Corelli: A Peer-to-Peer Dynamic Replication Service for Supporting Latency-Dependent Content in Community Networks

Abstract

The quality of service for latency dependent content, such as video streaming, largely depends on the distance and available bandwidth between the consumer and the content. Poor provision of these qualities results in poor user experience and increased overhead. To alleviate this, many systems operate caching and replication, utilising dedicated resources to move the content closer to the consumer. Latency-dependent content creates particular issues for community networks, which can often display the property of strong internal connectivity yet poor external connectivity. However, unlike traditional networks, communities often cannot deploy dedicated infrastructure for both monetary and practical reasons. To address these issues, this paper proposes Corelli, a peer-to-peer replication infrastructure designed for use in community networks. In Corelli high capacity peers in communities autonomously build a distributed cache to dynamically pre-fetch content early on in its popularity lifecycle. By exploiting the natural proximity of peers in the community, users can gain extremely low latency access to content whilst reducing ingress utilisation. Through simulation, it is shown that Corelli considerably increases accessibility and improves performance for latency dependent content. Further, Corelli is shown to offer adaptive and resilient mechanisms that ensure that it can respond to variations in churn, demand and popularity.