Intelligent edge CDN with smart contract-aided local IoT sharing

Abstract

A content delivery network (CDN) aims to reduce the content delivery latency to end-users by using distributed cache servers. Nevertheless, deploying and maintaining cache servers on a large scale is very expensive. To solve this problem, CDN providers have developed a new content delivery strategy: allowing end-users’s IoT edge devices to share their storage/bandwidth resources. This new edge CDN platform must address two core questions: (1) how can we incentivize end users to share IoT devices? (2) how can we facilitate a safe and transparent content transaction environment for end users? This paper introduces SmartSharing, a new content delivery network solution to address these questions. In smartSharing, the over-the-top (OTT) IoT devices belonging to end-users are used as mini-cache servers. To motivate end users to share the idle devices and storage/bandwidth resources, SmartSharing designs the content delivery schedule and the pricing scheme based on game theory and machine learning algorithms (specifically, a tailored expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm). To facilitate content trading among end users, SmartSharing creates a secure and transparent transaction platform based on smart contracts in Ethereum. In addition, SmartSharing’s performance evaluation is through trace-driven simulations in the real world and a prototype using content metadata and the achieved pricing schemes. The evaluation results show that CDN providers, end users and content providers can all benefit from our SmartSharing framework.

Keywords

CDN over edge IoT / Game theory / EM algorithm / Smart contracts

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgement

This research was partially supported by a Discovery Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

References

[1] GlobeNewsWire, Content delivery network market size to surpass USD 94.98 billion by 2030, 2023, https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2023/11/30/2788438/0/en/Content-Delivery-Network-Market-Size-to-Surpass-USD-94-98-Billion-by-2030-exhibiting-a-CAGR-of-23-5.html, Accessed in Oct. 2023.

[2] M. Bergstrom, The cdn is dead (as we know it) ... long live the edge!, 2023, http://www.contentdeliverysummit.com/2018/agenda.aspx, accessed in Oct. 2023.

[3] Q.V. Khanh, N.V. Hoai, L.D. Manh, A.N. Le, G. Jeon,Wireless communication technologies for IoT in 5G: vision, applications, and challenges, Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput. 2022 (2022).

[4] J. Chandler, G. Paolacci, P. Mueller, Risks and rewards of crowdsourcing marketplaces, in: Handbook of Human Computation, Springer, 2013, pp. 377-392.

[5] Q. Ma, L. Gao, Y.-F. Liu, J. Huang, Economic analysis of crowdsourced wireless community networks, IEEE Trans. Mob. Comput. 16 (7) (2017) 1856-1869.

[6] C. Buragohain, D. Agrawal, S. Suri,A game theoretic framework for incentives in P2P systems, in: Third IEEE International Conference on Peer-To-Peer Computing, 2003, pp. 48-56.

[7] A. Kosba, A. Miller, E. Shi, Z. Wen, C. Papamanthou, Hawk: The blockchain model of cryptography and privacy-preserving smart contracts, in: IEEE Symposium on on Security and Privacy, SP, 2016, pp. 839-858.

[8] F. Li, D. Wang, Y. Wang, X. Yu, N. Wu, J. Yu, H. Zhou, Wireless communications and mobile computing blockchain-based trust management in distributed internet of things, Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput. 2020 (2020).

[9] G. Wood, Ethereum: A secure decentralised generalised transaction ledger, Ethereum Proj. Yellow Pap. 151 (2014) 1-32.

[10] B. Tan, L. Massoulié, Optimal content placement for peer-to-peer video-on-demand systems, IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw. 21 (2) (2013) 566-579.

[11] Y. Zhou, T.H. Chan, S.W. Ho, G. Ye, D. Wu, Replicating coded content in crowdsourcing-based CDN systems, IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol. (2017).

[12] Y. Zhou, L. Chen, M. Jing, S. Zou, R.T. Ma, Design, implementation, and measurement of a crowdsourcing-based content distribution platform, ACM Trans. Multimedia Comput. Commun. Appl. (TOMM) 12 (5s) (2016) 80.

[13] BlockCDN, A distributed CDN platform based on blockchain technology, 2023, https://www.blockcdn.org, accessed in Oct. 2023.

[14] N. Herbaut, N. Negru, A model for collaborative blockchain-based video delivery relying on advanced network services chains, IEEE Commun. Mag. 55 (9) (2017) 70-76.

[15] T. Nakajima, M. Yoshimi, C. Wu, T. Yoshinaga, Color-based cooperative cache and its routing scheme for telco-cdns, IEICE Trans. Inf. Syst. 100 (12) (2017) 2847-2856.

[16] N. Hassan, K.-L.A. Yau, C. Wu, Edge computing in 5G: A review, IEEE Access 7 (2019) 127276-127289.

[17] X. Chen, C. Wu, Z. Liu, N. Zhang, Y. Ji,Computation offloading in beyond 5G networks: A distributed learning framework and applications, IEEE Wirel. Commun. 28 (2) (2021) 56-62.

[18] X. Chen, Z. Zhao, C. Wu, M. Bennis, H. Liu, Y. Ji, H. Zhang, Multitenant cross-slice resource orchestration: A deep reinforcement learning approach, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. 37 (10) (2019) 2377-2392.

[19] C. Wu, Z. Liu, F. Liu, T. Yoshinaga, Y. Ji, J. Li, Collaborative learning of communication routes in edge-enabled multi-access vehicular environment, IEEE Trans. Cogn. Commun. Netw. 6 (4) (2020) 1155-1165.

[20] S. Gu, D. Guo, G. Tang, L. Luo, Y. Sun, X. Luo, Hyedge: Optimal request scheduling in hybrid edge computing environment, 2019, arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.06499.

[21] Y. Cao, R. Ji, L. Ji, G. Lei, H. Wang, X.Shao, l 2 -MPTCP: A learning-driven latency-aware multipath transport scheme for industrial internet applications, IEEE Trans. Ind. Inform. (2022).

[22] Y. Zhai, T. Bao, L. Zhu, M. Shen, X. Du, M. Guizani,Toward reinforcement-learning-based service deployment of 5G mobile edge computing with request-aware scheduling, IEEE Wirel. Commun. 27 (1) (2020) 84-91.

[23] Y. Wu, Q. Zhu, J. Huang, D.H. Tsang, Revenue sharing based resource allocation for dynamic spectrum access networks, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. 32 (11) (2014) 2280-2296.

[24] Z. Xiong, D. Niyato, P. Wang, Z. Han, Y. Zhang, Dynamic pricing for revenue maximization in mobile social data market with network effects, 2018, CoRR abs/1808.04039.

[25] Q. Wang, W. Wang, S. Jin, H. Zhu, N.T. Zhang,Quality-optimized joint source selection and power control for wireless multimedia D2D communication using stackelberg game, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol. 64 (8) (2015) 3755-3769.

[26] K.-P. Yu, L. Tan, M. Aloqaily, H. Yang, Y. Jararweh, Blockchain-enhanced data sharing with traceable and direct revocation in IIoT, IEEE Trans. Ind. Inform. (2021).

[27] L. Tan, K. Yu, N. Shi, C. Yang, W. Wei, H. Lu, Towards secure and privacy-preserving data sharing for COVID-19 medical records: A blockchain-empowered approach, IEEE Trans. Netw. Sci. Eng. (2021).

[28] C. Feng, K. Yu, A.K. Bashir, Y.D. Al-Otaibi, Y. Lu, S. Chen, D. Zhang,Efficient and secure data sharing for 5G flying drones: a blockchain-enabled approach, IEEE Netw. 35 (1) (2021) 130-137.

[29] J. Yin, Y. Xiao, Q. Pei, Y. Ju, L. Liu, M. Xiao, C. Wu, SmartDID: A novel privacy-preserving identity based on blockchain for IoT, IEEE Internet Things J. (2022) http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2022.3145089.

[30] K. Christidis, M. Devetsikiotis, Blockchains and smart contracts for the internet of things, IEEE Access 4 (2016) 2292-2303.

[31] X. Cheng, J. Liu, Nettube: Exploring social networks for peer-to-peer short video sharing, in: IEEE Infocom 2009, 2009, pp. 1152-1160.

[32] A. Buonassisi, J. Marles, Can you stream your way around copyright infringement in Canada?, 2023, https://patentable.com/can-stream-way-around-copyright\protect\discretionary{\char\hyphenchar\font}{}{}infringement-canada/, accessed in Oct. 2023.

[33] D.R. Smart, Fixed Point Theorems, vol. 66, CUP Archive, 1980.

[34] D.G. Luenberger, Complete stability of noncooperative games, J. Optim. Theory Appl. 25 (4) (1978) 485-505.

[35] A.P. Dempster, N.M. Laird, D.B. Rubin, Maximum likelihood from incomplete data via the EM algorithm, J. R. Stat. Soc. Ser. B (Methodol.) (1977) 1-38.

[36] T. Needham, A visual explanation of Jensen’s inequality, Am. Math. Mon. 100 (8) (1993) 768-771.

[37] C. Dannen, Introducing Ethereum and Solidity, Springer, 2017.

[38] Data, Live streaming sessions dataset, 2023, http://dash.ipv6.enstb.fr/dataset/live-sessions, accessed in Oct. 2023.