Off-loading the aggregation networks by locality-aware peer-to-peer based content distribution

Field measurements show that more than half of the Internet traffic could be able to take advantage of the local data storage and distribution by utilizing the peer-to-peer (P2P) technique, which in many cases can offer higher scalability and lower price than the client-server based applications. However, typically Internet service providers (ISPs) are limiting P2P applications, because P2P traffic may unnecessarily travel through areas managed by other ISPs and hence cause additional cost when transmitting outside the ISP´s network. In this paper we employ a locality-aware content fetching strategy for the P2P application and investigate the influence of systems utilizing locally stored content on the traffic load distribution between core, metro and access networks. Moreover, we quantitatively evaluate the improvement of the resource utilization in an access network along with the inter-ISP bandwidth saving. Our simulation results show that using locality aware content fetching in access network can reduce traffic loads in the metro and core networks by keeping it closer to the access via local bridging. The big amount of localized P2P traffic in the access network may introduce a new challenge for next generation access networks to cost-efficiently handle the local traffic.