Evaluating Performance of Content Cache Placement in a Wireless Community Network

Community networks are often associated with bandwidth constraints. The limited bandwidth capacity in community networks results in higher content delivery time (latency) and reduces quality of service. Unplanned cache placement in the community networks has the potential to result in higher delays and increased network traffic. This study evaluates cache placement and content distribution in a community network using a distributed caching strategy. Latency, throughput and video performance measurements were carried out for geography, delay and hop count cache placement. In this study, hop count cache placement resulted in the lowest average latency, highest average throughput and best video performance. Overall, the study shows lower average latency, higher average throughput and better video performance at the caches compared to the main server. This reinforces the effectiveness of con- tent caching in improving network performance in wireless community networks

Effect of content caching on user QoE in iNethi community network

The aim of this research was to determine effectiveness of content caching in community networks. This was achieved by measuring network performance and user quality of experience. The network performance was measured by performing latency and throughput tests in the network. Latency, throughput and video performance measurements were carried out in the Ocean View community network between the main server and access points in 8 locations in the network. The same measurements were carried out in the simulated network using 3 different caching strategies. The network measurements showed that caches resulted in lower latency and higher throughput in the simulated networks. Also caches resulted in less time required for initial buffering to occur, less time taken for video to start playing on its best quality and less time for the video to complete playing compared to the main server. This suggests that content caching improved resource utilisation, network performance and user QoE. A comparison between the cache placement strategies was done to determine which strategy performed best in the simulated network. Latency, throughput and video performance measurements were carried out for geography, delay and hop count cache placement. From the results obtained, hop count cache placement resulted in the lowest average latency, highest average throughput and best video performance. The simulated network was then expanded and measurements were again carried out in the expanded network. The expanded network adopted hop count cache placement to determine if the network would continue to improve performance when more caches are added. Expansion of the network resulted in lower average latency, higher average throughput and better video performance at the caches compared to the main server. This reinforces the effectiveness of content caching in improving network performance even in larger networks