Energy Efficient Content Distribution

In order to optimize energy efficiency, network operators try to switch off as many network devices as possible. Recently, there is a trend to introduce content caches as an inherent capacity of network equipment, with the objective of improving the efficiency of content distribution and reducing network congestion. In this work, we study the impact of using in-network caches and content delivery network (CDN) cooperation on an energy efficient routing. We formulate this problem as Energy Efficient Content Distribution; we propose an integer linear program and a heuristic algorithm to solve it. The objective of this problem is to find a feasible routing, so that the total energy consumption of the network is minimized while the constraints given by the demands and the link capacity are satisfied. We exhibit for which range of parameters (size of caches, popularity of content, demand intensity, etc.) it is useful to use caches. Experimental results show that by placing a cache on each backbone router to store the most popular content, along with choosing well the best content provider server for each demand to a CDN, we can save about 20% of power on average in all the backbone networks considered.