End User Request Redirection Performance in Content Development Network Using Software Defined Networking -based Network

Abstract

Content Delivery Networks has created a sharp rise of internet traffic in recent years. New technologies has simplified users access to rich content, however, as the internet continues to grow and more users access content stored in CDNs, issues such as reduced scalability, reliability and availability becomes a challenge to end users. This study investigates end user request redirection performance in content development network using software defined networking - based network. The results should assist researchers in network management, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in managing request redirection as a service. An experiment to determine effects of client-side DNS caching on the contemporary DNS-based redirection technique found out that both Firefox and Chrome are prone to client side DNS caching. When subjected to a passive testing, Firefox and Chrome “timeout”. Moreover, users had to refresh their browsers for over a minute to get a response from a CDN server. The findings further indicate that Software Defined Networking improves users‟ quality of service in request redirection. It took ten seconds for multiple users accessing CDN servers to download content and get redirected. Further, the Domain Name System augmented with Network Address Translation technique, based on SDN approach is able to reliably redirect user request to an optimal CDN server. This is when if it discovers the DNS contains out of date information. The ryu controller gathered network statistics and pushed SNAT and DNAT rules. The rules directed TCP packets, hence reliably redirecting users to a better performing CDN server