A new surrogate placement algorithm for cloud-based content delivery networks

Cloud-based content delivery networks (CCDNs) have been developed as the next generation of content delivery networks (CDNs). In CCDNs, the cloud contributes to the cost-effective, pay-as-you-go model, and virtualization and the traditional CDNs contribute to content replications. Delivering infrastructure as a service in a networked cloud computing environment requires mapping virtual resources to physical resources, as well as traditional surrogate placement. In this paper, we develop a novel algorithm for virtual surrogate placement that combines multiple knapsack and competitive facility location problems. Moreover, we provide new formulations and theories for this problem. Finally, we compare our algorithm with the previous heuristics. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm achieves significantly better results in terms of a decreased number of surrogate servers, decreased total path length between end users and surrogate servers, decreased average workload variance and CCDN deployment cost.