Provider-Side VoD Content Delivery Using OpenFlow Multicast

IP based multicast is considered as the most efficient way to deliver data to multiple receivers at the same time with preserving high throughput, and hence, most of the IPTV system exploits IP based multicast protocol to deliver content especially between Super head end often called root node and Regional Head end called local nodes. With this protocol, the data transmission paths are determined by multicast tree which is constructed and maintained by each network router in distributed manner. Since each network router has no holistic network view and it is not aware of the entire network status, even though some local nodes encounter a drastic packet loss due to the network congestion, the multicast tree will still be maintained, and this in turn causes waste of network resources. OpenFlow is one of the enabling technologies to manage and control a network in a centralized and programmable manner by considering the current network status. Therefore, in this paper we take advantage of OpenFlow and propose a resource efficient “Provider-Side VoD Content Delivery method using OpenFlow multicast feature in IPTV network.