Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

The main focus of this project is on improving the performance of multimedia content delivery networks (CDN), in particular based on novel functionalities that software-defined networking and network function virtualization brings to such networks. The explosion of broadband access around the world has significantly scaled up user demand for the streaming of popular events such as international sport matches, live events and news. Traditional CDNs are often too architecturally rigid to deal with mobility and quick scaling of user demands, which may result in either poor quality of experience for the users, or require over-engineering of infrastructure which results in an increase in capital and operational expenditure. Elastic Cloud-based CDNs with a software-defined underlying infrastructure could provide a much more flexible architecture to guarantee Quality of Experience (QoE) in such dynamic scenarios. Our objective is to develop and validate methods for optimal network service provisioning in multimedia streaming networks that are operating on top of such software-defined virtualized infrastructures, with particular focus on guaranteed Quality of Experience in a multi-tenant, multi-service provider setting.