DECoupled Application Data Enroute (DECADE)

Abstract

Content distribution applications, such as those employing peer-topeer (P2P) technologies, are widely used on the Internet and make up a large portion of the traffic in many networks. Often, however, content distribution applications use network resources inefficiently. One way to improve efficiency is to introduce storage capabilities within the network and enable cooperation between endhost and in-network content distribution mechanisms. This is the capability provided by a DECoupled Application Data Enroute (DECADE) system, which is introduced in this document. DECADE enables applications to take advantage of in-network storage when distributing data objects as opposed to using solely end-to-end resources. This document presents the underlying principles and key functionalities of such a system and illustrates operation through a set of examples. Alimi, et al.

Reducing server and network load with shared buffering

“…Therefore, the server itself can assist buffering nodes in deciding which streams of byte are worth buffering by giving corresponding hints: the server sets store-me bits in the transport headers during its overload period. 2 The stream buffering nodes on the path from the server to different clients will only consider buffering those bytes that are marked with the store-me bit. In this way, the amount of traffic that the buffering node has to deal with is reduced to a small proportion of what could have entered the memory otherwise.…”

“…A number of different proposals that treat content replication as a fundamental part of the network is growing. For example, proposals such as DECADE [2] or transparent caching for streaming files [9] try to benefit from in-network storage in a more native way compared to the overlay-based models discussed above. The new methods, however, remain application specific and limited.…”