AMPS: a flexible, scalable proxy testbed for implementing streaming services

We present the design, implementation, and performance evaluation of AMPS --- a flexible, scalable proxy testbed that supports a wide and extensible set of next-generation proxy streaming services. AMPS employs a modular architecture and is built on top of a commodity Linux system. We study the performance of AMPS proxy using a server-proxy-client configuration in a switched-Gigabit LAN environment. We identify the CPU to be the system bottleneck. Through profiling study, we further identify the kernel network protocol processing and the Network Reception Module inside the proxy to be the most CPU-intensive components. We also quantify the maximum achievable throughput for two of the principal components of the proxy - the control plane and data plane, and characterize the end-to-end performance along the server-to-proxy-to-client path. We discuss lessons learned and the various optimizations made in the course of our study to improve system performance.

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