Efficiency Gains due to Network Function Sharing in CDN-as-a-Service Slicing Scenarios

The consumption of video contents is currently dominating the traffic observed in ISP networks. The distribution of that content is usually performed leveraging on CDN caches storing and delivering multimedia. The advent of virtualization is bringing attention to the CDN as use case for virtualizing the cache function. In parallel, there is a trend on sharing network infrastructures as a way of reducing deployment costs by ISPs. Then, an interesting scenario emerges when considering the possibility of sharing virtualized cache functions among ISPs sharing a common physical infrastructure, mostly considering that usually those ISPs offer similar content catalogues to final end users. This paper investigates through simulations the potential efficiencies that can be achieved when sharing a virtual cache function if compared to the classical approach of independent virtual caches operated per ISP.