mCast: An SDN-based resource-eficient live video streaming architecture with ISP-CDN collaboration

Abstract

The rise of Software Defined Networking (SDN) presents an opportunity to overcome the limitations of rigid and static traditional Internet architecture and provide services like network layer multicast for live video streaming. In this paper we propose mCast, an SDN-based architecture for live streaming, to reduce the utilization of network and system resources for both Internet Service Providers (ISP) and Content Delivery Networks (CDN) by using multicast over the Internet. We propose a communication framework between ISPs and CDNs to enable mCast while retaining user and data privacy. mCast is transparent to the clients and maintains the control of CDNs on user sessions. We developed a testbed and performed large scale evaluation and comparison. Results showed that mCast can improve the video quality received by clients and, for CDNs and ISPs in comparison to IP unicast, mCast can decrease link utilization by more than 50% and network losses to 0%.