A cost-effective resource allocation and management scheme for content networks supporting IPTV services

This study presents a cost-effective resource allocation approach, which takes the storage and bandwidth costs into consideration, for the proposed content network. The designed content network for supporting IPTV services is composed of several peer service areas, and all video servers are classified into two types – Type 1 and Type 2. Type 1 video servers only store the contents with high hit rates, while Type 2 video servers store other contents with lower hit rates. A novel scheme that allocates contents and video servers based on the hit rate distribution is proposed. The allocation strategy aims at minimizing the cost of the proposed content network. Numerical results show that the optimal resource allocation is strongly related to the hit rate distribution of contents, but is not sensitive to the content size distribution. Additionally, compared with the fully replicated storage method, the proposed allocation scheme can save a considerable percentage of storage space and reduce the total cost of the content network. Based on these findings, we believe that implementing the proposed resource allocation and management scheme will be of benefit to content network operators, especially to infrastructure-based IPTV operators, for reducing the operating expenses.