Using replicated video servers for VoD traffic offloading in integrated metro/access networks

Internet traffic is increasingly becoming a mediastreaming traffic. Especially, Video-on-Demand (VoD) services are pushing the demand for broadband connectivity to the Internet, and optical fiber technology is being deployed in the access network to keep up with such increasing demand. To provide a more scalable network architecture for video/content delivery, network operators are currently considering novel integrated metro/access networks which accommodate replicated video servers directly in their infrastructure. In such way, servers for VoD delivery are placed nearer to the end users, the core segment of the network is partially traffic offloaded, and the end users experience better performance in terms of QoS. In our work, we will evaluate the performance improvement of an integrated metro/access architecture for VoD delivery with replicated video servers considering different configurations in terms of number of replicated servers, meshing degree and adopted network technologies. We develop a network simulator in which replicas of video servers (called Metro Servers, or MSs) are deployed to meet the demand of VoD traffic. In the result section we compare the performance of the various configurations and discuss which are the minimum requirements to minimize blocking of the VoD requests.