On a Cloud-Controlled Architecture for Device-to-Device Content Distribution

Abstract

It has been shown that the distribution of popular content can benefit from solutions that dynamically distribute copies of the content from the backend to a subset of subscribed users, and let these users spread the content with opportunistic communication. In this work, we study with an experimental analysis how cloud computing could help to disseminate the popular content for the above scenario. We design an architecture for cloud-based controller of content deliveries, and we investigate strategies for delivering the content with the cloud logic. We implement our system using Microsoft Azure cloud service and building a video application running on commodity smartphone. We experimentally compare different strategies and show that solutions controlled by the cloud are more efficient in terms of traffic offload than approaches without cloud logic, and that practical challenges are solved by our approach that were not considered in former analytical works.