Caching for mobile users in edge networks

Abstract

Mobile networks deal with an increasing portion of the IP Traffic due to the significant growth in the number of mobile devices and the accompanied lifestyle. A large fraction of this IP traffic is spent on duplicate transfers for the same resources. Previous work has shown that a Content Delivery Network (CDN) based on edge-nodes can reduce redundant backhaul traffic by storing popular content closer to the user. It also shows that a reduced user population per node, as in edge-based caching systems, can have a significant negative impact on caching performance. This effect is attributed to a reduced view on global content popularity. In this work we first create and evaluate a simulator for resource requests that is used to evaluate different caching strategies in an edge network. Our simulation confirms the findings of previous work and inspire three different caching strategies: Cooperative-LRU, User Profiles, and Hybrid with Federated. These strategies include mobility information to help alleviate the reduced knowledge on content popularity and help nodes work together more efficiently. Our results show that we are successful in decreasing the impact of the reduced population using the Cooperative LRU strategy and Profiles strategy. We then improve upon that performance by using a Hybrid strategy of Federated nodes and one of the mobility strategies.