Energy-efficient networking for content distribution over telecom network infrastructure

The use of content-based services over telecom network infrastructures is growing rapidly as user-generated content, over-the-top videos, on-demand videos, personalized TV with CatchUp/PauseLive features, etc. are becoming increasingly popular. To meet the demands of such services, content-delivery networks (or content-distribution networks (CDN)) are being deployed over these telecom network infrastructures in a similar fashion as traditional CDNs. However, with the increasing energy consumption and carbon footprint of the information and communication technology (ICT) industry, these CDNs must be designed to include energy-efficiency measures. Our study presents energy-consumption models, analysis, and content-placement techniques for different types of CDNs over telecom networks to reduce energy usage. Our suggested content-placement strategies exploit variations between storage power consumption and transmission power consumption to achieve energy efficiency. Also, in dynamic traffic scenarios, our content-placement strategies utilize the time-varying traffic irregularities of content-based services. By creating more content replicas during peak load and less replicas during off-peak load, dynamic approaches can save substantial amount of energy. Illustrative numerical examples show a significant improvement in the CDN energy efficiency using these approaches.