Caching Algorithm (CCCA) and Distributed Contention-aware Caching Algorithm (DCCA), both of which detect the variation of contentions and the change of the traffic flows, in order to evaluate the benefit of selecting a node as a cache node. We also apply a TTL-based cache consistency strategy to maintain the delta consistency among all the cache nodes. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithms achieve better performance than other alternative ones in terms of average query delay, caching overheads, and query success ratio.     

基于SDN的无线网状网络缓存位置决策和操作分配方案

针对信息中心网络缓存管理效率较低的问题,提出一种旨在提高缓存管理效率的方法,且充分利用了无线网状网络(WMN)环境中软件定义网络(SDN)的概念。主要工作体现在SDN内容管理上,缓存位置决策考虑了网络拓扑位置、内容尺寸和缓存节点资源的位置。缓存操作考虑了请求客户端和缓存节点位置,且操作分为通过分支点的off-path缓存和通过缓存节点内容流的on-path缓存。控制器通过缓存内容表来确定工作的分配。实验在两种环境下进行:含有局部聚合客户端的小型网络和局部分布式客户端的大型网络。结果显示,所提方案仅利用每秒5.13kb的控制流量负荷即可将随机缓存位置方案的平均响应延迟减少23.95%。相比于其他网络缓存方案,所提方案最大化了WMN的节点缓存效率,明显提升了内容缓存分配性能,且系统没有较大的额外开销。     

无线Web访问的缓存和预取机制

缓存和预取在提高无线环境下的Web访问性能方面发挥着重要作用。文章研究针对无线局域网的Web缓存和预取机制,分别基于数据挖掘和信息论提出了采用序列挖掘和延迟更新的预测算法,设计了上下文感知的预取算法和获益驱动的缓存替换机制,上述算法已在Web缓存系统OnceEasyCache中实现。性能评估实验结果表明,上述算法的集成能有效地提高缓存命中率和延迟节省率。     

Improved group-based cooperative caching scheme for mobile ad hoc networks

Data caching is a popular technique that improves data accessibility in wired or wireless networks. However, in mobile ad hoc networks, improvement in access latency and cache hit ratio may diminish because of the mobility and limited cache space of mobile hosts (MHs). In this paper, an improved cooperative caching scheme called group-based cooperative caching (GCC) is proposed to generalize and enhance the performance of most group-based caching schemes. GCC allows MHs and their neighbors to form a group, and exchange a bitmap data directory periodically used for proposed algorithms, such as the process of data discovery, and cache placement and replacement. The goal is to reduce the access latency of data requests and efficiently use available caching space among MH groups. Two optimization techniques are also developed for GCC to reduce computation and communication overheads. The first technique compresses the directories using an aggregate bitmap. The second employs multi-point relays to develop a forwarding node selection scheme to reduce the number of broadcast messages inside the group. Our simulation results show that the optimized GCC yields better results than existing cooperative caching schemes in terms of cache hit ratio, access latency, and average hop count.     

Optimal Cache Memory Exploitation for Continuous Media: To Cache or to Prefetch?

Network continuous-media applications are emerging with a great pace. Cache memories have long been recognized as a key resource (along with network bandwidth) whose intelligent exploitation can ensure high performance for such applications. Cache memories exist at the continuous-media servers and their proxy servers in the network. Within a server, cache memories exist in a hierarchy (at the host, the storage-devices, and at intermediate multi-device controllers). Our research is concerned with how to best exploit these resources in the context of continuous media servers and in particular, how to best exploit the available cache memories at the drive, the disk array controller, and the host levels. Our results determine under which circumstances and system configurations it is preferable to devote the available memory to traditional caching (a.k.a. data sharing) techniques as opposed to prefetching techniques. In addition, we show how to configure the available memory for optimal performance and optimal cost. Our results show that prefetching techniques are preferable for small-size caches (such as those expected at the drive level). For very large caches (such as those employed at the host level) caching techniques are preferable. For intermediate cache sizes (such as those at multi-device controllers) a combination of both strategies should be employed.     

面向费用优化的云存储缓存策略

为提高云存储的访问速率并降低费用,提出了一种面向费用优化的云存储缓存策略。利用几乎免费的局域网环境下的多台桌面计算机,在本地建立一个分布式文件系统,并将其作为远端云存储的缓存。进行文件读取时,首先查找其是否在缓存中,若存在则直接从缓存读取;若不存在则从远端云存储读取。采用了最近最少使用(LRU)算法进行缓存替换,将冷门数据从缓存中替换掉。以亚马逊简单存储服务(S3)作为远端的云存储服务,对原型系统进行了简单的性能测试。测试结果表明,使用了所提出的缓存策略后,在降低费用的同时能够显著提高文件读取的速度。     

Design and analysis of a variable bit rate caching algorithm for continuous media data

In this paper, the problem of caching continuous media data in a (main) memory and disk caching system is addressed. Caching schemes can significantly reduce the load on the network as well as on the servers, also the retrieval of documents from the cache requires short response time. In interval-level caching algorithms, an interval of data between two adjacent streams is the basic caching entity. In this paper, we design a novel algorithm, referred to as variable bit rate caching (VBRC) algorithm, which belongs to the interval-level caching algorithms. The proposed VBRC algorithm can be used in the system for memory caching or disk caching. VBRC can handle variable retrieval bandwidth as well as constant retrieval bandwidth . In designing the VBRC algorithm, we propose the strategies of reducing the number of switching operation, which will probably cause discontinuity of retrieving data. Also, we propose a just-in-time scheme for resource allocation in our VBRC algorithm and show that the caching performance in comparison with the reservation scheme adopted in the resource-based caching (RBC) algorithm is significantly improved. Our simulation study compares the recent and most popular generalized interval caching, RBC, and VBRC, on several influencing factors such as cache space size, cache I/O bandwidth, request arrival rate, and percentage of requests for large documents, with respect to the byte hit ratio and the number of switching operations. The simulation result confirms our analysis.

Mesh layouts for block-based caches

Current computer architectures employ caching to improve the performance of a wide variety of applications. One of the main characteristics of such cache schemes is the use of block fetching whenever an uncached data element is accessed. To maximize the benefit of the block fetching mechanism, we present novel cache-aware and cache-oblivious layouts of surface and volume meshes that improve the performance of interactive visualization and geometric processing algorithms. Based on a general I/O model, we derive new cache-aware and cache-oblivious metrics that have high correlations with the number of cache misses when accessing a mesh. In addition to guiding the layout process, our metrics can be used to quantify the quality of a layout, e.g. for comparing different layouts of the same mesh and for determining whether a given layout is amenable to significant improvement. We show that layouts of unstructured meshes optimized for our metrics result in improvements over conventional layouts in the performance of visualization applications such as isosurface extraction and view-dependent rendering. Moreover, we improve upon recent cache-oblivious mesh layouts in terms of performance, applicability, and accuracy.